Natural Cure for InsomniaDr. David W. Sparks
While most insomnia cures give you false ‘quick fix’ Dr David. Sparks philosophy is focused on natural cures for insomnia through small changes in our daily habits. You know the old Groucho Marx joke; "I slept like a baby last night …I woke up every two hours and cried." Newborns do need their sleep. They sleep practically 24-hours, waking up only to feed and get their diapers changed. That’s because their internal clocks, called circadian rhythms, take time to adjust to the outside world. Eventually, they sleep less during the day and more at night, as their bodies become accustomed to sunlight versus darkness. We all function on a 24-hour clock that is no invention of mankind. Sleep is a basic necessity of life. Without it, we’re irritable, angry, stressed out, burned out, accident-prone... and like that baby we so wish to emulate, tired, sad and in desperate need of a nap! At least one out of three American adults don’t get the rest they need to function at their very best. Further, more than 100-million Americans don't sleep right and carry around a sleep debt of as much as 30-to-40 hours! That's sleep that must be made-up, or paid-up. Our lives literally depend on it. In fact, in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, sleep disorders were described as the second greatest threat to health in the United States…second only to smoking as a national health problem! New research is coming out every day proving that the WAY in which we sleep -- the QUALITY as well as the QUANTITY of sleep has a profound influence on how our bodies function. Believe it or not, the way we sleep affects our weight. The vast majority of the body's hormones are produced when we sleep. So…poor sleep means poor hormone production, and an imbalance of hormones due to a lack of sleep can control our moods. Depression, anxiety and stress are all tied to the amount of quality sleep we get. Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity in kids and adults may be tied to the way they sleep. If the bedroom has become a lover's leap due to no activity…it may be that the one you're sleeping with isn't sleeping right. Or maybe it's you. Americans put a very low priority on sleep. Many think it's a waste of time. For example…A good employee or student burns the midnight oil. You rarely hear someone announcing proudly how he/she gets to bed early every night. We're on the Internet or watching TV till all hours. We stay out late. Then rely on caffeine to keep us awake the next day. If any of this thinking describes you, then abandon that thinking now! Proper amounts of sleep are as necessary as eating, drinking, or breathing. And here’s why: When we fall asleep, there's a dramatic change in brain wave activity. When we're awake, brainwaves are very rapid and filled with the activities that are going on in our daily lives. But when we fall asleep, brainwaves slow down and change in a very ordered fashion. As we move to deeper and deeper sleep stages, our brainwaves slow way down. As we cycle through these various stages of sleep, which we do over and over throughout the night, our bodies and brains repair themselves and rejuvenate. The body, for example, is repairing muscle tissue, re-energizing the immune system. It's producing hormones like testosterone, estrogen, insulin, cortisol, human growth hormone and so many others..
The mind has to rejuvenate as well. When we sleep, there are periods when the eyeballs bounce around frantically under the eyelids and this is what's referred to as REM sleep. REM means rapid eye movement. Dreaming seems to occur during REM, and dreaming appears to have a rejuvenating effect on the mind. During REM, we appear to be processing information. Learning is taking place. It seems that information stored in short-term memory, gets transferred to long-term memory. It also appears to be a time when we resolve chaos and conflicts that occur in our lives. If you get into a fight with someone, if you're terribly worried about how you're going to perform on an exam, a job assignment, an athletic event…chances are you'll dream about that event tonight. And what does the dreaming do? It helps you deal with what you're worried about. When you wake up tomorrow morning, you won't be as troubled, anguished and exasperated as you were last night. So dreaming can soothe and refresh the mind. That's why we literally GO CRAZY if we don't get enough sleep. Our bodies and our minds need that time to reorganize and reset. A lot of this you may already know, there is no intention to send you back to the classroom, but the point needs to be made about how important sleep is. Sleep is to refresh, repair, re-charge, re-vitalize, re-new. We sleep so that we can give our minds and bodies a chance to heal and get ready for the next day. And don't let anybody tell you that you can get by successfully without a full night's sleep. Just about everyone, with very few exceptions, needs to get around seven to eight--even nine hours every night to function at their best. The problem is, while many people know intuitively why they can't sleep well, they lack the motivation to do anything about it. Some people have real medical problems that keep them from restful sleep and that need the attention of a doctor…however, sleep experts agree that in a majority of cases, 85-percent by some measures, we can heal ourselves by making simple lifestyle changes at home. The major complaint from people suffering from insomnia is that they suffer from mind chatter when they're trying to fall asleep or when they wake up in the middle of the night. The contents of this web site have an eye toward teaching you to control mind chatter…to lead you through easy exercises that will enable you to turn your racing mind off when you want to. This entire website is geared towards natural cures for insomnia. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose, except for perhaps that nasty temper, or that never-ending need for a nap...at noon. Or that tire around your belly. In a few weeks we will be opening up a premium section in our web site entitled Actions Steps for Better Sleep and A Healthier Life. These steps incorporate some simple behavioral modification techniques to help solve your problems with insomnia along with some positive steps that you can take toward improving your wellness. We have some wonderful suggestions for diet and exercise. Think of this program as an "easy boot camp where you learn to go to war against insomnia". By the way, you can get this program for free with your purchase of one of my audiobooks entitled "Better Sleep in 7 Days". Make sure you sign up in the Action Steps section and I will send you a sample of both the first day of Actions Steps for Better Sleep and A Healthier Life and Day 1 of The Better Sleep in 7 Days audiobook. We value your privacy and will not pass along your email address to anyone.
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