Sleep – simply essential 

Troubled sleeping patterns deprive millions of people from much needed uninterrupted sleep. Most crippling has to be that nothing specifically is stopping them from sleeping. Maybe this is your experience – you have a comfy bed, no distractions, you’re the correct temperature, you don’t feel exceptionally stressed, but something just won’t let you rest. If you know you need help for insomnia, hypnotherapy could be the way for you to finally get some sleep.

So what is insomnia?  Insomnia is essentially failing to get adequate or any sleep when we have ample opportunity to do so. It’s where we haven’t had the chance to rest, leaving us tired and lacking energy.

Signs of insomnia can be: difficulty going to sleep, problems sleeping at all, waking up early in the morning, waking up throughout the night, problems getting back to sleep, disturbed or stressed sleep, finding daily functioning difficult because of tiredness, mood swings and low concentration in the day because of lack of sleep.

The reason people have sleeping problems is typically very simple. Major reasons for the condition are anxiety and worry.  You might be well aware of thoughts racing through your mind, with all the day’s problems spinning around, as you go to bed for the night.  What you might be less aware of is what can be going on in your unconscious mind, which is equally unsettling and a barrier to restful sleep.  If you’re exposed to stress and anxiety over long periods, it can have a profound effect.  A lot of people begin getting anxiety attacks part way through the night, with no knowledge of what they are experiencing – only that they’re suffering from disturbed sleep. In some cases, anxious feelings can hit you without you realising what’s causing them.  People often just absorb the stresses around them without understanding how that it affects them on an unconscious level.

How to overcome sleep problems

Because insomnia has root causes at both conscious and unconscious levels, you have to deal with it at both levels.  Although conscious mind calming techniques can help (such as talking to someone before bed or mindfulness exercises) they only address the conscious part of the mind. This means that problems may continue in spite of all your efforts, because you’re not taking care of what’s going on in your unconscious mind.

With hypnotherapy for lack of sleep, you can target the underlying causes that lie hidden in your unconscious.  Hypnosis helps you to replace anxiety and stress with deeply calming thoughts.  There are a number of powerful sleep-inducing techniques I teach my clients, which help to relax the conscious mind.  By including them in hypnosis, it also means that they go deep into the unconscious mind too. What’s more, because hypnosis is so relaxing in itself, you can begin to get your body and mind back to being accustomed to rest and calm.  Hypnotherapy gets both the conscious and unconscious mind focused on the same goal of restoring your natural ability to go to sleep and stay asleep, giving you all the rest you need.

Want to find out more about how hypnotherapy could help your sleep problems?  Please contact me to book a free 30-minute consultation on 0208 546 2122 or anne@transforming-health.co.uk

The post Can’t sleep? How hypnotherapy can help insomnia appeared first on Transforming Health.

According to a survey by the Medical Health Foundation, a third of us suffer from sleep deprivation and insomnia.  It’s estimated that the NHS spends £15 million on insomnia, although many people don’t do anything about their sleep problems – they just try to get on with their lives.

The link between insomnia and obesity & diabetes

The BBC1 programme highlighted why it’s so important to get help for sleep problems.  Research has revealed that 50% of people who sleep less than 5 hours a night are obese and that there’s a link between insomnia and diabetes.  Researchers put this down to the effect of insomnia on the hormones that control hunger and appetite.  If you’re not getting an average of 7 to 8 hours sleep most nights, you’re more likely to feel hungry and less likely to feel full when you eat.  You’re more likely to get sugar cravings and because your glucose levels are higher, you’re at higher risk of diabetes.  One person featured on the programme said he ate 10 custard creams for breakfast!

The research also pointed to the bad effect that insomnia can have on your gut bacteria.  The millions of good bacteria in your gut that help you absorb nutrients from food and protect you against infections, get upset when you don’t sleep well.  When you’re sleep deprived, the bacteria extract more energy from your food, leading to more weight gain.

What’s more, a lack of sleep puts stress on the body, leading to the release of the stress hormone cortisol.  If you’ve got cortisol running round your body all the time, it’s very bad news if you’re trying to lose weight.  Cortisol encourages the body to store fat.

So what can you do to help insomnia and sleep problems?

The programme highlighted several important things to help get better sleep, as well as the well-known advice of avoiding caffeine well before bedtime:

1. Switch off phones, laptops, the TV and other screens at least 1 hour before bed.  The light from screens interferes with your body clock.
2. Keep your bedroom cool – about 17°C.
3. Avoid alcohol.  It might help you get to sleep, but it interferes with your sleep later in the night.
4. Eat a dinner rich in fibre.  Michael Mosley, the programme presenter, tried out dietary fibre in a prebiotic and reckoned it improved his sleep.  He also recommended getting more dietary fibre from foods such as lentils, chick peas, lima & butter beans and hummus.

One participant in the programme tried eating 2 kiwi fruit 1 hour before bed and gave it 7/10 for improving his sleep.

Other recommendations for getting a good night’s sleep

The kiwi fruit was a new one on me.  Among the recommendations I give to my clients on how to get a better night’s sleep, here are a couple that have been shown to work really well:

1.  Relaxation exercises – help prepare your body for sleep with relaxation before bedtime.  Some simple breathing and muscle relaxation exercises and visualisations of peaceful scenes can be very effective.  I always give clients my relaxation CD/mp3s to listen to.
2. Mindfulness – mindfulness exercises are great for calming a busy mind in preparation for sleep. I have a mindfulness CD/mp3s that I make available for clients.

Top tip for when you can’t sleep

Finally, why not try this top technique to help your sleep problems?  When you want to go to sleep, get your brain into dreaming mode by thinking in the same way as you do when you dream.  Dreams are full of flashes of often bizarre pictures and experiences, for example, seeing people from different parts of your life somewhere that they would never normally be.  Let your imagination run riot like it does when you dream – blue penguins with pink wigs sailing down your street; old school friends and the cast of your favourite TV programme having a picnic on the beach in period costume; the best memories from different holidays all jumbled together in the place you grew up – whatever takes your fancy!

Hypnotherapy to help overcome insomnia and sleep problems

As well as all these great techniques and more, hypnosis can be really effective in helping you sleep better.  Hypnosis gets your mind  into sleep mode and is a quick and easy way of retraining your mind and body to get into better sleep patterns.

Contact me for a free 45-minute consultation on how to get better sleep – e-mail anne@transforming-health.co.uk or ‘phone 0208 546 2122.

The post The serious effect on health of sleep problems – new research appeared first on Transforming Health.