Can’t
Sleep? The Best Long-Term Cure Is Closer than You Think
By Erin Del Toro, Clinical Hypnotherapist By Erin Del Toro, Licensed Clinical Hypnotherapist
Does this sound familiar? ”It’s 1:30 am...If I can fall asleep right now, I’ll get 5 hours and 30 minutes of sleep.” At 2:20 a.m….”If I fall asleep right now, I’ll get 4 hours and 40 minutes of sleep. I’ll be ok. I’ll get through the day, and then I’ll go to bed early, and it will be fine.” At 2:45 a.m.... 2:45 a.m. + eternity + 3:23 a.m. + eternity = What It’s Like To Have Insomnia. This nighttime plague increases in the U.S. as the decades roll on, and formulas like this one are all too familiar to many. If you find getting a good night’s rest to be a challenge—whether you have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early, or not sleeping deeply enough—you’re in big company. It’s estimated that between 10 percent and 30 percent of adults in the U.S. struggle with chronic insomnia and 30 percent to 48 percent of those over forty years of age suffer from the condition. Struggling with getting a good night’s rest is, at best, frustrating. But when sleepless nights become more frequent, mental, emotional and physical health problems begin to take a toll. The issues stemming from not getting enough sleep start their leak in the central nervous system and brain, and then the effects spill into nearly every possible area of the body. 50 www.sghealthandwellnessmagazine.com
During sleep, the body heals itself; the brain not only wires in new thought connections and memories, it also restores itself to proper chemical balance. Without these key components of healing, the brain and body begin to slip in their proper functions, causing immediate problems such as an increase in accidents and brain/body miscalculations, short term memory loss, difficulty focusing and learning, and episodes of microsleep (falling asleep for a few seconds at a time throughout the day). As sleepless nights continue, those suffering from insomnia also experience suppressed immune systems, weight gain due to lowered insulin levels, weight gain due to low impulse control and binging on empty calories, and higher heart disease rates due to cortisol changes. Because the brain is not directing the endocrine system correctly, insomnia also causes changes in hormone levels as well. The final tipper is that people who do not get enough sleep also have shortened life expectancies. Once you are caught in a pattern of poor sleep, the brain is often so fired up over the challenge of the falling-asleep process, it has a difficult time sorting itself back to its normal state: getting hormones and thought patterns into a healthy place and connecting correctly with the body so that natural sleep patterns can be reestablished.
