You would think that getting a good night's rest is easy... but getting good sleep is neither guaranteed nor easily attainable.
Patients frequently seek me out to address insomnia, an issue that affects close to 100% of adults at some point in time. Maybe it's because you have young kids, or you're experiencing stress, or even dealing with some sort of injury or illness. Unfortunately, sleep is usually the first thing to get thrown out of alignment.
Why is that? The answer is actually quite simple. Humans are no different from any other mammal. We have basic physiological mechanisms that regulate our behavior. For example, our brain relies on daylight to determine when we're supposed to feel sleepy and will produce melatonin accordingly. Our brain also will also try to compensate for the quality of sleep we had the night before by making us feel sleepy the next day (this is called sleep drive). Unfortunately this means that most of our lifestyle choices can easily to throw things off - like going to bed too late, watching TV or scrolling on our phone before bed, eating junky food, falling asleep on the couch, being too sedentary, etc.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is an incredibly straightforward and effective approach for dealing with insomnia. In this series, I will do my best to break down to essential components of CBT-I so that you can apply it to your nightly routine.
Next week I'll start off by talking about setting the stage for sleep. Stay tuned!