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Good to hear from you again! A sleep window of 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM (seven hours in duration) suggests that you are averaging around six-and-a-half hours of sleep at night. Does that sound about right?
Are you also making sure that you get out of bed by the same time every single day?
If you regularly struggle to stay up until the start of your sleep window, you may benefit from shifting it a little so it starts earlier in the night (and ends earlier in the morning).
—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, Pillow — and I don’t think you will find one person here who doesn’t share the same aspirations as you!
Home remedies do not cure chronic insomnia. Instead, look for a treatment option that is supported by evidence — such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I).
You mentioned that you feel anxiety when you can’t sleep because you know the next day is going to be brutal. A bad night of sleep can definitely make the next day more of a struggle — but how well we sleep actually has less of an impact on our day than we usually think.
Think of it this way — have you ever had a great night of sleep but had a bad day? Have you ever had a bad night of sleep but noticed a few good moments during the day? If so, see this as evidence that the quality of your day is not entirely dependent on the quality of your sleep. Being aware of this can reduce the power of sleep-related anxiety.
—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 Nick, and welcome to the forum. I am sorry to hear that you have been told by doctors that you cannot be cured of your chronic insomnia — because that does not sound accurate. Did your doctors give you a reason as to why they felt you could not be cured?
—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.
Thanks for your contribution, Seaman — and I appreciate that you feel let down by the medical community. Medical doctors do not receive much in the way of sleep education during their training — so when they see patients who struggle with sleep, they may not know the best course of treatment to recommend.
Sleeping pills are not the answer. They do not cure insomnia and they come with a number of potential side-effects. They are also not intended for use much beyond a couple of weeks. If you are currently taking prescription medication, do not make any changes to your medication regimen without talking to your doctor first.
A far better alternative to sleeping pills (and the American College of Physician’s recommendation) is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). CBT-I is supposed to be offered as the first treatment for adults with chronic insomnia but unfortunately, this rarely happens.
This is down to a combination of a lack of awareness, and a lack of availability of CBT-I practitioners.
—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.
If you are a morning lark it’s little surprise that you are finding it hard to stay awake until the start of your sleep window. You may want to discuss advancing the sleep window with your therapist while retaining an appropriate duration. So, instead of 11.40 PM to 6 AM you try 10.40 PM to 5 AM (as an example).
In your last post, you described conditioned arousal to a tee — and this is very common among people with chronic insomnia. In effect, you have learned that the bed is a place for worry and wakefulness rather than relaxation and sleep. So, when you get in bed you feel anxiety rather than relaxation.
Before you had insomnia, you did not have this association. The association was learned, so it can be ‘unlearned’ — and this is done by using the bed for sleep and nothing else. So, when you aren’t asleep you get out of bed.
If your anxiety is related to sleep and the bed, then getting out of bed when you are awake will actually help alleviate this anxiety over time — because it will retrain your mind to associate the bed with nothing but sleep. However, it does take time and consistent implementation of stimulus control techniques — and this certainly is not easy, especially for the first 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.
Hello Cammie, and welcome to the forum. I am sorry to hear that you have been struggling to fall asleep for the past few years and that your doctor’s suggestion was to try trazodone. Did your doctor happen to mention cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)?
In the United States, primary care physicians are encouraged to recommend CBT-I as the initial treatment for chronic insomnia because it is more effective than sleeping pills and doesn’t come with any of the side-effects associated with sleeping pills.
When you do you normally go to bed at night, when do you normally get out of bed to start your day, and roughly how many hours of sleep do you get on a typical night?
—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 and welcome to the forum. I am sorry to hear about the pain you are experiencing and your disrupted sleep.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we have any back and muscle pain experts here. Did anything unusual, stressful, or out of the ordinary happen eight months ago at roughly the same time you experienced this problem?
When it comes to your sleep, can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? When do you lie down to sleep at night, and when do you get up to start your day in the morning? Roughly how many hours of sleep do you get on a typical night?
—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 Edgar and welcome to the forum.
Most people don’t routinely take naps during the day because they get sufficient sleep at night and don’t feel sleepy during the day. People with untreated chronic insomnia are rarely excessively sleepiness — instead, they tend to have a problem with fatigue.
Healthy sleepers nap to reduce sleepiness — not for sleep itself. For example, if I am driving for four hours and feel very sleepy I will pull over and have a half-hour nap to reduce this sleepiness. I am not napping because I want to sleep at that moment in time.
If your ultimate goal is to get more sleep at night, it’s important to bear in mind that time spent asleep during the day will reduce sleep drive and can lead to less sleep at night.
When you implement sleep restriction, the goal is to increase sleepiness (and sleep drive) so that when you go to bed, you fall asleep faster, and you spend more time in bed asleep rather than awake.
You mentioned that you think napping is meant to be a part of everyone’s day. I don’t know any healthy sleepers who regularly nap. This would, of course, be different if I lived somewhere like Spain where siestas are part of the culture — but I don’t think people in ‘siesta culture’ nations nap because of any pressure to do so. They nap because they want to, and it is something they are accustomed to.
If you aren’t accustomed to naps, there is no need to feel you should be taking them — and they can actually be unhelpful if you struggle to sleep 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.
Are you currently following a regular sleep window? If so, when does it start and when does it end? Roughly how many hours of sleep are you getting at night? If you provide some more information, I will try to offer some suggestions.
—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.
Thanks for your contribution, jazzcat.
Sleepiness and adenosine levels are linked — higher levels of adenosine mean higher levels of sleepiness. The only way to create sleepiness is through wakefulness and daytime activity. One reason why CBT-I is so effective is that it helps strengthen sleep drive through bedtime restriction and stimulus control. So, you go to bed when sleep drive (and adenosine levels) are high enough for sleep.
The study you linked to did not conclude that people with insomnia have 30% less GABA. It only involved 16 individuals, the study findings were preliminary, and they still need to be replicated. It is also worth mentioning that the research was funded by a drug company (perhaps no surprise since many sleep medications target the GABA system).
If GABA deficiency was the cause of insomnia, then insomnia would be cured with GABA supplements. However, GABA deficiency is not the cause of chronic insomnia and so insomnia does not get cured when people take GABA supplements (or sleeping pills that target the GABA system).
(Another study published in 2012 — four years after the study you shared — found that people with insomnia had higher GABA levels!)
There are only three causes of chronic insomnia disorder. These are:
1. Homeostatic disruption (ie, reduced sleep drive)
2. Circadian disruption (ie an inappropriate or inconsistent sleep schedule)
3. High levels of arousal (physiological arousal, cognitive arousal, and/or conditioned arousal)
There can be an unlimited number of initial triggers of sleep problems, but every case of chronic insomnia disorder is down to one or more of the above three causes. These are the issues that need to be addressed if someone with chronic insomnia wants to improve their 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.
I just came across a great discussion between Daniel Erichsen, a sleep physician based just down the road from me, and someone with insomnia who went back and forth between CBT-I and ACT. I think it adds some really good context and additional value to this forum topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjVIzRUnf1I
—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.
“Researchers took blood samples from 11 pairs of identical twins with different sleep patterns…”
So, the study did not involve individuals with chronic insomnia. Therefore, that study does not support the idea that chronic insomnia suppresses the immune system.
I’m going to withdraw from this discussion now since it’s not constructive for me to evaluate all the sleep-related studies out there in order to demonstrate why they do not apply to chronic insomnia!
Insomnia is awful. It makes you feel lousy. It can make the day harder. It can make you feel frustrated, worried, anxious, and alone. However, there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any disease or health problem. Such concerns are natural and understandable (after all, we are bombarded with inaccurate sleep messages on a near-daily basis by the media) — but they are not accurate and they are certainly not helpful.
—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.
CBT-I techniques are effective at improving sleep even among people with high levels of anxiety. They just need to be implemented correctly and consistently — and the techniques are not easy.
Good luck, Barb!
—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 again, Barb. I received your sleep log but unfortunately, it’s not terribly helpful because you left a lot of entries blank or used large ranges of times. So, we can’t really use your current sleep diary to average your nightly sleep duration or to determine when you usually get into bed and get out of bed.
I did notice that the sleep log you submitted was quite complex and asked a lot of questions! You may find it easier to keep up with a simpler sleep diary such as this one:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/insomnia-coach/Short+Sleep+Diary.pdf
Generally speaking, the amount of time you allot for sleep should be very close to the amount of time you actually spend asleep. So, after a week, you calculate your average nightly sleep duration. Then, add half an hour to this time to get your sleep window (this should be at least five-and-a-half hours long).
You can then use the sleep window to determine your earliest possible bedtime and your latest possible out of bed time. It’s important to then stick to these times — but bear in mind that the start of the sleep window is the earliest possible time you should go to bed. If your sleep window begins and you don’t feel sleepy, don’t go to bed until you do feel sleepy. However, no matter how well or how poorly you sleep during the night, it’s important to get out of bed by the end of your sleep window every day.
—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 again, Barb. Are you currently keeping any type of sleep diary or sleep log?
—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.
