What happens when you simply cannot get a good night’s worth of sleep? Do you feel like you have tried everything, and it is still not working?
There is a solution out there, and it really is something that I think can work to help you get some rest.
Want to learn more, let’s discuss today what you might want to do when your insomnia keeps keeping you up at night.
It is just a fact: everyone definitely has the capacity to sleep. I have heard it right from my good friend Dr. Michael Breus, the Sleep Doctor (The Sleep Doctor). He has told me that no one has a broken “sleeper”.
This means that while everyone has the capability to, some have trouble getting good sleep.
What does it mean? It means that people struggle.
Insomnia is a huge problem on its own, even when it is not full-fledged insomnia. When you do not get enough sleep, you put yourself at risk for:
Key Insight: Sleep is essential, and it is not something that you can take for granted. If you feel like you are not getting enough, it might be time to try and get to the bottom of your problems and finding a solution.
Some have found success using sleep aids, like pills, in order to sleep at night. It gets to a point where you might not be sleeping great with the medicine, but it is even worse if you were to stop.
It is not really a solution at all, since it is pretty much lose-lose. Either you do not get good enough sleep, or you do not get it at all.
Bottom Line: If all it takes is some simple lifestyle changes, do it! Sleep is essential, and if you can make little changes in your life to improve your sleeping conditions you need to act on it. If it is a little bit more complicated than that, and it takes more than a few quick changes, there is also something that I am really excited to share with you.
When you go to sleep, there are two conditions at play. They are:
Think about it in terms of food. Throughout every day, there are certain times when you start to feel hungry. Whether it’s at 7 o’clock in the morning, at noon, or at around 6 o’clock at night.
This is a frequency where you feel hungry. Sleep rhythm is where your body becomes conditioned to seek out sleep at certain times, which for most of us is after the sun goes down.
On the other hand, the pressure we are experiencing is how ravenous we are for whatever it is that we are seeking. When it comes to food, it’s that intense feeling of hunger that we might have just before we normally eat. But we could also have it all day.
Sleep works the same way. You might not normally fall asleep at 10 in the morning, but you might feel tired. This is sleep pressure at work.
Key Insight: As we dive into the concept of wake therapy, I want you to hold onto these concepts and this information. What wake therapy does, in a nutshell, is where you build up that sleep pressure and use it – in a controlled way – where you get your proper sleep rhythm back.
The initial drawbacks of wake therapy, the ones we might need to consider before we even begin, is that it can put your body on a very strange schedule.
It is also a process where you have to skip sleep entirely for the first day, which is difficult. But, if you have the time and the ability, it can change your life. All you need is a long weekend!
I think back to a patient that I had once, who was operating on about three hours of sleep (on sleep medications).
If she missed her medications, she was only guaranteed an hour of sleep. This obviously was not working for her, and she was a wreck – and she knew it because it does not feel good to miss out on that much sleep. You can feel it, and you know how bad it can feel.
This patient, in particular, described her symptoms due to her lack of sleep:
When she first came in, it was because she was seeking out a natural sleep aid so that she did not have to rely on her sleeping medications any longer.
What I told her is what I will tell you today, and is something that you should really take to heart…
Key Insight: There really is no natural alternative that does what those medications are able to do. They just do not exist, because these pills – unfortunately – rely on causing your body harm in order to get you to sleep. If you did the same thing with something more natural, it would still cause harm. Ultimately, the question is not what the natural alternative to those pills is, but how do you get your body back to working better again?
We might be able to consider wake therapy1 as the big guns for those who have the very worst insomnia.
The process typically takes 4 – 8 days, and it can work in even the toughest of cases. This is how you do sleep repair the right way, without the pills.
Key Insight: For the first few days, you may be even more tired than normal. That is why it is important not to undergo this kind of therapy when you have a big presentation at work, or when you might be studying for a final exam. You need time, and you need to have an open schedule.
To start, it is helpful to estimate how many hours of sleep you are currently getting, even if broken up throughout the night in fits and starts.
For example, if you finally fall asleep at 12, wake up at 2, cannot get back to sleep until 3, and wake up for the day at 5, this would be 4 hours of sleep. For our purposes, we will use this number in our planning.
Next, you will want to decide on your ideal time to wake up in the morning. Consider everything, your:
Think of the best time to start your day, if sleep was not an issue. For the purposes of our discussion today, let’s use 6 AM as our ideal time.
The general plan is to restrict sleep to the number of hours you are currently getting, ending at your wake up time.
What you will want to do is avoid sleeping at any other times of the day. Gradually, the scheduled sleep times become expanded.
This results in your rhythms resetting because your body gets so tired the first few nights that you cannot help but fall asleep. Once you have gone about resetting your rhythms, good sleep is automatic.
Key Insight: Resetting your rhythms relies on increasing your body’s sleep pressure until you are ravenous for sleep. Your appetite for sleep grows and grows, and then you get to a point where you cannot help but reset your sleep.
The night before all of this begins, you cannot have any sleep. The idea is to steadily increase your sleep pressure, so depriving yourself of sleep (and staying up in whatever way possible) is going to be key.
Let’s say that you get 4 and a half hours of sleep on your own and that you would like to wake up at 6 AM. On the first day, you would stay awake until 4 ½ hours before 6 AM (the first night) – this would be 1:30 AM.
At 6 AM you would wake up, potentially using multiple alarm clocks. Immediately after waking, let your body know that this is the morning (otherwise known as your ideal time).
You can easily do this by being outside in bright lights, moving in some way and being around people. This is easy enough, like going to your local coffee shop and ordering from the barista.
During that entire first day, you want to do whatever possible to avoid napping. The next evening, you add 15 minutes to your sleep time without changing your ideal time for waking up.
That would mean going to bed at 1:15 AM and then waking up at 6 AM. Again, wake up, be active and stay awake all day until bedtime.
Each night, go to bed 15 minutes earlier. Continue this process until you are completely satisfied with your sleep. The vast majority of those with longstanding insomnia can get healthy sleep again by following this process.
Wake therapy is so powerful, many also use it to come off from sleep aids. In this case, though, you will want support and assistance from your doctor before doing this.
Bottom Line: Wake therapy works, and it works on a strict set of guidelines that rely on proper timing, brightness, and ensuring that you do not give yourself any leeway – no naps! If you really want to see results, then wake therapy might be your ticket to escaping the perils of insomnia for good.
Wake therapy is a tested and proven process. The only times that I have not seen it work is when people did not follow the guidelines.
It can be incredibly difficult to stick with, but it is so important if you want to get back to getting better sleep.
It might sound tough, but resetting your sleep rhythm can be life-changing.
In fact, for those times where you’ve thought “I’ve tried everything and still can’t sleep” I hope this information has helped you.
If you do it once, you do not have to do it again, doesn’t that sound worth it? You get to fall asleep when you want, you get to wake up when it works for you and your life. After all, what’s better than a good night’s sleep?
Life is good with better sleep, but it is better with more and more information to help benefit your life. Take the Thyroid Quiz (Click Here) today, while you are at it, and learn more and more about what is going on in your body.
1 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10637957
P.S. Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you now:
1. Schedule a Thyroid Second Opinion with me, Dr. C, Click Here for Details
2. Need a Personalized Supplement? Check out My Thyroid Specific Formulations
3. Download and use my Favorite Recipes Cookbook Here
4. Check out my podcast Medical Myths, Legends, and Fairytales Here
Dr. Alan Glen Christianson (Dr. C) is a Naturopathic Endocrinologist and the author of The NY Times bestselling Adrenal Reset Diet, The Metabolism Reset Diet and The Thyroid Reset Diet.
Dr. C’s gift for figuring out what really works has helped hundreds of thousands of people reverse thyroid disease, lose weight, diabetes, and regain energy. Learn more about the surprising story that started his quest.
Dr. Alan Christianson
Alan Christianson is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor (NMD) who is a board-certified Naturopathic Endocrinologist with a focus on thyroid disorders. He is the author of The Metabolism Reset Diet and the New York Times bestselling book The Adrenal Reset Diet.
He founded Integrative Health, a physician group dedicated to helping people with thyroid disease and weight-loss resistance regain their health.
He has been named a Top Doctor in Phoenix magazine and has appeared on national TV shows and in numerous print media.
Dr. Christianson resides in the woods by a lake in Northern Minnesota with his wife Kirin.
