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Could you get a great night’s rest without sleeping pills?

DOES IT FEEL LIKE you’re constantly tired – even when you’ve only just been to bed?

Do you lie awake at night, trying desperately to drop off, until the sun comes up. And even when you do finally get to sleep, you wake up for seemingly no reason? Maybe you started having the odd restless night, but the more you worried about it the less you sleep? You could even have found your health suffering, as lack of sleep lowers your immune system, making you more prone to infection – it can even lead to depression.

You are not alone – lack of sleep (or insomnia) causes misery for 1 in 3 people in the UK.

Sleeping pills can make it worse

Many people turn to sleeping pills for help, but these are often addictive and long term use actually inhibits natural sleep. Because sleeping pills just treat the symptoms, not the causes of insomnia, as soon as you stop taking them the problems return (and are often worse). Even more worrying, many sleeping pills are highly addictive, so the craving for them also keeps you awake. Not an ideal solution by any means! So what are the alternatives?

Understanding the sleep cycle

In order to understand the causes of insomnia, we need to have a look at how the sleep cycle works. A normal night's sleep has three main parts:

Quiet sleep. This is divided into stages 1-4. Each stage becomes progressively more deep. Quiet sleep is sometimes called deep sleep.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

REM sleep is when the brain is very active, but your body is limp, apart from your eyes which move rapidly. Most of your dreams occur during REM sleep.

Short periods of waking.

Each night, about 4-5 periods of quiet sleep alternate with 4-5 periods of REM sleep. In addition, several short periods of waking for 1-2 minutes occur about every two hours or so, but these are more frequent towards the end of your night's sleep. The graph above shows a typical normal pattern of sleep in a young adult. Normally, you do not remember the times that you wake if they last for less than two minutes. If you are distracted during the wakeful times (for example, a partner snoring, traffic noise, etc) then the wakeful times will tend to last longer, and you are more likely to remember them.

Controlling your sleep/wake cycle

The amino acid L-tryptophan (found naturally in meats, cheeses and some vegetables) is converted during digestion into 5-HTP and used in the manufacture of a neuro-transmitter called serotonin. Serotonin, in turn, is transformed into a sleep hormone called melatonin by the pineal gland in the brain. Low levels of melatonin have been shown to lead to disrupted sleep and insomnia. By controlling your production of melatonin with a natural supplement like Insomnadrene®, you can help to balance your sleep/wake cycle, so you drop off naturally and wake up refreshed.