Every night, millions of people all over the world find themselves lying awake desperate for that miracle cure that can help to relax their mind so they can drift off to sleep naturally and healthily.

There are all sorts of bold claims made about light boxes, sleep clocks and hypnosis tapes that can help you get to sleep. It’s always wise to be cynical. But when the claims can be backed up by scientific research it’s worth checking out whether they might be the insomnia cure you’ve been looking for.

One of the latest treatments getting a lot of insomniacs excited (or ideally, more relaxed) is the phenomena of brainwaves entrainment and how it can help you to get to sleep.

What is brainwaves entrainment?

Our brainwaves fluctuate at different frequencies depending on the activity they are engaged in. During the daytime, when we are awake, they are typically between 12 and 30 Hertz, known as the Beta frequency. But when we are asleep the frequency slows dramatically to between 0.1 and 4 hertz, known as the Delta frequency.

In order to get to sleep, our brainwaves have to reduce from Beta to Delta. Normally this happens naturally, as our bodies and mind relax, our breathing slows and our minds drift off to the land of nod. But when you are feeling stress, depressed or anxious, you can find it difficult to relax enough mentally for your brainwaves to slow so you can get to sleep.

This is where brainwaves entrainment comes in. Brainwaves entrainment is the process of using special sounds and pulses to induce slower brain frequencies. When sounds are played at between 0.1 and 4 Hertz our brains naturally adjust themselves to replicate the slower frequency. Much like how fast dance music can make us feel more alert and active, slow sounds can help our minds to relax and feel calm and lulled into the Delta state needed for us to get to sleep.

A method of relaxation used for 100s of years

Brainwave entrainment isn’t a new concept. It’s been used for hundreds of years in spiritual and religious ceremonies to induce people into certain states of mind. Over the last hundred years brainwave entrainment has been developed and refined, and is now used widely for meditation, hypnosis and for curing insomnia.

Brainwave entrainment has been scientifically proven to be effective in reducing brainwave patterns and helping people to relax. This was done using a brainwave scanner to record feedback and images on the slowing brainwaves as a result of listening to brainwave entrainment music. What’s more, brainwave entrainment has been used successfully by the Monroe Institute since the 1980s, and many hypnosis experts swear by its power to help you feel relaxed and calm.

Where can I find brainwaves entrainment music?

There are many different types of MP3s you can buy that use brainwaves entrainment for inducing more relaxed states of mind. Many people use them as a form of therapy relaxation to reduce anxiety, stress or depression.

If you’re looking for an MP3 series focused on battling insomnia then you might want to check out the MP3 series produced by the Sleep Salon. Comprising of 12 different sessions, the set includes different types of brainwave entrainment for treating different levels of insomnia.

So if you’re suffering from bouts of insomnia then brainwave entrainment MP3s are worth trying to see if they can help you relax your mind and gain more hours of healthy, rejuvenating sleep each night. The entire Sleep Salon MP3 set is available on a 60 day money back guarantee, so if it doesn’t help to reduce your insomnia then you can get your purchase fully refunded.

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Do you ever wake up in the morning and still feel exhausted, even after eight or more hours of sleep? If you’re like me, waking up feeling half asleep can make me feel grumpy and tired for the rest of the morning (if not the whole day). Why is this? And is there anything we can do about it?

Why you can still feel tired

Every night our bodies go through 3-5 sleep cycles lasting around 90 minutes. These sleep cycles fluctuate between deep sleep and a light slumber, as your body rejuvenates itself for the day ahead. If you wake up during a light sleep cycle then you can feel alert and refreshed. But waking up during a deep sleep can mean you wake up feeling tired because your mind still feels half in sleep mode, causing you to desperately hammer the snooze button on your alarm and wish you could sleep for a couple of hours more.

With a good night’s sleep vital to our mental and physical health, technology boffins have come up with a few inventions that help to track our sleep patterns and to help you sleep better at night.

axbo SleepPhase Sleep Monitor

This advanced alarm clock analyses your sleep patterns via a wireless wristband worn while you sleep. Developed by sleep scientists (whatever they are), the axbo SleepPhase sleep monitor will then wake you up gently,with the sound of birdsong or five other gentle sound, while you’re in a light sleep phase up to 30 minutes before your normal alarm clock. This enables you to wake up feeling more refreshed and energetic, rather than grumpy and tired.

If you fail to wake up then a conventional buzzer will sound to get you out of bed.

The axbo SleepPhase sleep monitor comes with two different wristbands, for you and your partner. It will also display your sleep patterns in an interesting graph, which might be nice to look at but confusing as to how it can help improve your sleep.

While not exactly cheap, if you place a premium on a good night’s sleep then the axbo SleepPhase is worth a look. It scores favorably in reviews, with many people feeling more awake and less drowsy from being woken during a light sleep cycle, rather than groggy and tired. It’s also smartly designed, which will appeal to those that value the design of gadgets almost as highly as the technology itself.

Sleeptracker Elite

This smart looking wristwatch was named the invention of the year by Time Magazine. Like the axbo SleepPhase, the Sleeptracker Elite monitors your sleep patterns and then aims to wake you at the optimal time. In particular, it monitors the number of sleep interruptions during the night to see whether it’s these that are causing you to feel exhausted in the morning, such as pets jumping on your bed in the middle of the night.

The Sleeptracker Elite scores highly in reviews, with lots of people confirming that its maker’s claims are right and that it works. However, wearing a watch all night might feel a bit clammy and uncomfortable for some, in which case you might want to opt for the axbo SleepPhases instead.

Fitbit One Wireless Activity and Sleep Tracker

This gadget is like a Swiss army knife for monitoring your daily health. Along with tracking your sleep patterns, the Fitbit One can record the number of steps you’ve walked and how many calories you’ve burned. After logging events in your daily routine, such as what you’ve eaten and your workouts, you can then share the results with friends and other users on the maker’s website to win badges and encourage one another’s progress.

In terms of helping you to sleep, the Fitbit One is slipped into a wristband at night to measure your sleep cycle and the number of times you wake up during the night to give you a sleep quality score. However, it wont wake you on its own accord without you setting the timer. So it cant be used to wake you up during a light sleep cycle like the other two devices. So the Fitbit One is only really worth considering if you want to use it to measure and record your daily health and lifestyle, rather than a sleep boosting device on its own.

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Like many medical conditions, insomnia isnt the same for everyone. It can vary from occasional bouts of not being able to get to sleep for an hour to a nightly battle of stress and frustration, dreading how exhausted you’ll feel the next day. Insomnia is a common problem, with it affecting up to a third of people – half of which suffer from it nightly.

There are all sorts of solutions you can try, from herbal remedies to sleep CDs and books to practicing good sleep hygiene. But if none of these have worked and you find yourself tempted to try sleeping pills, it might be worth taking a look at the Nightwave Sleep Assistant first.

What is the Nightwave Sleep Assistant?

The Nightwave Sleep Assistant projects a blue light onto the ceiling (or a wall) which slowly throbs in brightness. The idea is that you synchronize your breathing in time with the light. As the light’s brightness begins to fade your breathing is slows with it, enabling you to reach the relaxed mental and physical state needed for you to drift off to sleep.

The Nightwave Sleep Assistant has a 7 minute and 25 minute timer and 4 different functions: sleep mode, mood light, heartbeat stress reducer and flashlight.

Essentially, the Nightwave Sleep Assistant helps you to get to sleep in three ways:

1) If you suffer from anxious or overactive thoughts, which keep you in a state of wakeful alertness, the Nightwave Sleep Assistant can distract you from these thoughts by providing you with something else to focus on.

2) It harnesses the ancient relaxation technique of deep breathing, which helps to reduce stress levels and help you feel more relaxed

3) The light tells your brain that your eyelids are begining to droop, which subconsciously tricks you into feeling tired.

Does it work? Or it just a gimmick

The Nightwave Sleep Assistant isnt exactly cheap. So it’s wise to cynical of the claims made in the carefully worded sales pitch on their website. Whilst I haven’t used it myself, the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. In fact, it’s got 3.5 stars out of 5 from 98 reviews (at the time of writing) on Amazon which vouches for the fact that, in many cases, the Nightwave Sleep Assistant has helped people get to sleep. This includes an airline pilot, used to battling an erratic sleep schedule, and someone who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for over four years following an accident before trying out the device.

A healthier alternative to sleeping pills?

When you’re battling insomnia night after night it can be tempting to rely in medication to resolve the problem. But this can cause problems it itself, because medication can make you feel drowsy the next day and you can come to develop a reliance on medication to help you to get to sleep. Relying on medication can also get expensive. So if the Sleep Assistant can help you to get to sleep naturally it’s going to be better for your long-term health and your wallet in the long run.

Having said that, if chronic insomnia is adversely affecting your life then you should always visit your doctor for professional advice.

Disclaimer – the links in this article are affiliate links.

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Are you a Snorter? A snorchestra? Or a rattler? Snoring can be a source of amusement, but for people with a severe snoring problem it’s no laughing matter. It can disrupt your sleep, damage your relationship with your partner and even cause health problems.

Up to a quarter of people in the UK snore, with two thirds of them snoring so loudly that it keeps their partner awake and leaves them wondering nightly what can help me stop snoring? What’s more, if snoring makes you to wake up in the night, and disrupts your sleep, it can make you feel tired the next day and at a higher risk of having an accident. In fact, The Department of Transport estimates that a fifth of traffic accidents are due to excessive sleepiness.

So if your snoring is ruining your sleep and that of your partner, it’s wise to find a solution and discover what can help me stop snoring?

Why do I snore?

People snore due to vibrating soft tissue in the mouth, nose or throat. Snoring can affect anyone and to different degrees: some only snore occasionally while others snore every night.

Snoring is linked to being overweight, smoking and/or drinking alcohol. It could also be due to a response to medication, often ironically sleeping medication which causes the neck muscles to become too relaxed and allow the skin to vibrate.

Snoring can also indicate obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), where the airways might be partially or totally blocked from anywhere from 10 seconds for up to 2 minutes. This in turn can cause other problems due to the lack of oxygen to the brain. So if you wake up in the middle of the night gasping for breath it’s a wise idea to see your GP to get it checked out.

How can I stop snoring? Anti-snoring devices you can try

With three million people suffering from the problem nightly and wanting to know ‘how can I stop snoring?’, there’s a range of anti-snoring solutions you can try. Firstly, with snoring being linked to being overweight, drinking alcohol or smoking, the first step is to make some lifestyle changes to eliminate possible causes.

If you snore through your nose then the first anti-snoring devices to try are nasal strips or a nasal dilator. Nasal strips are simply self adhesive strips of tape that are placed over the nose to pull the nostrils apart so that the wearer can breathe through their nose comfortably when they sleep. Alternately, nasal dilators resemble nose rings and are placed inside the nose to push the nostrils apart to clear the airways.

If, on the other hand, you snore through your mouth, you could try wearing a chin strap to keep the mouth closed while you sleep, and so you force yourself to breathe through your nose. Another option is a vesilibutor shield which resembles a gum shield rugby players wear and blocks the flow of air through the mouth, forcing you to breathe through your nose when you sleep.

If none of these anti-snoring devices work, the absolute last resort might be surgery to tighten the tissue that’s vibrating when you sleep. Surgery, however, is far from an ideal solution for snoring and isn’t going to help in many cases, such as if you suffer from sleep apnea. Due to the nature of conducting surgery on sensitive areas, surgery can have unpleasant side effects and will only last up to two years before it will need to be repeated.

So before you think about going under the knife, try out some different anti-snoring devices to see if they can stop you wondering ‘what can help me stop snoring?’ And it’s wise to always visit your GP if snoring is harming your sleep and that of the people around you.

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When my sister had a baby I saw first hand how tough the first six months can be. It’s a never ending cycle of feeding, sleeping and crying, with a full night’s sleep a distant memory.  You might be lucky and have a baby that sleeps for long periods and is able to sooth themselves back to sleep. But for many parents wondering how to get their baby’s to sleep through the night is challenge that can last the first nine months.

The problem is that if your baby isn’t sleeping you aren’t either. This can lead to you feeling tired and irritable the next day, and it can even make you prone to bouts of depression. So if you’re a new parent, it’s wise to have some strategies for helping your baby to get to sleep so you can get more sleep of your own and increase the enjoyment you gain from being a new parent.

Here are ten easy ways to train in your baby in good sleeping habits so they can sleep through the night:

1. Get the baby used to a small amount of noise. You shouldn’t immediately feel you have to stop watching TV downstairs or getting on with chores in case you disturb their sleep. If they get too used to absolute silence then they are more likely to wake.

2. At night keep the lights around the house low and your voices quieter than during the daytime. This will signal to the baby that it’s now the nighttime and time to sleep.

3. Establish a bedtime routine. This could include having a baby, changing them into their nigh clothes and having a feed and cuddle before they are put to bed. This will help the baby to relax physically and mentally so they can go to sleep for longer.

4. Get baby’s used to falling asleep on their own. Holding your baby until they fall asleep may be comforting but it means they might struggle to go to sleep if they get too used to it. When they appear to be tired and sleepy rest them on their backs so they can drift off to the land of nod on their own.

5. Avoid too much excitement or stimulation at bed time. Instead begin the process of winding down and relaxing the baby.Make the daytime feeds feel more social and lively and the nighttime quiet and calm.

6. If formula feeding then take it in turns with your partner to share the early hour feeds. Alternately ask them to look after the baby’s early morning changing so you can grab a couple more minutes of sleep.

7. Give the baby a security item that carries your scent, such as a blanket or soft toy. Before the baby is born sleep with the blanket or toy to give it your scent, or if you’re breast feeding express a small amount of breast milk into a small piece of muslin. Baby’s are very sensitive to smells and the familiar aroma will calm them if they feel unsettled in the night.

8. After four months you could try leaving your baby to ‘cry it out’. Rather than give them the sudden shock of not coming when they start to cry, try leaving them for set intervals. You could start by leaving the room and waiting for two minutes before going back in to check up on them and then gradually increase it a few minutes at a time. Repeat until they fall asleep, remembering to increase the length of intervals each time.

9.  When cuddling an unsettled baby try pretending to go to sleep yourself. This will let them know that fun time is over and its time to go to sleep.

10. If the baby is teething then try massaging their gums with your finger or a teaspoon cooled in the fridge.

Hopefully these strategies should help both you and your baby to get more hours of healthy sleep every night. But if all else fails then you could try identifying whether there is an underlying cause to your baby’s irritibility. If they’ve been fed and changed, maybe changing their clothes might help or maybe they have a cold.

You might also find these articles useful for further advice on how to get your baby to sleep through the night:

31 Ways to Get Your Baby to Sleep and Stay Asleep

* Source of the information in this article taken from babycentre.co.uk and the NHS website.

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Insomnia and wondering how to get to sleep at night can be a frustrating experience. You lie there for
hours on end, getting agitated and worrying about being tired and crabby the next day because, yet again, you’ve missed out on the eight hours of sleep you need to be getting every night.

There’s a wide range of reasons why you might be suffering from the nighttime blues. It could be a reaction to medication, too many cups of coffee, troubling thoughts or a wide range of other reasons. So the first step in battling insomnia is to try and identify what is stopping you from going to sleep at night. Introducing good sleep hygiene habits, such as going to sleep at the same time every night and avoiding stimulants late at night, is a also a wise step.

But if you’ve cut out the caffeine, havent been sat in bed working on your laptop and cant identify any psychological reason why you are still awake, it might be worth listening to some music a try.

How can music help me sleep?

In order to get to sleep your mind and body has to be able to relax. If your mind is too active, worrying about things or being distracted by noises and other disturbances, then it wont be able to go through the stages of relaxation needed to reach a restful state in which you can drift off to sleep.

There are a number of reasons why music can help you get to sleep:

1. Helps your body to relax – Along with your mind, your body has to be able to relax in order to get to sleep. This means your heart has to be able to beat at a slow, steady pace so that your muscles and body can relax. Music can help if it is slow and matches the rhthym of a calm heart because it can subconsciously slow your breathing so that you reach a semi-meditative state and your muscles stop being tense and relax.

 2. Calms down an overactive mind – Have you ever noticed how your thoughts seem to become abstract and random just as your drifting off to sleep? This is your mind becoming relaxed. It stops focusing on the here and now, but instead starts to delve into the apparent chaos of the subconscious mind. To help your mind get there, it needs to be able to relax. While using music to assist with meditation is a relatively new approach (meditation is traditionally done in complete silence), adopting the practices used by meditators to relax their mind and body can be an effective way of overcoming insomnia.  Soft, relaxing music can enable you to calm the mind and to free it to think more freely and in a less ‘present’ active state.

3. Blanket out background noise - If you live in a busy street, with noisy flatmates or family members watching the TV until late at night, background noise can be a real problem when you are trying to get to sleep. Music can be helpful in providing a blanket of soft noise to replace the background sounds that might be jarring and keeping you awake at night. Another option is to listen to ‘white noise’ that provides a continuous stream of sound that can mask distracting background noise that’s disturbing you from reaching the land of nod.

What sort of music can help me sleep?

A look around the web will reveal that some of the music that helps people get to sleep includes Coldplay, Loreena McKennitt or even some downbeat ‘Dream’ trance music. However, the best advice is to try listening to calm instrumental music without any vocals. If there’s a singer in the song then it can distract your mind and stop it from relaxing, possibly because it has to subconsciously compute the noise it is hearing or make sense of  the words.

Soft, soothing music without vocals, however, is probably the best for helping your mind and body to relax. You could try listening to panpipes, something ambient (like the sound of crashing waves or rainfall) or maybe even classical music. A study by the University of Toronto  found that music with slow rthymic patterns created a meditative mood and slower brainwaves, and that classical music with this pattern helped people to get to sleep faster and for longer.

So if you’re wondering ‘what music can help me get to sleep? try whacking on some Bach or Beethoven to see if the scientists are right and that it can banish your insomnia blues.

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Insomnia and wondering how to get to sleep at night blights the lives of millions. If you aren’t getting  the recommended eight hours of sleep a night then you can feel lethargic, irritable and unable to perform at your best. Prolonged sleep deprivation can also be very damaging to your health, as your body hasn’t had time to rejuvenate.

Thankfully, wondering how to get to sleep need not be a long-term problem. Through taking the right steps to improve your ‘sleep hygiene’ and making healthy lifestyle changes, you can find ways to help you to get to sleep at night and enjoy more lucid dreams.

Why does insomnia occur?

There are a wide range of reasons why you might be thinking of visiting your doctor and asking them to ‘help me sleep.’ In fact, a reaction to medication could be the root cause, so it’s a good idea to check whether your insomnia started at a particular time.

More common reasons for insomnia are psychological, notably stress, anxiety and/or depression. There can prevent your mind from reaching the relaxed state you need to be able to drift off to sleep. So if you think your sleep deprivation might be due to a mental cause then the best advice is to try and resolve the issue that is making you anxious. Although this may be easier said than done, it’s far healthier than reaching for the sleeping pills.

Other causes of that can stop you from sleeping can include taking stimulants, such as tobacco, alcohol or caffeine, a couple of hours before you want to get some shut eye and descend into lucid dreaming. These put your mind into a heightened state of alertness which makes it difficult to firstly get to sleep and secondly to reach the level of deep sleep needed so your mind and body can rejuvenate itself during the night.

Sleep Hygiene Tips

Sleep hygiene is the process of creating the right conditions and patterns of behaviour for making how to get to sleep easier. Along with cutting out stimulants from your diet, good sleep hygiene tactics on how to go to sleep include going to bed at the same time every night, not watching TV in bed and not eating a large meal too late at night.

While sleeping pills can help for brief periods of insomnia, they can be addictive as you can start to think that the only way to sleep is to pop a few pills every night. Sleeping pills can also make you drowsy the next day, which can be dangerous if you work in a hazardous environment, such as a building site.

An alternative is to try natural remedies. This includes a warm glass of milk, bananas and camomile tea, which releases relaxing chemicals in the brain that can help you drift off to the land of nod.

So if you find yourself lying awake at night thinking ‘what can help me sleep’, try some of the tips in this article so you can stop counting sheep and spend more time enjoying lucid dreams catching zzzs.

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Do you ever have dreams where you feel in total control? Dreams in which you know you are dreaming but the dream seems very clear and almost like real life?

Lucid dreams are just one of the mysteries of what goes on in our brains when we are asleep. They usually occur in the middle of normal dreams when the randomness seems to settle down and you can feel as though you are awake even though you are having a lucid dream. You also tend to remember lucid dreams much more clearly than regular ones and they’re linked with REM sleep, just before you wake up.

The enhanced sense of control and clarity can make lucid dreaming a pleasurable experience, and one which you want to get straight back into if you’ve been rudely awakened. Learning how to have lucid dreams can also be a great way of avoiding having nightmares or uncomfortable sleep disorders.

However, learning how to have lucid dreams isn’t as simple as learning to improve your golf swing or how to speak another language. Lucid dreaming is just too random. But what you can do is use some techniques to improve your chances of slipping into a serene lucid dreamscape you can control.

Keep a dream journal – Whenever you have a lucid dream, write down what it was about and, in particular, whether the same people or places keep appearing in your lucid dreams. You’ll need these journal entries for some of the other techniques you can try.

Drink orange juice – A glass of OJ 30 mins before you sleep is believed to relax the body while maintaining the mental agility needed to have a lucid dream. The best time to drink it is 30 minutes before bedtime.

Get WILD in bed

Getting WILD or, to give it its full name, Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming is one technique you can to have a lucid dream. It’s aim is to trick your body into thinking you are falling asleep while maintaining a level of mental consciousness. Essentially it’s based around the fact that dreams run in 60 minute cycles. So if you can interrupt yourself in the middle of a dream and then get back to sleep you’re maximising your chances of jumping straight into a wonderous lucid dream.

If you’d like to use the WILD method, here are the steps to take:

1) When you go to bed, relax your body in a comfortable position. You will need to stay in this position, without moving, for 10-20 minutes while you try and relax one body part at a time.

2) While keeping still, you need to try and balance yourself mentally between being relaxed and feeling mentally active.

3) Allow your breathing to become relaxed and slow as you gradually drift into sleep paralysis. Just allow the sensations and random thoughts wash over you as a sign that you are entering a lucid dream.

How to have lucid dreams with the Wake Back to Bed Technique

If getting WILD doesnt do the trick then another popular method is Wake Back To Bed (WBTB). This entails waking yourself up in the middle of a dream state and then creating the optimal conditions for slipping back into a lucid dream, so not ideal if you suffer from insomnia and value your beauty sleep.

If you’d like to try WBTB to have a lucid dream, the steps are:

1) Set an alarm clock to go off 6 hours after you go to sleep.

2) When your alarm clock disrupts your slumber, stay awake for 1.5 hours. The aim is to gain yourself a measure of alertness while still being able to quickly fall into a dream state quickly.

3) 30 minutes before going back to bed drink a glass of orange juice and then read an article about lucid dreaming or some of the entries in your dream journal. This will help you to start mentally thinking about having a lucid dream.

4) Use the WILD method to go back to sleep and slip into a blissful and wonderous lucid dreaming experience.

Hopefully, a combination of WILD and WBTB should do the trick. But if you’re still wondering how to have a lucid dream successfully, you might want to check out the free ‘OBE Lucid Quickstart Kit‘ which includes an Lucid Dream Timer MP3 which its creator used to stop having nightmares and more lucid dreams.

It’s free, so why not give the Lucid Quickstart Kit a go to start having more lucid dreams and fewer nightmares.

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In today’s fast paced world we’re always looking for a quick fix. Got a headache? You can get a pill for that. Need some energy? Knock back an energy drink. The same is true for when you’re wondering how to get to sleep.

Reaching for sleeping pills is the first resort for many. In fact, an article in The Guardian on Britain’s hidden addiction to sleeping pills has highlighted some shocking statistics. Ten percent of people now take medication for insomnia, which amounts to 15.3 million prescriptions every year costing the NHS £50 million per year in sleeping pills. What’s worse is that there has been a ten percent rise in people asking their doctor to ‘help me sleep’ and then knocking back some tablets.

The sharp rise over the last four years coincides with when the recession hits, and suggests that stress and money worries could be the psychological triggers behind people’s insomnia. But is medication the best way forward?

Addressing anxious thoughts can help sooth the soul and help the brain drift to sleep

While beneficial for people with chronic insomnia, a genetic condition or struggling through a brief period (such as a bereavement), sleeping pills can have some worrying side effects. People can form a dependency, believing they can’t sleep without them, they can have more accidents from feeling drowsy the next day and they certainly arent cheap.

It’s been suggested by a leading sleep specialist – Kevin Morgan, professor of gerontology at the University of Loughborough – that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) might be a more practical solution for many people suffering from insomnia and wondering how to get to sleep at night. CBT is a form of psychotherapy that teaches people to challenge the irrational and negative thought processes that are causing problems in their life, and is a highly effective method of treating mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

With many people’s insomnia caused by anxiety or stress it makes sense that teaching people to address the underlying problems or thoughts causing their insomnia can be a more practical approach than simply popping a pill to paper over the cracks. The Department of Health in the UK is due to assign £400 million over the next four years to this type of talking theory, so it’s clear that the benefits are real and proven.

Combined with sleep hygiene practices

As always, the first step in tackling insomnia is to assess whether your habits are getting in the way of getting a good night’s sleep. This means adopting sleep hygiene practices to eliminate all the stimuli that could be keeping you awake at night wondering ‘how can I get to sleep?’

This includes avoiding stimulants, such as caffeine and alcohol, before you go to bed. While alcohol can help you fall asleep in can prevent you reaching a deep rejuvenating level you need for your body to rest and recuperate. Other habits to avoid are watching TV or sitting in bed working on your laptop late at night.

To help put your mind in a relaxed mood, there are also natural remedies you can try, such as chamomile tea, bananas or a warm glass of milk to help you drift off to the land of nod without the use of medication.

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It’s been reported in the news today that filming of the sci-fi show ‘Fringe’ has been brought to a halt due to one of its star actors, John Noble, suffering from a reported sleep disorder. Reports claim that his lack of sleep has been affecting his performance, and consequently filming has been halted for nine days while he gets medical treatment.

This highlights how damaging insomnia can be to your daily life. It makes you feel tired, irritable and unable to concentrate. This can obviously have negative effects on your ability to perform in your daily job, whether you’re a teacher, builder or if you sit at a desk all day.

Sleep disorders and insomnia can be caused by a variety of mental and medical triggers. So one of the first steps to curing insomnia is to identify the underlying cause, whether it’s feeling anxious about a problem (like money) or a medical condition that needs treatment, such as heartburn.

Although the temptation might be to immediately prescribe Noble with medication to help him sleep, here are some sleep hygiene tips he can try to try and get more hours of healthy, rejuvenating sleep naturally:

1) Avoid caffeine or alcohol late at night – Caffeine will simply keep you awake while alcohol might help you sleep initially but you wont reach the deep sleep your body needs to rejuvenate.

2) Don’t watch TV, play video games or sit working on a laptop in bed – these activities will hamper your subconscious link between your bed and sleep. Beds should be just for sleep…and something else that can help cure insomnia.

3) Avoid strenuous exercise a few hours before you go to bed – your body’s activity levels aren’t like a switch that can simply be turned off when it’s time to get some shuteye. Instead, you need to start slowing down gradually

4) Have a regular sleeping routine – this might be difficult for Noble to achieve with a fluctuating film schedule to contend with, but you will find it easier to go to sleep if you have a regular routine. Try and go to bed at the same time every night, and get up at the same time (of course, late nights and late rises are allowed on weekends).

5) Avoid napping during the day – while political leaders and high powered business men like to boast of their ability to keep rolling with only a few hours sleep and a power nap in the afternoon. The problem with napping during the day is it knocks you out of your regular sleeping pattern and can leave you feeling wide awake until late into the night.

6) Try natural remedies – chamonille tea, milk and bananas are just three natural cures for insomnia that can help your mind and body to relax and to calm you down ready for 7 hours or more of peaceful slumber.

The first response to curing Noble’s insomnia might be to prescribe him sleeping tablets, which can be effective but can be addictive and can make you feel drowsy the next day. So it would be more sensible (and healthier) if Noble follows these simple sleep hygiene techniques so that he can be back on set and able to deliver fans of ‘Fringe’ the series ending they’ve been looking forward to all these years.

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Sleep Hygiene Tips to Help Cure John Noble’s Sleep Disorder Help Me Sleep - How to Get More Hours of Healthy, Rejuvenating Sleep Help Me Sleep - How to Get More Hours of Healthy, Rejuvenating Sleep - Tips and advice for getting more hours of blissful sleep so you are healthier, happier and more refreshed every day.