[jayinsf]

Interesting piece in today's NY Times that addresses many themes that have been discussed here: effectiveness of CBT; insomnia and depression; sleep aids; etc. I highly recommend it to all on this board:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/opinion/sunday/the-case-for-sleep-medicine.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[Martin Reed]

Thanks for sharing! I may well refer to this in a future blog post.

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If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[wonderhussy]

OMG that was a TERRIBLE article for those of us already freaking out about not getting enough sleep!!!! Every resource I read says you're supposed to STOP worrying and that you WON'T DIE if you don't sleep. Supposedly, once you stop worrying about not sleeping, you'll sleep.

Reading this article freaked me the fuck out. It basically reinforces my paranoia that if I can't sleep, I WILL DIE, whether due to lack of cellular regeneration or cancer or whatever!

[SittingStill]

The author (Gayle Greene) wrote the best book on Insomnia that I have read – “Insomniac“. I highly recommend it. It talks about the benefits and the drawbacks of all approaches – CBT, medication, alike.

[Martin Reed]

I finally got around to posting about this on the Insomnia Land blog. I went with the angle that sleeping pills aren't always bad. Thanks again for bringing this to everyone's attention!

http://www.insomnialand.com/blog/sometimes-sleeping-pills-are-absolutely-necessary/

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If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[brayan]

Sigh another thing to add on our list of negatives is isomniacs more likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack and cardiovascular disease, it was on the news yesterday morning

[jjmahern]

I would say far be it from me to know what is best for everyone but I didn't particularly like the article. It seemed quite fatalistic and really only gave sleeping pills as a viable option. I think she also snubbed CBT and I don't think she gave it an accurate portrayal. She said there were only a small amount of studies on it and the populations studied were “small numbers of carefully screened, self-selected and highly motivated subjects”. First off, I have done some research and there have many studies, over many years, with many people. Now as for the “self-selected and highly motivated subjects”, my rebuttal is I am sure most subjects were self-selected and highly motivated and that is because they were really desperate and really open to the idea that this might work and gave it a chance. Unfortunately what I have read about her book, she believes completely that insomnia is never psychological and only physiological. As this is the case CBT will never be able to help her because she already thinks it can't work because it is dealing with behavior and psychology of sleeping. Also I find it illogcial that someone might use the logic that CBT doesn't work cause you have choose to do most of the work yourself. That is blaming the therapy for not working not because it doesn't work but because you are not willing to do the work.

Here is an exerpt from a review of the book on Amazon that I found revealing:

“Gayle Greene certainly deserves our sympathy as she struggles with this debilitating illness. However, it is apparent that she begins with certain preconceptions. For example, she fervently believes in a physical or biological origin of insomnia, which may or may not be the case, but it colors the way she approaches her subject. As the saying goes, when you own a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Most researchers agree that insomnia almost always has a psychological AND a physical component. If you emphasize one and ignore the other, you are making a potentially serious error. A much better book is Dr. Barry Krakow's “Sound Sleep, Sound Mind” which delves into the subject from a much more informed and knowledgeable perspective, and might actually help people with the disease.”

I am not saying that CBT is the only way and that taking pills is completely bad (I have been taking pills on and off for about a month, but I am already fed up with taking them because I know they will only be effective for a short time and then I will have to take something else and then something else and so ad infinitum). I have become really desperate to find a cure that can give me the power to change my life. I am also motivated to being open to and really work at trying CBT at least for a month. I know from past experience that when I have be only just strict with my bedtime and arising for a couple weeks, it noticably helped.

I do firmly believe that yes there could be cases of purely physiological cases of it but the only way to know if it is, is to really give CBT a try, do everything as prescribed and finish the course. If after that your insomnia is in no way improved, then I say go get a sleep study, have your doc do blood tests and so on. Don't just decide before you ever tried it that it won't work. If you do that, it most certainly won't.

Sorry about it sounding like a rant, but I really want people to explore all their options and be open to alternate possibilities, so it increases their chances of getting help. As they say, a mind is like a parachute, it only functions when open.

Also I say all this not to critize anyone for anything they do related to their own insomnia. I am not here to judge but just try to give an alternate way to go. Don't just read this article and take it as gospel. Go out and explore everything.

Thanks!

Jen

[jjmahern]

Sorry couldn't edit my post but the second to last sentence in the post should read: Also I find it illogcial that someone might use the logic that CBT doesn't work cause you have chosen not to do most of the work yourself

[Martin Reed]

'jjmahern' wrote:

Unfortunately what I have read about her book, she believes completely that insomnia is never psychological and only physiological. As this is the case CBT will never be able to help her because she already thinks it can't work because it is dealing with behavior and psychology of sleeping.

Good point – and I wrote about this very issue (and one psychotherapist's opinion) on the blog yesterday:

http://www.insomnialand.com/blog/introducing-the-ultimate-insomnia-cure-a-lobotomy/

Thanks for your contribution – I may have to make you our official fact checker!

—

If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[jjmahern]

Sorry to go on about it but I read a review of her book and the reviewer writes:

Though she hyperbolically declares that she would have “sold her soul for sleep,” she refuses to give up wine or leave parties early so that she can have a regular sleep schedule. Confusingly, she concludes, “I love sleep too much to voluntarily restrict it for the rest of my life.”

The American scholar, Book Reviews, 2008, Sleepless Nights, Sarah Fay

This was my earlier point very pointedly admitted to by the writer. She refuses to give up wine or leave parties early (and by inference, to go to bed and rise at the same time everyday) but she would “sell her soul for sleep”? Ummm, what? You say you would do anything to get sleep, well anything that doesn't interfere with the lifestyle you enjoy. Also saying essentially that she loves sleep so much that she won't even try sleep restriction. Btw the sleep restriction is generally part of the first part of CBT, but I am almost certain that once you get your sleep efficiency much higher you can begin to sleep more and more.

Again sorry to go on and I am not trying to judge her, but it does seem apparent to me that her articles and books are not only not helping insomniacs desperate for help, but they are probably in a larger portion hurting them. She convinces them that CBT is completely bogus and drugs are the only way. In some measure what she is proposing is similar to someone proposing that eating less or no cholesteral and less fat isn't the way to go for people with high cholesteral. The thing to do is simply to take the doctors pills to lower, because well eating less or less fatty foods is just too much of an imposition or you dissmiss outright the possibility that this could help. Now don't get me wrong, I know folks to do both, some that do one or the other. I have no problem with the person who decides they really can't be vegetarian and would rather take pills. I get that. But if you are that person, you really ought not write books about this to disuade others from trying lifestyle changes because in your limited experience and non-medical expertise lifestyle changes don't work.

I realize I keep going on about this but this also hits a nerve with me as I am really saddened and upset with our medical industrial complex. Don't get me wrong, modern medicine can do wonders for us all and I have benefited in my life from antibiotics, surgery, hell, I have even been on antidepressants for ten years now (which btw I am looking into weaing off and to try not being on something or trying something different because I have suspicions that my use of this drug long term may be a contributing factor to my insomnia). But generally modern medicine is of the belief that if you have a problem, let's find a pill to fix it. Instead of looking for things we can do outside pharmacology to help the patient. But then if they did that, no one would make any money. The pharmacueticals would have to scale down their companies big time and the dr wouldn't continue to have a patient to treat. I am not trying to say that doctors, pharmaceuticals, and modern medicine are total crap. What I am saying is that there are alternative ways to deal with problems. Look at the source of the problem instead of simply treating the symptoms.

Sorry again to post on about this. I just feel so strongly. Again my purpose is in no way to judge or critize anyone for how he/she chooses to live his/her life. Just don't come crying to me when you refuse to really try every means possible to help.

[jjmahern]

Also here is a webpage that could be of some help or illumination.

http://www.apa.org/research/action/sleep.aspx

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