This short article will present a few facts and then some suggestions that have proven to be helpful to others. There can be medical reasons for insomnia, so if your problem persists or bothers you, it may be important to contact your physician.
Here are some facts about sleeping:
- 100 million Americans have occasional sleep problems
- About 30 million have chronic insomnia
- Over 40 million prescriptions for sleep medications are written per year
- Half of the population has tried tranquilizers/sleeping pills
- 20% use tranquilizers/sleeping pills frequently
- Insomnia occurs at all ages, and problems increase with age
- Between midnight and 3 a.m., 20 million Americans are watching TV, most with insomnia
If you have a problem, you are not alone: there are a lot of people with sleep problems.
What can you do about it if you have a sleep problem? First, you can work on having a better sleep environment:
- Make sure you have a comfortable bed
- Wear comfortable night clothes
- Control the temperature: warm/cold-make it just right
- Control the lighting: light/dark (get room darkening shades, for example)
- Control the noise: noisy/quiet (partner snoring or other noise-get earplugs if you can)
- Don't have a big clock staring at you
- Don't let pets ruin your sleep
- Control allergies and air conditioning (filtering)
- Control the humidity
- Make your sleep room safe
Sometimes changing one of these can make the difference. Can you change at least a few?
And you would do better at handling sleep problems if you used the group of ideas or techniques developed by Bootzin over 25 years ago:
- Go to bed only when you are sleepy
- Use the bed ONLY for sleeping
- If you can't sleep, get out of bed; stay up until sleepy
- Repeat the above step as often as necessary through the night
- Set the alarm and get up at the same time every morning, regardless of how long you slept
- Do not nap
Pretty simple steps and only six of them. Yet, if you are not sleeping well, you are probably not doing one or more of them.
If you need further information about sleep problems, contact Dr. Kraft at (402) 330-0800.
