If you are experiencing insomnia, there are a few things you can do to help. Unfortunately, some of these treatments may require measures that are difficult for us to take. For example, regular exercise is one of the best strategies to help you get a good night's sleep. Most of us know it is, but very few of us are motivated to take action. What makes exercise so challenging?
If it's the first line of defense against insomnia, why can't we?
No matter how difficult the task, we must try. Any exercise can seem significantly more challenging if we are already tired from a lack of quality sleep at night. Although it often leads to a vicious circle in our lives, putting aside any short-term suffering can usually significantly improve the way you feel. This is true because even brief activity stimulates your body to produce sleep-promoting hormones. Additionally, it will help restore some of the balance in your body that has been lost as a result of your lack of sleep.
It doesn't have to be extremely demanding to be effective.
In fact, even a short amount of exercise done several times throughout the day can have a noticeable effect on how you feel and how well you sleep. If doing too much activity at once feels overwhelming, try doing a moderate amount of exercise each time you eat. This is where even a 5-minute walk after a meal can have a great effect.
Not only does exercise release some important sleep-inducing chemicals into your body, but it also helps you feel an overall sense of well-being. All of these things can significantly improve your ability to fall asleep at night and stay asleep until you wake up feeling rested. Why not try gentle exercise for a few weeks? You will be amazed at what kind of difference it can make in your life.
Sleep-Inducing Hormones and How to Make Them
It doesn't matter what kind of a problem you are having, it is always a better idea if you can find a natural cure than trying to find one that is produced by a pharmaceutical pill. The reason why this is the case is that medical cures tend to attack the symptoms of the problem rather than attacking the problem itself. A good example of this is if you are suffering from insomnia. If you take a sleeping pill that is given to you by the doctor, all that it is really going to do is put you into an unconscious state. It will not get to the root of the problem that is causing insomnia, a problem that often has to do with the hormones in the body.
Our bodies are amazingly balanced and whenever we are firstborn, we rarely experience problems with insomnia because the balance in our body allows us to sleep well when we need it. As we get older, however, the environment around us creates problems that we are dealing with that tend to throw our bodies out of balance making it difficult for us to sleep. Some of the things that tend to get out of balance during these years are the hormones within our bodies. Here are two hormones that tend to cause us to lose some sleep.
The first of these is serotonin. Although this hormone does not necessarily help you to sleep it does have a lot to do with the mood that you are feeling. Serotonin is a hormone that is usually released whenever we exercise or do something good for our body. It helps us to feel good on the inside and does a lot to relieve the stress within us. If our insomnia is stress related, the hormone serotonin can go a long way in helping us to get a good night's sleep.
The other hormone that we may be lacking is melatonin. This is a hormone that is put out by our body that does many different things but for one, it helps to put us to sleep. Many people take natural forms of melatonin in order to overcome problems such as jetlag and insomnia. If you find that you are suffering from occasional sleeplessness, a little bit of melatonin in the form of a pill may go a long way in helping you to get the sleep that you need.
If you are having a difficult time falling asleep, the last thing that you want to do is to reach for a pharmaceutical cure. Although some of these pills will help you to fall asleep, they really are only inducing a fake sleep that will not necessarily help to cure the problem. They may make you unconscious but what you are really getting can hardly be called sleep by any stretch of the imagination. If you would like to cure your insomnia from the root of the problem, here are three natural cures that you can use which tend to help.
The first cure is blocking any extra sound or light that is coming into the room in which you are sleeping. These are the two problems that cause a lack of sleep in many individuals. Things such as outside noise in the home, a TV that is playing in our bedroom or even somebody that is snoring can make a big difference in how you're going to sleep. Light also tends to keep us awake and if there is light in our bedroom, we are never going to be able to achieve that deep level of sleep that we need in order to feel rested and rejuvenated.
The second thing that you can do is to prepare your mind and body for a good night's sleep.
Try to avoid any type of heavy eating or stimulant drinks, such as caffeine within several hours of going to sleep. You should also avoid watching any television shows or movies that will stimulate your thinking to a level that may keep you up at night. About an hour before it is time to go to sleep, take the time to relax your mind with some soft music and perhaps some poetry. Take a relaxing bath and practice deep breathing. You would probably be surprised by how much this will help you sleep at night.
Finally, you may try some good old fashion warm milk if you are having a difficult time sleeping. Warm milk has tryptophan which can help the body to produce serotonin naturally. This particular hormone helps you to feel good and may help to alleviate any stress that is keeping you up at night. Not only that, it may also help in producing the hormone melatonin naturally which is one of the body's strongest ways of putting us to sleep.