2 major ways to cure insomnia without drugs....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 10-2-2012

Drugs for insomnia are usually not needed, not entirely safe to take, and people who take them also have higher rates of cancer and death than people who don’t. (Since there are other effective ways to stop insomnia, those drugs strike me as a poor solution.)

But insomnia is no fun either.

You don’t feel well and too tired and may even get depressed because of the sleep you don’t get and the frustration of not sleeping when you want to!

It would be a lot better if you could get rid of insomnia effectively without using the drugs.

The much better news is that two major strategies do turn off insomnia.

A. Don’t take the drugs that cause insomnia!

B.  Do the things that make good sleep quite likely that don’t require drugs.

Some recent research has information on both of these strategies.

A.  Lipitor and possibly other statin drugs and beta blockers cause insomnia.  But both classes of drugs each have a major flaw and other methods should be used by most people.

The good news is that if you use those other methods and stop the drugs, the insomnia they cause disappears!!

One of the top two or three ways to protect your heart and health and lower your death rate is to get vigorous exercise, if only for a few minutes at a time, most days of every week.

Beta blockers make such exercise almost undoable and largely ineffective.  And statin drugs prevent your body from repairing the muscles you use and even cause muscle damage if you do such exercise.  With statins, the more they lower LDL the worse muscle damage they tend to do.

But such exercise is more protective than either class of drugs!  People take statins to prevent heart attacks and take beta blockers to prevent heart attacks and strokes. 

Such exercise does a better job at both and has other health benefits.  Besides insomnia and preventing you from protecting yourself with exercise those two classes drugs have other side effects!

In addition, there are better and safer ways to lower high LDL cholesterol and high blood pressure.

1.  Most people would be far better off taking niacin and sterols and practicing aggressive lifestyle upgrades for heart protection than taking statins.  Those things lower the risk of heart attacks and death better than statins. 

And even the minority of people who test genetically as being helped by statins should take the lowest possible dose.

2.  Repeated studies show that taking drugs for blood pressure of less than 160 over 100 is not protective in terms of lowering death rates and other serious events.

Meanwhile, the kind of exercise we just described, is more protective than the drugs for all high blood pressure according to a recent study.

Stopping soft drinks and packaged foods and most fast foods and going on a high vegetable intake version of the DASH II or Mediterranean diet or better yet a combination get the triple.  Blood pressure goes down somewhat and the risk of heart attacks and strokes and early death improves.

The kind of blood pressure increase caused by stress that beta blockers best stops can be stopped as well or better by practicing Tai Chi or using a breathing pacer device called the Resparate. 

So, if you have insomnia and are taking a statin or a beta blocker, it does take work to use exercise and upgrades in what you eat and drink plus these other methods.

But if you do that now or are willing to begin, remember that stopping those two kinds of drugs stops the insomnia they cause!

B.  There is a whole list of ways to get better sleep you can use for the other causes of insomnia.

1.  Interestingly one of the best of those methods is to get vigorous exercise, if only for a few minutes at a time, most days of every week.  AND a recent study found that the exercise works much better to stop insomnia if you do it first thing in the morning!  People who get such exercise first thing in the morning do it more days a week and are far more likely to keep doing it.  So this new study is great news. 

Do your vigorous if brief exercise at the time of day that is least derailed by the later events of your days AND you double your insomnia protection too!

2.  Go to bed as close to the same time each evening as you can on weekdays and also get up at the exact same time each week day.  (Hitting the snooze button doesn’t add that much extra rest and it does make you start out late and makes insomnia more likely.  Do NOT use it!) Regular habits make your body more efficient at you falling asleep and getting good rest from it.

3.  Whatever your normal hours per night is try to cut back a bit as long as you still total 6 to 7 hours a day.  Soldiers in basic training who tend to sleep about 6 hours a day are famous for how easily they fall asleep when they have the opportunity.  You can do this too.  Closer to 7 hours a day is better for you.  But if you have insomnia, getting a bit less while you add these other methods might work for you.

4.  Do your best to have your room quiet and dark and cool when you sleep.  (I use two pillows and put one on top to cut down light and noise.  Air conditioners, black out curtains, and noise cancelling technologies also work.)  Covering large glowing electronic displays on clocks and the like can also help.  If you wake up and want to see the time you can look and re-cover – meanwhile, you’ll sleep better.

5.  Don’t have a TV in your bedroom and stop watching it as early in your day as you can.  With the internet, if you need breaking news, don’t watch late night TV news!  Check out the breaking news right after you exercise first thing in the morning the next day. 

You will get to sleep easier; you’ll sleep better; and for some people who did have a TV in their bedroom before, their sex life will be better!

6.  In a recent Newsmax email article by Sylvia Booth Hubbard, she added some other ideas.

a)  Take magnesium citrate sometime during the evening as it has a relaxing effect for some people (I take 200 mg.)  And many people are deficient in magnesium.  So for them they also will often get some blood pressure reduction too.

b)  If you need extra help falling asleep and/or are over about 60 amounts of melatonin from half a 1 mg tablet to 1 mg to 2 mg to even 3 mg can help when taken an hour before bedtime.  A recent study found that 2.5 mg of melatonin a night even helped people who still were taking beta blockers.  (My caution, start with the smaller amounts.  Whatever the right amount is for you, if you take more, you can be a little too relaxed to start your day well the next morning. So start with a half mg an hour before bed. If needed, you can always go to 1 mg and then 2 etc.)

c) If you possibly can, avoid tobacco use and second hand smoke. My point is that doing that is a very important way to protect your heart and prevent all cancers.  But her insomnia point is that the middle of the night low nicotine levels can wake you from temporary withdrawal symptoms.

d)  “Caffeine takes eight hours to be eliminated from the body.”  So if you go to bed at 10 PM and can manage it OK and have insomnia, stop ALL caffeine by 2 PM. (Or at least by 6 PM if you can’t manage 2 PM.)

7.  She also recommends having a bedtime ritual of things you always do as you go to bed.  And she recommends stopping TV an hour before bedtime.  (You can take your melatonin then if you decide to do that.)  The ritual is part of a pattern that the regular bedtimes and getting up times are.  The more consistent you are with your patterns, the easier it will be to fall asleep.

The electronic media also tend to boost neurotransmitters that don’t go well with falling asleep.  Plus watching bad news or events you can’t fix just before bed it NOT a great idea.  Get your breaking news online in the morning AFTER a good nights sleep!

8.  If you have extra stresses another thing you can do early in the hour before you go to bed is to list things you can do that will or might make things better, is to write down those.  Then tell yourself forcefully that it’s OK to get some rest now so you’ll be effective at doing those things tomorrow and give yourself permission to put them on hold until then.

For religious people adding prayer at this point can help.

Worry causes insomnia.  But thinking, I have a shot at making things better and I’ll do them TOMORROW also can help you fall asleep.

9.  What if you are still too stressed?  Taking the herb valerian works.  But use it as a last resort. 

The essential oils that contain the active ingredient stink.  You literally want to have a larger wide mouth jar like a big mayo container that’s empty and a tight fitting lid to keep your valerian bottle in.  The family of Anne Frank in World War II took valerian for sleep.  So if way excessive stress is your insomnia problem, adding valerian may help.

For most people NOT taking drugs that cause insomnia and these other methods will be enough.

But if all that fails, try valerian.

10.  If you still have insomnia, and can afford it and have access to one, go see the doctors in a University affiliated sleep clinic.  If these other steps aren’t enough for you, you may need their services to find and eliminate your problem that’s causing insomnia.