Sleep difficulties are becoming increasingly common in today’s hectic, stressful world. A vicious cycle is often created, whereby increased anxiety and stress through the day make sleep elusive at night, and a lack of quality sleep contributes to stress and frayed nerves during the day. Over time this can take a significant toll on health and seriously undermine quality of life.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, these could be contributing factors:
- Expecting to have difficulty sleeping and worrying about it
- Ingesting excessive amounts of caffeine
- Drinking alcohol before bedtime
- Excessive napping in the afternoon or evening
- Smoking cigarettes before bedtime
- Irregular or continually disrupted sleep/wake schedules
If you have trouble falling asleep, or if you wake up early in the morning and can’t get back to sleep, you may have sleep disturbance or insomnia. And you don’t have to live with it.
Tips that could help reduce sleep problems:
- Ensure your bedroom is comfortable for sleeping. Avoid temperature extremes, noise and light. These will disrupt sleep for almost everyone.
- Wind down before going to sleep. A good 30 minutes relaxing before bedtime could get you in just the right mind-frame for a good night’s sleep.
- Avoid napping in the afternoon or for longer than 1 hour.
- Exercise regularly. It’s a good idea to carry out 20-30 minutes of exercise after the evening meal (and at least three hours before trying to sleep), three to four times a week.
- Get into a regular sleep pattern. Get up at the same time each morning and go to bed at the same time each night to set your biological clock and maintain regular sleep.
- Try eating a light bedtime snack. Snacking on foods that contain high amounts of tryptophan (an amino acid), which is found in milk and bananas. Other sources include avocado, dates, figs, grapefruit, oranges, papaya, peaches, pears, persimmon, pineapple, strawberries, tomatoes and all the vegetables.
The naturopathic approach to sleeping problems looks at overall lifestyle, diet and health issues that may be adversely affecting an individual’s well-being. Treating the nervous system with relaxing herbs and nutrients like magnesium, nourish and rebalance your nervous system, promoting a good night’s sleep and an overall positive impact on everyday life.