Can’t sleep… but can’t figure out why not?

Let me tell you how I used to sleep. Like a baby. Like an angel. Like the dead. Like all of the similes that describe really really good sleep. I used the lay my head on the pillow and be asleep before my current thought ended. And I would sleep for hours. In a row. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning – pee, have a bite to eat, and then go back to sleep. I couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t that I was tired all the time, just that I had a seemingly unending ability to sleep.

And then…

And then I started naturopathic college. The workload was incredible. The stress was unimaginable. My adrenals (the tiny glands that produce all of your stress hormones) were seriously working overtime. My cortisol (one of the stress hormones) was being pumped out like mad, and for the first time ever I would lay in bed, bone tired with my mind racing and not sleeping. For days at a time. This is what we call “wired and tired.” It took a supervisor intervening and putting me on a protocol of calming herbs and melatonin to get me sleeping regularly. And then years and years of adrenal support.

And then…

And then I had kids. My kids are all sorts of awesome. They eat almost everything. They will take any supplement under the sun. They are funny and smart and great dancers. But my kids are terrible sleepers. They get up early. Mind numbingly, soul suckingly early. And one of them falls asleep really late. They also need someone to lay down with them, which means that 3-4 nights per week I’m asleep by 8:30 p.m. And on those nights, there is also a very good chance that I will be up at 1 a.m. And just as I fall back asleep, hours later, I hear “Mama, can you make me breakfast?”

And then…

And then I turned 42. As we age, our hormones do all sorts of shifting. Progesterone starts to decline and we can wind up with a relative excess of estrogen (it didn’t go up, but there isn’t enough progesterone to balance it out). And guess what one of the symptoms of estrogen dominance and progesterone deficiency is – you got it, insomnia. There were always a few days each month that my sleep would suck for no other reason. Some hormone balancing herbs have helped immensely with this (and some of the other lovely hormone shifting symptoms).

And then…

I decided to start using an e-reader before bed, which broke, and so now I read on my phone. For a long time I was in denial about what the screen light was doing to me – “I keep the screen as dim as it will go”, “I use the night time colour setting”… But then I discovered the Twilight app (http://twilight.urbandroid.org/) which blocks the blue light that can affect your body’s ability to produce melatonin (hormone responsible for your natural sleep cycle). As the sun goes down my screen develops an amber hue. Weird, but you get used to it. It has, however, cut down my night time reading by 30-40 minutes because I get sleepy so much quicker now.

So, there you have it – one person, four different reasons for lousy sleep, and each of them needed a different and and natural intervention to resolve. And these aren’t certainly all of the causes of insomnia. Thyroid trouble, digestive discomfort, anxiety, adverse reactions to medication and food sensitivities can all disturb sleep as well.

As for my early risers – I’m working on them.