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Sorry to hear about your struggle with sleep. How long has this been going on for? Health issues are quite often an initial trigger for sleep disruption, but it’s our response to this sleep disruption that makes it hard for our sleep to recover.
Typically, we respond to sleep disruption by thinking about sleep more than we ever did before, we might start (quite justifiably!) worrying about sleep, and we might implement behaviors in a bid to improve our sleep that actually make it harder for our sleep to recover (for example, spending more time in bed and modifying our days in response to a hard night of sleep).
Have you looked into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)? CBT-I techniques help address the thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate insomnia and that’s why they’re such a great long-term strategy for dealing with insomnia.
—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.
Welcome to the forum. Consuming whey protein isn’t going to be the direct cause of a night of no sleep — and it certainly isn’t a perpetuating factor of insomnia, so I don’t think this is something you need to be too concerned with.
I suspect that your sleep issues are more to do with insufficient sleep opportunity rather than chronic insomnia. In other words, it sounds as though if you are able to consistently give yourself the opportunity for sleep, you might very well be able to sleep.
Are you receiving any help with your internet addiction? In your case, addressing this issue might be all that is needed. If you find that you continue to struggle once the internet use is no longer an issue, it might be worth discussing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) with your doctor.
I hope this helps!
—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.
Although it can feel as though a hard night of sleep means our day is going to be completely ruined, what we actually do during the day has far more of an influence on the quality of our day than sleep.
As an example, I would LOVE to go into space as a tourist one day. An afternoon spent seeing the Earth from space would be an incredible experience — and it would STILL be an incredible experience even if I only managed to get a few hours of sleep each night for a year beforehand.
One of the worst things about insomnia is fatigue— yet we have far more control over fatigue than we think. Activity is the enemy of fatigue, so fatigue urges us to remain inactive.
If we stay sedentary because of fatigue, we simply feel more fatigued and the more inactive we are, the more we end up thinking about and worrying about sleep. Furthermore, when we modify our lives in response to poor sleep, we guarantee that a bad night of sleep leads to a negative outcome — because we aren’t allowing ourselves the opportunity to have a good day or even to recognize one or two “OK” moments.
I would encourage you to treat yourself to some really enjoyable activities to help motivate you to get active during the day. The more enjoyment you can get out of your day, the less you’ll worry about sleep — and the easier you’ll probably find it to sleep.
Here are a few videos you might find helpful:
If you have chronic insomnia, you have an incredible ability!
Daytime fatigue is caused by more than just a bad night of sleep
The quality of your day isn’t entirely dependent on the quality of your sleep
Adding more enjoyable moments to your life and planning fun activities reduces the power of insomnia.
I hope this helps.
—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.
Welcome to the forum, Kojak. Have you tried getting out of bed when you are struggling with sleep? Doing this will help prevent you from reinforcing the idea that the bed is a place for struggle and is often more appealing than staying in bed!
Getting out of bed and doing something you find relaxing and enjoyable can also help distract the mind and calm that sense of panic a bit quicker compared to staying in bed.
You might find these videos helpful, too:
Why CBT-I is so effective when worry, anxiety, and a racing mind are fueling your chronic insomnia.
What to do when anxious thoughts are making sleep difficult and leading to insomnia.
—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.
It will take time to regain and reinforce that sleep confidence — every night of better sleep helps bolster that sense of confidence, though! How have you been doing over the past couple of weeks?
—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.
Sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep. Waking in “fight or flight” mode is a relatively common symptom of hyperarousal and many people with chronic insomnia experience hyperarousal due to the repeated experience of sleep difficulties.
You might find this video helpful: Why you feel a sense of panic when you drift off to sleep (or when you wake during the night).
How long have you been experiencing this? Have you spoken to your doctor or looked into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)?
—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.
With that bedtime and rise time, we can see that your son is allotting around eight-and-a-half hours for sleep — that’s a long period of time to be allotting for sleep! If your son currently gets around three hours of sleep at night, we can see that allotting over eight hours for sleep is only guaranteeing up to five hours of wakefulness during the night.
A good first step might be to reduce the amount of time he allots for sleep to around five-and-a-half hours. This will help build sleep drive and reduce the amount of time he spends awake during the night.
You can learn more about this on the sleep restriction page.
I hope this helps.
—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.
Welcome to the forum! First of all, it’s important to stress that you CAN sleep — every human being on earth can sleep! If we are awake for long enough, we will sleep.
With that being said, we can definitely struggle with sleep and find it more difficult than it should be — and that’s usually down to the way we think about sleep and the behaviors we implement to improve our sleep that actually get in the way of sleep.
How have you been getting on since you posted? Most of the time, sleep will recover by itself after the initial trigger for sleep disruption is no longer a relevant issue. If not, I would suggest familiarizing yourself with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques to address the perpetuating factors behind insomnia.
I hope this helps!
—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.
Hello John. I am sorry to hear of your horrific childhood experience. That is very likely the initial trigger of your sleep issues — and led to changes in the way you think about sleep and probably in your sleep-related behaviors, too. Ultimately, it’s these thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate insomnia and make it difficult for us to get out sleep back on track.
Have you looked into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)? It’s a great collection of techniques that help identify (and address) the thoughts and behaviors that feed insomnia — and for this reason, it’s a really helpful way to improve sleep for the long term.
—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.
It sounds as though you’re doing really well! How have things been over the past couple of weeks?
—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.
Hi Kassandra
It takes time for the sleep window to help build sleep drive and have a noticeable effect on your sleep. We can’t evaluate the effectiveness of a sleep window after just two or three nights. So, what you are experiencing is completely normal.
You will learn a lot more about the sleep window in Session 2. Since you are a client, I would suggest contacting me directly with any concerns you might have so that you receive the best and most relevant guidance possible.
—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.
My thoughts are this:
1. The study involved only 15 people — we can’t extrapolate the results of a study that involved 15 people to a worldwide population of close to 8 billion people.
2. Sleep deprivation is not insomnia. In other words, chronic insomnia is not the same as — and does not have the same effect on the body as — one night of complete and absolute sleep deprivation.
3. The study actually looked at five different biomarkers (t-tau, Aβ40, Aβ42, NfL, and GFAP). Only one out of five (t-tau) was found to be affected by one night of complete sleep loss. In the remaining four markers, no changes were seen.
A line in the article that I would like to draw particular attention to is this one: “The AD [Alzheimer’s disease] risk genotype rs4420638 did not significantly interact with sleep loss–related diurnal changes in plasma levels of Aβ40 or Aβ42.”
4. The biomarkers t-tau and β-amyloid (Aβ) are only associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Association is not causation.
5. The authors of the study fail to mention (or didn’t investigate) what happened to the increased levels of that one biomarker after participants were allowed to sleep after that single night of forced and absolute sleep deprivation.
6. The study only looked at biomarkers in blood, not the brain. As one of the study authors pointed out, “More research is needed to confirm that sleep deprivation increases tau in the brain, since levels in the blood aren’t necessarily indicative of those in the brain [and] higher blood levels of tau after sleep deprivation could be a sign that the brain is clearing out the protein rather than accumulating it”.
So, there is still no evidence that insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever. It’s so important to read beyond the headlines and to get into the nitty-gritty of these studies to see the bigger picture.
It’s probably even more helpful not to read them or look for them in the first place since all they do is increase sleep-related worry and anxiety.
I hope this helps!
—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.
Any more updates for us, @anna and @jtthemillenial?
—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.
How are you getting on, Phil? Any updates for us?
—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.
Meditation is great for relaxation, but it’s not going to generate sleep for you — so try to bear in mind that the goal of meditation is meditation, not sleep!
If you are averaging around three hours for sleep each night we can see that allotting eight hours for sleep (bed at 10:00 PM and out of bed at 6:00 AM) is perpetuating your insomnia. You are basically guaranteeing yourself up to five hours of wakefulness during the night, every single night.
I think you would benefit hugely from implementing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques — and I’d encourage you to start with sleep restriction to reduce the amount of time you spend awake during the night.
You might want to start by allotting closer to five or five-and-a-half hours for sleep each night. This will build sleep drive and reduce the amount of time you spend awake at night.
I hope this helps!
—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.
