You’re dead tired, but for some reason, getting the sleep you need seems impossible to get. This guide is designed to help you fall asleep and get the deeper, longer, rejuvenating rest you need. Although this guide is best for handling temporary insomnia, I’ve designed a second section for dealing with severe, chronic insomnia.
I wrote this report because over the years I’ve received literally thousands of requests for insomnia remedies from talking in sleep center seminars to feedback from column articles and everything in-between.
Everyone is looking for the “quick fix” for insomnia. I find this to be rather naive behavior, although it is perfectly understandable when considering that the medical community has by and large ignored insomnia. Sleeplessness is one of the most common health problems, costing the world billions of dollars in lost efficiency by depriving millions of people of their well-being. As a health category, insomnia has an alarmingly low amount of resources dedicated to it. As a matter of fact, few articles and books are even based on scientific research or clinical practice.
The “quick fix” mentality is largely a result of the billions of dollars sleeping pill companies use to advertise every year. Since so many sleeping pills are advertised on television, in magazines, in the newspaper, all over the Internet, and elsewhere, we have become conditioned to think of sleeplessness as something to be cured with a pill.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Chronic insomnia is more like a disease than a pain in need of a quick fix. At it’s core, sleeplessness is a learned condition of behaviors, mindsets, and beliefs that are detrimental to sleep. Sleeping pills do not have much effect when it comes to helping people with chronic insomnia – if that were the case, I would simply list the top 10 sleeping pills in this report – even worse, many insomniacs become addicted and cannot fall asleep without their pill (even though it has very little affect!) While these remedies may help the temporary insomniac, if you have chronic insomnia, make sure to read the second section on Curing Insomnia, or you may end up making your insomnia worse. That’s because struggling to make the remedies work can backfire, making you feel like you can’t get sleep no matter what you try.
I’ve listed the following remedies in order of effectiveness – the top remedy seems to have the most beneficial affect on sleep for more insomniacs, whereas the last remedy only helps some.
Brainwave Entrainment
Using a new breakthrough technology, brainwave entrainment is the fastest growing sleep remedy that works consistently for every age group and type of insomnia.
While some brainwave entrainment programs boast to help you cure your insomnia in the first night, be wary – this remedy relies on conditioning your mind, a process that usually takes two to four weeks to reach it’s full potential, but does help right away.
Brainwave entrainment is what it sounds like – it conditions the brain waves that promote good sleep behaviors and mindsets that are essential to getting sleep. This is largely due to the fact that falling asleep and getting sound sleep is reliant on slower brainwaves (which has been proven by hundreds of studies using brain scanning technology.) By listening to brainwave entrainment audio, you can fall asleep within minutes and condition yourself to sleep deeply through the night.
By simply listening to a short audio track every night, you will condition your brain to get the sleep you need. It’s been proven to work by using brain scan studies and thousands of insomnia patients. Here are the different types of brainwave entrainment remedies you can buy:
- Isochronic tones: This is the newest and most effective type of brainwave entrainment technology. The most infamous and successful of these is the SleepTracks program.
- Binaural beats: Tried and true (though less effective), binaural beats have been helping people fall asleep for years. Binaural Mind has 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, usually require a trip to your doctor for a prescription. Most doctors will only prescribe a sleeping pill in the case of temporary insomnia; in the case of chronic insomnia, they are more likely to prescribe another pill that will help you sleep.
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 our body will build a tolerance against them instead of making them for itself.
As a result, sleeping pills never work for more than a few weeks, but millions of people continue taking them for 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 to fall asleep. When they stop taking it, there is usually a backlash – 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 Fixing Anti-Sleep Brain Activity
This is generally the most effective insomnia remedy, but few people actually take the time to practice techniques that improve sleep. My thoughts are that this is largely due to the “quick fix” mentality I mentioned earlier. While it seems like insomnia can drain you of all your energy, spending some energy on the techniques that will cure your insomnia is very valuable… wouldn’t you think?
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. If you have chronic insomnia it’s crucial that you use good sleep techniques along with any other insomnia remedies you try.
I will discuss how to use these techniques to fall asleep in the Cure Insomnia section, but for now, if you know how to do any of the following techniques you might consider using them to calm down anxiety and to relax at night (although, be careful not to put too much emphasis on these techniques – just like any remedy, these techniques can backfire if you don’t use them correctly.)
- Meditation
- Deep Relaxation (or the “Relaxation Response”)
- Guided CD / hypnosis for easily achieving either.
There are also many more sophisticated techniques I will discuss in the Curing Insomnia section.
Getting Exercise And Sunlight
There are two ways that exercise can improve your sleep:
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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.)
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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 (I will discuss another method of using this strategy by taking a hot bath.)
Body temperature (and sleep) is also influenced by melatonin, a hormone that is governed by sunlight. When you get sunlight, melatonin decreases, causing temperature to rise and you feel awake. Darkness causes melatonin to rise and temperature to drop and 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 is 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.
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.
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 your 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 supposedly helps many people fall asleep. I am not trained nor do I know much about how to do this, however there is a lot of information on it available on the Internet.
I do not personally recommend this approach unless you already know how to use acupressure and acupuncture.
Taking A Hot Bath
Several studies have shown that, like exercise, taking a hot bath causes a rise and fall in your body temperature which can make it easy to fall asleep and sleep longer. This strategy is usually not as effective as getting exercise and sunlight as the fluctuation in body temperature is not as great.
To try this remedy, 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.
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 we’ve 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. I will mail this to you automatically if you have subscribed to my Advanced Sleep Techniques.
How To Cure Insomnia
There is a little known field of insomnia remedies where each one is more effective than any sleeping pill, tablet, or tip you could possibly find. These “remedies” are what I refer to as sleep techniques.
The easiest and fastest way to falling asleep sooner, sleeping longer, and getting more rest lies in going a step further by using these little known techniques. Combinations of the remedies above and advanced sleep techniques have been shown to help 100% of insomniacs improve their sleep.
The problem with using an insomnia remedy is that it doesn’t address the underlying causes of sleeplessness. The underlying causes are in the way your mind thinks about sleep and the affect the mind has on the body.
Consider what happens when you start thinking about going to bed. You feel anxiety as your heart rate begins to rise, you start to worry about if you’re going to get any sleep, and just getting into bed makes you tense. That’s the secret right there. What was once a few nights of restless sleep turns into a severe case of chronic insomnia.
You weren’t aware that you were “learning” to be an insomniac. You’ve always tried your hardest to fall asleep. You simply have never been aware of all unconscious behaviors that you’ve picked up from your negative thoughts and beliefs about sleep. And the harder you try to fall asleep, the worse it gets.
The way to cure insomnia is to learn the counter-intuitive behaviors, mindsets, and beliefs that cause great sleep. This is the secret world of insomnia remedies that the sleeping pill companies don’t want you to know about.
What Is A “Sleep Technique”, Exactly?
A sleep technique is an exercise that you can quickly learn which makes falling asleep much easier. It’s a remedy that fixes one (or several) of the 5 little known causes of sleeplessness that you must address to unlearn your insomnia.
At their core, sleep techniques make it clear to you both consciously and subconsciously how the mind and body conspire to wreak havoc on the quality of your sleep. They help you address both the psychological and physical factors that you MUST deal with to cure your insomnia.
The Next Step
Fill in the missing pieces and join thousands of people who have cured their insomnia by simply reading my Advanced Sleep Quick-Guide.
Since it can be difficult to read a long book on insomnia when you’re tired, I designed this guide to be an incredibly quick way to learn all the best techniques and gain insights to the 5 little known causes of sleeplessness that they address. Even before reading the guide, my website will assess the cause of your insomnia and make recommendations as to what will work best for you.
I’ve designed this to be the simplest way for you to start getting better sleep tonight, considerably improve your sleep within a week, and cure your insomnia within a month. Right now, my guide is still free. I highly recommend you take this next step towards falling asleep faster and getting the quality rest you deserve by clicking here right now.
Wishing you restful sleep every night,
James Cahoon
thecahoon@gmail.com
Tags: Cures For Insomnia, Insomnia Remedies
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