Reasons You Can’t Sleep
The following is an article written by Andrew Charles. I have added my own comments in italics about his suggestions for people not being able to fall asleep. I hope you find this helpful so that you are no longer asking yourself why you can’t fall asleep!
Are you one of those people who has trouble getting to sleep night after night? If so, this may be for any (or all) of the following reasons:
1. Trying to fall asleep
That’s right, trying to fall asleep is one of the biggest reason’s that prevents you from actually falling asleep. This is because, you have conditioned your brain to "not sleep" when you go to bed. Therefore, the easiest way to fall asleep is to re-educate your brain into falling asleep as soon as you lie down.
This is a good comment, but I would add that the reason for not being able to fall asleep when you are trying to, is that you are trying to! I know that I use to lay in bed and try as hard as I can to fall asleep. When I finally gave up and stopped trying, I fell asleep…imagine that!
2. Fear insomnia
Did you know that worrying about not getting enough sleep is about the worst thing you can do at night? So tonight, when you go to bed, if you find yourself asking if you are going to have another bad night’s sleep, just think to yourself "so what?" what’s the worst thing that will happen? By not making a big issue of it, you will find it easier to relax and before you know it, you will be fast asleep.
Okay so this one is similar to what I said in my last comment. I like his idea of saying "so what?". It is important to not make a big deal of not falling asleep. The more you think about it, the worse it will get.
3. Worrying Your Night Away
You don’t need to suffer from depression to find yourself worrying the night away in bed, whatever the problem that’s keeping you awake, it’s usually a lot less of an issue the next morning. This can then become a regular mental association of starting to worry as soon as you turn the light out. The trick is to replace the bad association with an automatic habit of falling asleep instead.
This is perhaps the biggest reason that most people have trouble sleeping. We all can have a stressful day at work or home, and if we don’t have some way of relieving that stress before we go to bed, it will literally haunt us all night long. Make sure you know how to relieve stress and do so before bedtime.
4. Succumbing to tiredness
A trap that many people fall into is to start taking things easy when they are feeling tired. The problem here is what’s known as the body temperature cycle. During the day, as you expend energy, your body temperature rises and you feel wide awake. Conversely, if you have a healthy sleep cycle, your body temperature will start to drop at night, you will start to yawn and feel sleepy. This doesn’t happen with insomniacs, the temperature doesn’t rise high enough during the day, nor drop enough at night, resulting in fragmented sleep. The answer here is to get exercise during the day to raise the body temperature, then just like a pendulum swinging, it will then drop lower at night enabling a good night’s sleep to be gotten.
I have never heard of this before, so I’m not sure if it is effective. It never hurts to try and I know that getting exercise, especially in the morning can help. However, I usually get more tired when my body temperature rises, so, I’m not really sure how that works.
5. Spending too much time in bed
A very popular myth is that to maintain a healthy lifestyle, everyone needs 8 hours sleep every night. The fact is, around 20% of people actually, get by very well on 6 hours or less per night. Often, when you have had a poor night’s sleep, you will hit the snooze button in the morning to try to make up the hours. What you are actually doing is messing with your biological clock and putting back your sleep cycle. The next time you go to bed at your usual hour, this will be too early for your body clock, you won’t get off to sleep and you’ll start worrying, the whole cycle will start over again.
This is a very good point. Your biological clock needs to stay on time. Also, not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can go off 6 or even less and be just as productive during the day as those that sleep a full 8 hours.
This article was linked to MySleepTracks.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Charles
http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Reason-That-You-Cant-Sleep-at-Night&id=1231018
Tagged With can't sleep, find out why you can't sleep, reasons for not sleeping, sleeping tips
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