People who have never suffered from true insomnia wouldn't guess that this could be a touchy subject. If you are currently suffering from severe, chronic insomnia, you will know exactly what I mean. The well meaning people in your life literally tell you to drink warm milk and put lavender in the bath, as though this has even the slightest bit of effect on true, debilitating insomnia. Rest assured that these people have never experienced what you are going through.
I worked as cabin crew for an international airline for 2 years, and my experience with insomnia was quite severe, especially when taken on top of the sleep deficit that cabin crew already experience. I had all the symptoms that those who have never experienced a prolonged inability to sleep, can not even imagine. These include depression, anxiety, hallucinations, odd visceral sensations like my body being hollow and made of tin, depersonalization phenomena such as feeling as though I was standing outside my body and watching myself converse with another person, slurred speech and difficulty understanding speech, constant throat pain and frequent throat infections, blisters in the back of my mouth and under my eyelids from a lack of rest of these organs (yes that is as horrible as it sounds.) The list goes on.
If you are feeling alone and stressed about your inability to sleep, I'm here for you. I know it's rough and very few people understand how it feels. Deep breaths. You WILL get to the bottom of this.
First, the most obvious tips that most people already know, but which you may not have heard yet. Then, I'll follow up with some less obvious ideas.
Don't try to fall asleep when you aren't tired. It gets more and more frustrating the longer you lie in bed "trying" to go to sleep, and once your fight or flight response is activated it is nearly impossible to relax enough to sleep peacefully. Rather get up and do something constructive and try again in 15 minutes. It can be helpful to try and go to sleep quite soon after you start feeling tired. Waiting too long to get into bed will often give you that second wind where you feel awake again for a few hours. Stretching and yawning purposefully is a good trigger for your body to start feeling sleepy. A bedtime routine can also help your brain to associate bedtime with sleep, rather than stressful tossing and turning. Wash your face, brush your teeth, or take a relaxing shower or bath about 30 minutes before you plan to sleep.
Make sure the room is cool, below 18 degrees celcius if possible. Rather use more blankets in a colder room. If you find your feet are too cold, or too hot, make adjustments. A messy room makes for a very difficult time letting go and winding down. Keep your bedroom tidy and clean, put things in their place to end off your day so that you don't feel stressed about unfinished business while you're lying in bed.
Get air circulating through the room. Crack a window or use the air conditioner. Stagnant, oxygen depleted air does not help one stay asleep.
Get ear plugs and invest in some blackout curtains. They can be pricey, but so is going crazy because you can't sleep. Some would say an eye mask is cheaper, but the fact is that there are many points on the body which have photo-sensitive cells, such as little organs behind your knees just under your skin. Sometimes your whole body needs darkness.
Write a to do list before you go to bed. Unsolved issues and the fear of forgetting important tasks can keep your subconscious ticking long after you should have been asleep. In the same vein, set an alarm that you know you won't sleep through. Turn your alarm clock away so you don't have to watch the hours of sleep slipping away every time you wake up.
If your job is affecting your sleep in a serious way (weird shifts, stressful environment) consider changing jobs. I did, and it solved the problem in less than a month.
Have a sleep study done. A sleep study often has a positive mental effect when the researchers inform you of how much sleep you are actually getting. Sometimes we are sleeping more than we think, we just wake up frequently, and it helps to know that our cumulative hours of sleep are enough to sustain us. Insomnia can be all in the mind, and in these instances, reassurance is enough. Conversely, if you REALLY are not sleeping, the sleep study will reveal this fact, and you will be able to move forward from there.
Google hypnic jerk. This is the violent jerk that wakes you up a few seconds into falling asleep. It can be caused by nerve irritation in the upper spine due to overuse of the arms and upper body. A notable example is my brother Theo who developed hypnic jerk from paddling while surfing. He suffered from very serious chronic insomnia, so much so that he had to come home from working in Singapore and China because he couldn't function in the day anymore.
Take naps when you need them. Many people are worried about turning their night and day around, which makes the problem worse, but the fact is that while you are in the dark forest of insomnia, you need to support your body and brain any way you can. Insomnia can not and does not last forever, and you need to find a permanent solution. But while you are in the midst of struggling with the very real health effects of sleep deprivation, you need to get sleep!! If that is in the day, then so be it, until you can figure this out.
Bonus: here are a few tips that I had no idea were a thing until I started googling this topic to help my brother.
• Lower your protein intake to reduce the amount of ammonia given off as a by-product, which can hang around in your body irritating your nerve cells and causing sleep disturbances. Eat only as much protein every day as the size of your palm. (About 200 grams.) This includes all your meat, fish, chicken and eggs for the day.
If you feel you need pharmaceuticals to be able to fall asleep, take the mildest one you can get away with, and take it about an hour before you want to fall asleep. Don't wait until you are well and truly pissed off at 2am before taking a sleeping pill. By the time you are deep into the fight or flight state, there is a good chance it won't work, and if it does, you will still be feeling the effects the next day, which will make the problem worse. Don't increase the dose too fast as your body will start to adjust.
Research something called "the second sleep." Apparently it was very normal until the invention of electric lights and cheap street lamps, for people to go to sleep soon after dark, and then wake up again around 11 or midnight. They would do cleaning, kneed bread dough and leave it to rise by the fireplace, pray and study spiritual texts, and so on. Then they would go back to sleep for a second stint at about 2am, until daylight. I had no idea this was actually a thing, but nowadays many of us see it as insomnia when it is in fact a very normal part of many people's lives. It might be that accepting the fact that you have a period of wakefulness every night, is what you need to feel more in control of your situation.
• Avoid dairy like poison. Apparently lactose and casein intolerance can cause brain inflammation, which obviously messes everything up. Try it for 12 days and see how you feel.
• Increase your green leafy vegetables as much as you possibly can. If you can’t stomach a huge salad every day then make a green juice or a green smoothy every day.
• Increase your nut and seed intake. One small handful of raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds every day, plus other raw, unsalted nuts like cashew, pecan, almond, walnut or macadamia. The minerals in nuts and seeds include zink, magnesium and many others that nourish the nervous system, which will eventually help you fall asleep easier. That said, a topical magnesium spray is sometimes necessary if you have a serious deficiency.
• Increase your omega 3 fatty acid intake. That means 1 table spoon of flax seed oil every day. If you don’t like the taste, buy the capsules, but then you will need to take about 6 capsules daily. Omega 3 is anti-inflammatory, reducing the irritation around your joints, muscles, nerve cells and organs, and it is one of the building blocks of myelin, the fat sheath that surrounds your neurons and prevents the electro-chemical impulses from going astray, such as would happen in a badly wired house. Has been shown in clinical trials to improve sleep in insomniacs.
• Take ornithine, arginine and glycine. These amino acids detoxify ammonia from your body and brain, reducing nerve cell irritation and improving sleep over a period of months.
• Get exercise that releases aggression, for example hitting a punching bag for 30 minutes at relatively high intensity. This has been shown to be far more effective than simple cardio or other kinds of exercise that don't release anger from your body. More likely than not, insomnia is caused by mental programming, or by emotions and frustration building up in our minds that we have no way of releasing. Taking it out on a punching bag can sometimes help a whole lot.
• Eat more fresh fruit, especially sweet fruits. Banana, peach, mango, pineapple, grapes etc. Increase your intake of berries (fresh/frozen/dried/juiced, however you can afford them.) Eat at least 6 dates every day. Dates are full of minerals that nourish your entire nervous system, and eating a food that contains minerals will help your body to assimilate them better.
• Take an alkalising powder daily, for example A Vogel’s mineral powder. Do not take this at the same time as high iron foods like chard, dates, tomatoes etc, it will prevent the uptake of iron.
• Take Rhodiola capsules daily. Rhodiola is an adaptogenic herb that has numerous different actions which all support the mind and body during stressful or unnatural circumstances. It doesn’t improve sleep directly, but it provides a cushion for your body and brain from challenging experiences. It has been called “The Coping Herb.” Often used to treat burnout and PTSD. Valerian root is a calmative and sleep inducing herb. And the most interesting one is hops! Hops harvesters often have to lie down on the job and sleep because working with hops is such a powerful sleep inducer. Make a small hops pillow and put it inside your pillow case.
• Avoid caffeine and alcohol COMPLETELY for not less than 12 days. Alcohol is a serious sleep inhibitor because of the vast effort it requires of the liver to be converted into harmless sugar, this process literally keeps the body awake. Under normal, non-toxic circumstances, the liver flushes it’s toxins into the gut at about 10pm when the body is in a horizontal position. If the body is not horizontal at that stage the flush is inhibited, and if alcohol has been consumed 4 hours previous or less, the flush is severely compromised while the liver tries to deal with the poisonous threat of a preservative in the body, namely methanol.
• Get weekly reflexology! Reflexology causes detoxification, re-aligns body energy, balances hormone secretions, improves digestion, drains cortisol from the brain allowing the adrenal glands to return to normal operation, balances neurotransmitter levels, and feels comforting and calming.
And finally: pray before you sleep. Feeling connected to God can calm your mind and help you sleep.
I hope these help somebody. Please put all your tips in the comments!
All the best for your sleep in the future.