“Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails. I read the list of ships up to half … ”- Osip Mandelstam preferred the calming rhythm of a hexameter to elephants or rams. The great poet instinctively found a fairly accurate way to fall asleep quickly, because, according to doctors, our heart has the ability to tune its work in time to the measured rhythm of the verse. Unfortunately, not all insomniacs are fans of poetry. What should they do?
Least of all, as it is not unfortunate, sleeping pills will help you. Imagine that after drinking a pill, you borrowed sleep, and even at monstrous interest. Sooner or later, the hour of reckoning will come: you will either become addicted to drugs, or you will earn yourself the so-called rebound insomnia, which begins after you give up the pills. Alcohol often takes the place of pills, and prolonged insomnia becomes an abstinence syndrome. However, a visit to your doctor can be beneficial for you.
The fact is that insomnia can be the result of diseases such as restless legs syndrome (in this case, you feel such symptoms in your legs as: trembling, chills, tingling, burning, twitching), abstructive or central apnea (stopping breathing during sleep), and others.
Then attention should be paid to the underlying disease, and not to its consequence in the form of sleep disturbances. Sometimes the cause of insomnia is purely psychological – for example, if your bedroom makes you uncomfortable with an argument, unwanted intimacy, guilt, or fear. In this case, you can try to change the scenery and henceforth not turn the bedroom into a battlefield.
However, according to experts, we ourselves can find the cause of insomnia better than doctors. The fact is that in the program of domestic medical universities, negligible attention is paid to the problems of sleep disorders.
Nor does the profession of a somnologist, which is widespread in the West, exist in our country. Therefore, our doctors still prescribe sleeping pills first.
Americans counted their sleepless citizens and found that about 80 million adults in the United States suffer from this disorder. Among them, about 30 percent of insomnia is a chronic phenomenon. These numbers showed how serious the problem is and forced doctors to reconsider their views on insomnia. Unfortunately, these new methods of fighting sleep disturbance are just beginning to penetrate the Russian countryside.
Now in our country there are only 5-6 sleep centers that can provide patients with qualified assistance. However, you should not despair, since some of the techniques can be tested by you yourself.
It happens that a person, due to a change in the rhythm of life, time zone or for a number of other reasons, could not fall asleep at night. All night he tossed and turned with the thought that tomorrow he had to go to work early and he would feel overwhelmed all day. In the evening he returns home and lies down to rest for an hour and a half. As a result, in the evening he again cannot sleep and is even more worried about tomorrow. This fear is fixed in consciousness. And the very thought of the upcoming torment becomes the reason for a sharp adrenaline rush. And a person, having long entered into a normal rhythm, cannot fall asleep due to the fact that he is trying very hard to do it: he counts elephants, rams, etc. hence insomnia. What can be done here?
First, you need to start from the very night when you could not sleep for the first time. If you do not want to sleep, do not try to force yourself. Dedicate this time to your favorite activities, spend this night with pleasure, not worrying about tomorrow. Any more or less healthy human body has enough hormones to make up for the lack of sleep the next day. If you remember this evening as a wasteful but enjoyable pastime, you will not have a fear of the next night and you will almost certainly fall asleep as a baby.
When doctors calculated how many hours a month a person sleeps before and after the development of insomnia, it turned out that the difference rarely exceeds half an hour. This means that those who could not fall asleep at night get sleep during the day, but since this happens in fits and starts, they do not have time to enjoy the process. So, the point is not at all that we sleep less … The motto “If you suffer for a long time, something will work out” is good in many situations, but completely unsuitable for falling asleep.
The same Americans conducted a funny and characteristic test. Hundreds of volunteers had their sleep times tested. The next day, the organizers of the experiment offered a cash prize to whoever fell asleep first. As a result, the rate of falling asleep for all participants increased at least three times. Based on these data, it became clear that all the so-called ways to fall asleep are not only ineffective, but, on the contrary, achieve the opposite result, since a person is consciously trying.
The recommendations of somnologists may seem trivial, but even if you start to follow at least some of them, it will allow you to dramatically improve the situation.
It is very important to stay asleep. Try to get up at the same time, regardless of whether it is a weekend or weekdays, whether you went to bed sooner or later. Never spend time in bed if you cannot sleep.
A person usually sleeps a lot more than he actually needs. This can be quite enjoyable, but not for those with insomnia. They just need to shorten their sleep time. Sleep reduction therapy should ideally be supervised by a specialist, but this is not always possible.
A more radical way suits young people. First, it turns out how many hours a person still sleeps per night. This is usually about five hours. He is allowed to lie in bed for five hours and not a minute more. As soon as a person begins to sleep all these five hours, and only to sleep, he is allowed to spend another half hour in bed. He sleeps again. Another half hour. And so on until the difficulty of falling asleep again appears. Then the last (extra) 30 minutes are subtracted, and the resulting time is considered optimal.
Older people are asked to remember how long they slept before they had insomnia. It often happens that a person, while working, slept seven hours a day, and after retiring, began to go to bed at 11 pm and get up at 10 am. It is not surprising that from this time he continues to sleep for only 7-8 hours, and the rest of the time he lies and suffers. After the time for normal sleep is set, an hour is subtracted from it, and then everything happens as in the first case.
This method is also suitable for those who think that they have not slept at all. This (usually imaginary) sensation is common in people with depression.
There is another way that suits everyone. If you have not been able to fall asleep within fifteen minutes, get out of bed urgently and do not go to bed for the next hour. Try again and, if it ends in a fiasco, get up again – and so on until you snore victoriously. Usually 10-15 times is enough to normalize sleep.
An important factor in the process of falling asleep is the so-called decline in the body’s activity. It is at this time that it is most convenient to go to bed. For the average person living normally, these declines occur between 3 and 5 pm, 11 am and 4 am, 5 and 5 am. It so happens that a person has “sat out” the recession around midnight and is forced to toil without sleep until the next recession at XNUMX o’clock in the morning. If this happens infrequently, then take advantage of this time for your own pleasure and do not be afraid of tomorrow’s lack of sleep.
Success in exams or important negotiations practically does not depend on whether you slept at night or not. Fear should only be for those people whose work is either very monotonous or very dangerous. If you regularly “sit out” your recession, then you need to try to shift it by falling asleep and getting up. This can be done, as a rule, in two weeks.
The main thing that should be done by everyone who sleeps poorly is to turn falling asleep from a burdensome necessity into a kind of ritual, a sacred rite. This can be a warm bath, a lighted aroma lamp with soothing oil, or relaxing music. Whichever method you choose, observe this ritual every night until it becomes a habit. Enjoy the process and leave you forever behind myriads of maple leaves and herds of mammals. And you will never flinch again when they wish you: “Good night!”