Warning: If you have CHRONIC INSOMNIA many of these remedies may stop working after a few days or may not work at all. Click here to avoid the trap of taking more pills and discover a shocking secret your doctor won’t tell you.
1 - Brainwave Entrainment
Brainwave entrainment is a new breakthrough in technology that’s growing fast as a consistent, effective sleep remedy.
To understand why this remedy is effective, you need to know the science of how sleep works. The difference between easily falling asleep and struggling is determined by brainwave frequencies. During the day faster brainwave speeds keep you active and alert, and during the night brainwaves slow down, allowing you to sleep. Insomnia happens when the mind can no longer slow down it’s own brainwaves.
The inability to slow down your brainwave speed to a level in which you fall deeply asleep can be a result of many different problems, including anxiety, anticipation, or even being too serious about getting sleep. In all cases, increased brainwave speeds occur even after individuals have fallen asleep, resulting in less restful, fragmented sleep.
Brainwave entrainment conditions your mind to use slower brainwaves that are essential to getting sleep.
It works by simply listening to a short audio track. You can fall asleep within minutes and condition yourself to sleep deeply throughout the night. Brainwave entrainment has been tested on thousands of insomnia patients and has been proven to effectively condition the brain.
Here are the different types of brainwave entrainment available:
- Isochronic tones: This is the newest and most effective type of brainwave entrainment technology. The most infamous and successful of these is SleepTracks.
- Binaural beats: Tried and true, binaural beats have been helping people fall asleep for years. I recommend Binaural Mind as a good binaural beats insomnia CD.
Brand Name Sleeping Pills
While not a good solution to chronic insomnia, sleeping pills are highly effective if your insomnia is only temporary, however, it usually requires a trip to your doctor for a prescription. Most doctors will only give you a prescription for a sleeping pill in the case of temporary insomnia.
Sleeping pills are effective for short lived insomnia because they introduce hormones and other chemicals into the body that are essential for getting sleep. The reason they generally only last a few weeks is because your body will build a tolerance to them.
Even though sleeping pills never work for a few weeks, millions of people continue taking them because of the placebo effect they induce. Even knowing that the pill is a placebo won’t necessarily stop it from working, and people get into an expensive habit of needing the pill. When they stop taking it, there is usually a withdrawal – so if you want to stop taking sleeping pills, you might have to go through a few restless nights without them to break the addiction!
Techniques for “Shifting Your State of Mind” Into One That Promotes Easily Falling Asleep
This is generally the most effective insomnia remedy, but there’s a major pitfall: trying to fall asleep will prevent deep sleep from happening. Make sure to practice using these techniques as enjoyable activities in and of themselves – the more you *expect* to fall asleep, the less likely it is to come. Practice being relaxed and enjoying each of these techniques to get the most out of them.
Fixing anti-sleep behaviors, mindsets, and beliefs are key to reversing insomnia because it’s faulty behaviors, mindsets, and beliefs about sleep that create insomnia in the first place and prevent these techniques from working. If you have chronic insomnia, I will discuss how to use these techniques to fall asleep in the “Why Remedies Always Stop Working” section.
These techniques are particularly effective if you think too much or have anxiety about sleep.
Meditation
Meditation can help you fall asleep by shifting your state of mind and keeping you focused on other devices that can help you sleep (such as guided relaxation, SleepTracks, or advanced state of mind shifting techniques.)
Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the reflexive, “thinking” mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. Meditation often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. Here is a quick guide on how to meditate:
- Sit in a way that makes you feel relaxed.
- Clear your mind of all thoughts.
- Focus on a single point of reference. One way to do this is to make a commitment to simply focus on the sensation of your breath – while simply letting all other thoughts go. If you have trouble focusing, you can use another point of reference; one that works very effectively for people is the sound waves of SleepTracks (since meditating on brain entrainment combines a powerful technique with a powerful remedy.) It is important to “snap back” to the sensation you are focusing on if at any point you find your mind has drifted from it.
- The longer you spend working on this focus, and the more times you attempt to completely focus on one sensation, the better you will become at achieving deep relaxation through meditation.
If you experience a high amount of stress during the day, it can be damaging to your sleep at night. Meditation is a quick and easy way to greatly reduce stress and concentrate your focus.
While simply focusing on one point can help you relax, I highly recommend combining this strategy with deep relaxation by focusing on one relaxing word, feeling, or sensation. If you’d like to learn how meditation works in greater detail, I recommend trying “Meditation For Beginners” by Jack Kornfield.
Deep Relaxation
Relaxation is great for your sleep because it allows you to enter the state of mind that is best for sleep. The major pitfall is “trying” to relax… or getting into an active state of mind by trying too hard to get in an idle state of mind. This concept is throughly explained in the second section of this report.
Dr. Jacobs is one of the first pioneers to conduct breakthrough studies on how to use relaxation to promote sleep. His strategy involves eliciting what he calls the “Relaxation Response.” The following is a condensed version of how to use the Relaxation Response to greatly counteract the effects of stress from his book, Say Good Night To Insomnia.
Relax the muscles throughout the body. This is accomplished by lying down or sitting comfortably, closing the eyes, then feeling relaxation gradually spread throughout the body…
“Establish a relaxed breathing pattern, breathing deep from your abdomen.
Direct your attention from everyday thoughts by using a mental focusing device that is neutral and repetitive: a word such as one, relax, peace, or heavy, or any word you choose [Jacob's goes on to list other things you can use, such as the rise and fall of your abdomen] [Yoga uses the word “umm”]…
When eliciting the Relaxation Response, it is important to assume a passive attitude. In other words, let the relaxation happen at it’s own pace; don’t “try” to relax, and don’t worry about whether relaxation is occurring.”
There are also many more sophisticated techniques for shifting your state of mind into one that promotes quality sleep, but require advanced knowledge of how sleep works.
I also suggest that you consider guided relaxation, which evokes the Relaxation Response very powerfully with virually no effort on your part, and can be used any time during the day to quickly and greatly reduce stress.
Getting Exercise and Sunlight
There are two ways that exercise can improve your sleep:
- Your body’s temperature cycle has a large impact on your sleep cycle. For you to feel awake, the temperature MUST rise. For you to sleep profoundly, it HAS to drop. Normally, your temperature cycle rises during the day and falls at night. The more it fluctuates, the better. The problem is, an inactive lifestyle may cause this wave to be rather flat, and this in turn causes sluggishness during the day and poor sleep at night (you can also achieve a similar affect on your temperature cycle by increasing SMR using the “Insomnia Buster” part of SleepTracks.)
- If you work out 3 to 6 hours before going to sleep, you can boost this cycle to make falling asleep and staying asleep easier. The rise in temperature gained by working out is followed by a 2 - 4 hour drop in temperature which will make you feel tired.
Another way of achieving this same affect is to take a hot bath 1 - 2 hours before going to sleep. Like exercise, taking a hot bath causes a rise and fall in your body temperature which can make it easy to fall asleep and get deeper sleep. This strategy is not as effective as getting exercise as the fluctuation in body temperature is not as great.
Make sure your bath is kept hot while you soak for about 25 minutes. The bath should be taken no later than 2 hours before bedtime. In general, this is a great remedy to help you relax and works well in combination with other remedies.
Body temperature is also influenced by melatonin, a hormone that is governed by sunlight. When you get sunlight, melatonin decreases, causing body temperature to rise and you feel awake. Darkness causes melatonin to rise, making body temperature drop so you feel tired.
Most of us don’t get enough sunlight because we spend our days indoors. When inside, we only get about 1 percent of the sunlight we would be getting if we were directly in the sunlight. Sitting by a window helps, but nothing makes up for getting at least one hour of direct sunlight per day.
If you cannot be outside, you may also consider taking melatonin pills, but I recommend you consider the more natural way. It’s important that you understand that you’ve got to want to do the things that are required… because quite frankly, insomnia is a message letting you know something is wrong. Melatonin will only help you sleep if you are not getting enough sunlight.
In addition to getting more sunlight and exercise, you can also improve the quality of your sleep by not drinking alcohol, smoking, or having caffeine within a few hours of going to bed. For more information on which lifestyle behaviors affect sleep (including what vitamins to get, tracking your sleep cycles, and other behavioral remedies) I recommend reading the End Tiredness Program.
Non-Prescription Sleeping Tablets
Generally any sleeping pills that can be bought in stores without a prescription are considered to be sleeping tablets. They are effective for temporary insomnia and there are several different types. I recommend taking sleeping tablets because they have fewer side effects and are less addictive.
There are a variety of over the counter sleeping tablets available. The three most common products are Unisom, Tylenol PM and Advil PM. They all contain the active ingredient Diphenhydramine. There are also herbal treatments; Sleep MD is the leading herbal treatment. Its ingredients are extracts from Valerian root, White Willow, Lemon balm, Hops, Lavender powder, Melatonin and Passionflower (any of which can be taken individually with less effect.)
Sleeping tablets are generally safer than prescription sleeping pills in the long-term, however, the side effects of sleeping tablets have a greater risk of uneven or pounding heartbeat than sleeping pills. Tylenol PM also contains the pain relieving ingredient, Acetaminophen, which makes falling asleep easier.
Sleeping tablets have a varied rage of effectiveness. People with slight sleeping problems benefit more from sleeping tablets. Greater success has been found with pills containing Diphenhydramine than herbal methods. While tablets may be safer than prescribed sleeping pills in the long run, these treatments are for short term sleeping problems only.
Antidepressants
Doctors often prescribe antidepressants to help with chronic sleep disorders, but generally do not prescribe these drugs in the case of temporary insomnia. CNN reports,
“Over the last two decades, doctors treating sleep disorders have prescribed more antidepressants than insomnia drugs, according to several published analyses. And there is insufficient evidence that most antidepressants are effective in treating insomnia, concluded a National Institutes of Health panel that convened on the topic in 2005.”
Make sure to get recommendations from your doctor before trying any antidepressants for sleep, as they can have negative impacts on your health and severe withdrawal symptoms. If you are stuck in a cycle of trying one antidepressant after another, make sure to read about why they stop working.
Medical Marijuana
Many people advocate that medical marijuana is a wonder drug for insomnia. This makes sense to me because marijuana influences your state of mind, and like putting yourself to sleep with alcohol, can alter the faulty behaviors, mindsets, and beliefs that prevent you from falling asleep. Unlike alcohol, however, marijuana doesn’t seem to hurt your sleep other than having a negative effect on REM sleep (The part of sleep where you dream and repair linguistic-memory, which helps you retain skills that are related to using words.)
While it is occasionally prescribed for insomnia and is effective for helping you sleep, you should remember that marijuana is a drug that can have negative affects on your life (which can in turn affect your sleep.) Some people experience paranoia when smoking marijuana which makes their insomnia worse.
Medical marijuana is only legal in about 20 percent of states (in the U.S.A.) You can find out if it is an option for you at this URL.
Acupressure and Acupuncture
Altering your blood flow helps many people fall asleep. There is a lot of information on it available on the Internet, however this approach is really only effective you already know how to use acupressure or acupuncture.
Non-Brand Name Sleeping Pills
There are many other sleeping pills you can take without a prescription that can’t be found in stores. You see them advertised on television, in magazines, on the Internet, and elsewhere.
They are all just variations of sleeping tablets or herbal mixes that generally aren’t more effective than sleeping tablets you can find in stores. I recommend trying brand name sleeping tablets because they’re under more strict control.
Other Sleeping Tips
There are many other tips that can be found all over the Internet which serve as mild remedies. These are most effective when combined with the other remedies discussed, however, few sleeping tips are actually very helpful in and of themselves.
I’ve made a “Top 10 Most Effective Sleep Tips” report which analyzes the best sleep tips from 27 sleep and health websites and ranks them by their effectiveness. Click here to see this report.
If you’ve already tried more than 1 of these remedies and they stopped working or never worked at all, click here to find out why chronic insomnia makes these remedies ineffective.
DISCLAIMER
While this guide provides information on insomnia and sleep strategies, it is not a substitute for appropriate medical diagnosis or treatment. If you are having a persistent problem, you should consult your physician. The author of this guide is not a licensed practitioner of medicine. All of the information, suggestions, and techniques in this guide are, therefore, meant for informational purposes only. The readers are encouraged to verify for themselves all of the information within this website before making any decisions based upon the advices in this guide. The author shall not be held liable for any decisions resulting from the usage of this guide. Before making any changes in prescribed health-care regimes, consult a licensed practitioner.
This guide is copyrighted under public domain laws and may be redistributed freely or sold. You may not alter any part of this guide without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
Some of the links within this guide promote products which pay the copyright holder a commission if purchased, including SleepTracks, Binaural Mind, and End Tiredness Program.
