Natural Insomnia Cures - Sleep Restriction Therapy

Sleep restriction therapy is a natural cure for insomnia that appears to be very effective. It has been developed by Dr. Spielman of Columbia Presbyterian in New York who has reported effectively improving the sleep of his patients over the course of a month. They all achieved seven hours of good sleep at night with improved sleep quality. The therapy uses the idea that the body has become adapted to lack of sleep and needs to be retrained in order to allow better and longer sleep. This method of sleep retraining will take a few weeks and during this time, any sleeping aids you may have been using, will have to be abandoned. They will interfere with your attempts to retrain your body in a healthy sleep pattern.

Sleep Restriction Therapy Steps

Step one

The first thing you must do is to find out your minimum sleeping time. Keep a log for a week and note the time you went to sleep and when you woke up. Find the average time the you are asleep over these nights. This will be your minimum sleep time.

Step two

Disrupting your learned sleep pattern is important and can be achieved by going without sleep for 24 hours. Chemicals will build up in your body that will induce sleep and will disrupt the faulty sleep pattern that your body has learned.

Step three

Now allow yourself to sleep, but only for your minimum sleep time. Take the normal time that you wake in the morning and subtract your minimum sleep time. This will give you the time that you should go to sleep. So for instance if you normally wake up at 6:30 AM and your minimum sleep time is three hours you will keep yourself awake until 3:30 in the morning. Set an alarm to ensure that you wake up at your normal waking time and do not allow yourself to sleep in, however much you may feel like it. On waking each day use a very bright light for about 30 minutes to help to regulate your sleeping pattern.

Step four

In this step you will gradually increase your sleeping time. Do not try to do this too fast as you will not retrain your body properly and you would just go back to the faulty sleep pattern you had in the first place. To do it gradually add 15 minutes to your minimum sleep time and allow yourself to sleep 15 minutes earlier each night. This will gradually extend the time the you are sleeping and help to retrain your body to sleep longer. If you get to a point where you again cannot sleep, go back to the minimum sleep time that allowed you to sleep properly for a few nights and then attempt slightly longer sleep.

Special Notes

However tired you may feel during the day do not allow your body to sleep. This will only teach it to sleep at the wrong time and disrupt your sleeping pattern at night. If you start to feel drowsy take some exercise or do some stimulating activity to keep yourself awake.

Conclusion

This natural cure for insomnia can help many people who suffer from chronic insomnia, although of course results may vary. You are aiming for seven or eight hours of deep, refreshing sleep but at a minimum this method will increase the time that you can sleep which can only be of benefit. It is also drug-free and easy to do so you have nothing to lose by trying this natural insomnia cure.

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