This week the Huffington post reported 6 things that can be cured with a good amount of regular sleep. These included weight gain, diabetes, memory, libido, colds, stroke and cancer risk. Having worked in the sleep industry for a while, I come across many people who suffer from sleeping problems or insomnia. The issue is that we are all after a quick fix in the form of a magic pill to solve our sleeping problems but these can be caused by so many different factors.
The first questions I ask to people with sleeping problems are whether they or their partner snores, whether they drink a lot of caffeine and whether they have a lot of stress and anxiety in their lives. Although there can be a few route issues, getting to these can help to give more specific advice as to how to solve the problem.
The solution for any of these route causes is not a magic pill but in fact a holistic approach. Long term lack of sleep is a major health problem so all of the areas below need to be looked into.
Nutrition: The questions need to be asked as to whether you are drinking caffeine or consuming lots of sugar throughout the day and whether you are eating a balanced diet. There are supplements that can aid sleep such as Bioglan Rest and Restore Vitamins.
Stress and Anxiety: Whether at work or at home any kind of stress can impact on sleep. Sometimes the anxiety isn’t even external it can be a type of sleep anxiety caused by our stress about not being able to sleep.
Breathing – Learning specific breathing techniques can really help the body to calm down. We often take a long breathe to calm ourselves down but in order for this to actually work we would need to take long rhythmic breaths for a few minutes before it would reduce our heart rate.
Relaxing – Try to keep external stimulation minimal so no action movies just before bed and for some people a warm bath and lavender oils can help. Also a relaxing body cream such as Bentley Organic Calming Lotion.
Snoring: Our Breathing Relief Nasal Dilator has been clinically proven to significantly reduce and eliminate snoring. It can be so frustrating when someone else is the cause of your lack of sleep.
Meditation: Some people get anxious about the word meditation and others don’t know where to start. More and more research is showing the astounding benefits of meditation. If you’re a newbie just see it as giving yourself 5-10 minutes time out where you can let thoughts come in and then go out. If you gradually learn to not focus on the thought then it will leave and your mind will start to calm down. For example you remember that you forgot to pick the dry cleaning up but rather than thinking about when you will do it and feed the thought, just say to yourself I will remember and deal with this later and let the thought go. Otherwise try an audio meditation with relaxing music and see if that can help you to zone out.
Although not nearly exhausted hopefully some of the tips above will help you to prepare yourself for a better night’s sleep.
