You have insomnia if you regularly: find it hard to go to sleep wake up several times during the night lie awake at night wake up early and cannot go back to sleep still feel tired after waking up
This is a common problem many people come to me for support with, either as their main issue or concomitant to other health issues and its happened to me too
For quite a few women this can start to be an issue post menopause,
Or it might be that its following a period of stress, and you still haven’t got back to previous healthy sleep patterns
Whatever the reason, it can be debilitating and depressing, causing you to get anxious, even dread going to bed, even though you are really tired
The good news is that its often possible to improve this, even though you might feel you’ve tried different things, and nothings worked
In my own experience of ‘post menopausal insomnia’ and feeling tired in a way I’d never felt before, Im happy to report that my sleep did improve, with various interventions, including Homeopathy, lifestyle changes, Nutrition, supplements, and i've been able to support many others with this too
Homeopathy – by sitting together and me listening to your ‘unique’ history, how your particular sleep problem started, by asking relevant questions, looking at your ‘’whole self and health’ ,taking into account events, that may have been ongoingly stressful or specific traumatic events, after which your sleep has never been as good since, we can piece together a picture of you as whole and identify any obvious or potentially causative factors. After this ‘case taking’ I evaluate and match your ‘unique state’’ with a Homeopathic remedys that is ‘similar’ to your ‘individual state & disposition’, that resonates with your ‘dis ease’ (your constitutional) Remedys can then support you by giving your self healing mechanisms, the right signal and energy to ‘self heal’, to rebalance. There are also specific remedys that might help alongside the ‘Constitutional’ such as homeopathic coffee or homeopathic melatonin.
Sometimes Homeopathy alone is just not enough and we need to look at other things, this is best worked out together with your Practitioner, but to give you an overview:
Lifestyle factors such as going to bed late on a regular basis, ignoring or overriding natural tiredness and keeping going with the ‘second wind’ of energy that we can get, which overrides our natural ‘circadian rythyms’ and is stressful and tiring to us and our adrenal glands .
Dr Sarah Myhill talks about 'sleep waves' - Actually sleep does not gradually creep up on us during the evening - it comes in waves. There is a sleep wave about every 90 minutes and you will get to sleep most efficiently if you learn to recognise and ride the sleep wave. Often there is a lesser one earlier in the evening when people drop off to sleep in front of the telly, or they jump and make a cup of tea to wake themselves up because "they are not ready to go to bed" - actually they are! My sleep wave comes at 9.20 and I like to be in bed reading well before this - it is immediately recognisable now and I have learnt to expect it!
Diet & Nutrition we are all unique and whilst some people might thrive e.g. on skipping a meal and doing intermittent fasting, others may not. You may know that some people wake up from a sudden drop in blood sugar in the middle of the night, and and may benefit from eating 3 regular meals a day and even having a small snack before going to bed for a period of time.
A high fat low carbohydrate snack just before bedtime (eg nuts, seeds) helps prevent nocturnal hypoglycaemia which often manifests with vivid dreams or sweating or waking in night. Hypoglycaemia - the full story is the commonest reason for disturbed sleep. However some people find any food disturbs sleep and they sleep best if they do not eat after 6pm - Dr Sarah Myhill
Supplements & Herbs again we are all unique and different, there’s not a one size fits all, but I have found that supplementing Homeopathy and /or Nutritional interventions, with one or more of the following has had a significant impact in helping improve many peoples sleep patterns
Magnesium Citrate - works synergistically with calcium in the body, many of us are deficient in magnesium, due to soil erosion and depletion of essential minerals, where as Calcium is readily available in the average ‘western diet’ and so many of us have too much calcium that way, resulting in excess of calcium and subsequent displacement of magnesium .
Did you know that calcium and magnesium compete for absorption and so too much calcium in the diet will block magnesium absorption. The requirement ratio for calcium to magnesium is about 2:1. In dairy products the ratio is 10:1. So, consuming a lot of dairy products can induce a magnesium deficiency.
Neurolactin Plus - Bionutri – for support with calming nervous system and adrenal glands where this is relevant and a factor in your insomnia
Valerium root - and other calming herbs such as Ashwaganda<i?> (an adaptagen) can support where anxiety & ongoing stress is a factor
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