Jeez Louise! It's NIGHTLY now!
No one who hasn't gone through chronic insomnia can believe the horror of the thing. If you haven't tossed all night without a wink and faced this torture nightly, then you cannot believe the terror that brings kings to their knees. If you haven't dragged yourself around blearily the day after, you can NOT imagine the grogginess and emotional suffering that goes with it.
The usual insomniac is a person who is an habitual night owl, has a body in tension, every muscle is made of cement, can't relax thus can't sleep easily, is mentally agitated, typing, writing, fussing, then gets so exhausted she goes to sleep, wakes in a while, does some more typing, fussing, sleeps again, wakes up hungry, needs food, (which should be right by bed, so one needn't rouse oneself,) but he must go in kitchen, cook and eat, then sleeps fitfully. WORSE, when the HIGH energy of dawn hits us, which the Sikhs call the AMBROSIA hours, our insomniac totally cannot sleep. The sun is up, so she's only truly had 4 hrs sleep. SHE will age, her organs will age. Her immune system will leave her open to all the genetic diseases in her family tree. And she'll go crazy!
If you have this restless condition, you GOTTA get into power over it. LESS THAN 8 hrs a night fatigue AGES, depresses and leaves the door open for mental problems including schizophrenia, paranoia, and jerky nervous system overreacting to everything with weeping and temper so that all the people around her think' damn, she's odd,' all of which can be caused by a lack of sleep! Most of us just have poor FOCUS from those four hour nights, but isn't that enough?
Follow these easy rules and you will find it's very easy to get insomnia out of the picture. There are two causes of insomnia: fast heart beat, (quit caffeine) & low blood sugar (quit refined carbs, sugar, alcohol, starches, baked goods). This combo will HEAL the pre-diabetic pancreas and dried up, shriveled adrenals that demand coffee all day and are messing with your ability to sleep.)
At some point in his/her life, the famous light sleeper who drinks coffee and sez they can do it with impunity, will have coffee turn on him. When it does, that single, morning 'Cup of Java' gives a 24 hour inability to sleep especially if it's a high voltage African coffee. That can get you for two days of wakefulness.
Quitting coffee is a headache. Literally. If you plan to switch to decaf, take pain killers every AM for the first few days while you half the daily dose. A full cup becomes a half, then the half becomes a quarter. As your bowels will tighten up with out that morning blast…… for that first week, take herbal laxatives every night (a spinach salad will do) and eat very lightly that week, no sticky white flour foods, less meat, lots of raw vegie juices or fruit taken between meals. This regimen will make it easy to quit caffeine. Although I am verging on malarkey when I say that. As Mark Twain said 'it's easy to give up (coffee) I've done it thousands of times.' (He was talking about tobacco, but it applies.)
After you quit, Drink Colombian (most flavorful) De-Caf in the a.m., your daily dose ground fresh from whole beans in your blender, as it tastes the way coffee should, (especially GEVALIA, avail. only through mail order and best is Colombian light roast). Decaf satisfies that habitual need or try Mate Tea from Argentina, a ‘soft’ caffeine, or try "Constant Comment" tea in the AM or Yogi Bhajan’s famed YOGI TEA. (Mix cinnamon sticks, cloves, black pepper corms, raw, sliced ginger, crushed cardamom pods, all of it dumped into a few quarts of pure water, softly simmered 20 minutes, then add some dry, whole black tea leaves, good bovine hormone free milk, honey to taste and simmer another 5 min. You will not believe how fine this fabulous brew is! True, yogi tea has some caffeine but not a dealbreaker amount as the milk buffers it. You can drink it all day, drink a little in the afternoon and night, switch to NON caffeine teas or a thimbleful of de-caf coffee after dinner as even de-caf has enough jarring nerves in it for a true insomniac.
At bedtime, make a SERIOUS, holistic sleeping potion of all the herbs that knock people out and take them after you suck down (literally as you suck them for five minutes) a couple of melatonin pills, the sublingual kind.
NEPENTHE TEA - This is pure ‘soma’. (Soma was a mythological producer of dreams.) 2 cups of Britta water (I make my own. A DYNAMIC invention, the Brita pitcher)… brought ALMOST to a simmer, about 155 degrees, between a bath and a boil…. Turn off fire, throw in a fist of herbs, passionflower leaves, (available throughout Southern Calif in most gardens), catnip, hops, valerian, skullcap, vervain, bought from holistic herb supplier. And chamomile, from any super market. Any healthfood store has bottles of herbal Sleep mixtures but they're more costly than buying herbs in bulk. Open capsules drop contents into the pot of ALMOST boiling water. And turn it off. You do not want a boil. A STEEP is what you're looking for. Squash a single, dried red poppy bollix if you want to dream in Chinese. (Get oriental poppy seed at flower stores, grow your own, save the dried boluxes. (What’s there after petals drop. LET IT MATURE.) You will see pagodas and emerald lyre birds in your dreams. But I notice a strong emotional depression, hitting the afternoon of the day after I use a poppy bollix in my nighttime tea. I pass that fact on for you to research personally.
DIETARY NOTE- Certain foods invite sleep: Poultry, Turkey especially and iceberg lettuce. You can stew the lettuce into a mug of onion soup and have it at bedtime. This kind of lettuce is full of sleep producing narcotic alkaloids. You won't believe it until you see it. I boiled some with the cat's meat, like a half head, tore it apart into little pieces with the meat; They ate ravenously and konked out for hours, dead to the world.
HERB NOTE: FOR cheaper herbs, like hops, skullcap, valerian, try MAIL ORDER. All Healthfood Magazines in the stores have ads on back pages with bulk herb suppliers. Anyway, let the tea sit covered to STEEP for 5 minutes. Drink a cup while you watch tv or read. It will make the strong desire for sleep COME UPON YOU like a thick cloud, a stuporous cloud, a strong desire for the pillow. The other cup you leave by bed for any accidental wake ups. Slop some down, and back to sleep you go.
SUPPLEMENTS - CALM (magnesium,) deepens sleep, is closest thing to a poppy bolux I ever tried. Deep muscular relaxation. Avail any healthfood store, little envelopes you take at bedtime. I use half of one, rinse mouth as they add Vit C. The combination that makes us sleep deeper is calcium and magnesium. Get a supplement of one or both together and give it a shot. You will be impressed.
ACCESSORIES! Try Earplugs and a cotton bandana folded into an eye shade. Use bee's wax earplugs that when warmed by body, can be rolled, formed into something the exact shape as ear canal. Every pharmacy has them for sale. They are the costly ones. Avoid cheap ones. FLENTS used to be a good brand. SLEEP WELL is also. Keep them wrapped in tissue under your pillow by day. The plugs prevent house sounds, neighbors' dogs, trash trucks from jarring your brain awake. For the eyes, a soft cotton bandana or silk scarf, folded into an on-the-bias as a blindfold works well. The shade prevents the morning light from waking you before you've had your full nine. Trashcan pick up day you will be REALLY glad you had them!
DUTCH HUSBAND METHOD- Have a long fat pillow sleeping at your left side, (the Dutch Husband) and a regular down pillow under head. Sleep on your right side, somewhat face down ---but more like the right side down, left side leaning over the long or standard sized pillow, left knee on the long pillow, which is like a body beside you, as this posture will open the left nostril, necessary for relaxing. If you sleep on other side, you open right nostril and that exhilarates the body. (In Yoga right nostril breathing is used to ‘yang’ you up, make you dynamic. No good for sleeping! Prop body up with pillow. Deep nose breathe being 1-pointed on breath. Do mantra mentally, in time to heartbeat: om mani padme hum. You'll be mindless fast, then the visions of dreaming take over. Do this to re-enter sleep every time you wake. A diehard insomniac may have to take a square of cheese to bed with him, in a piece of foil or plastic. Not napkin as cheese is sticky. Every time you wake, take a bite. Chew, swallow. Then, rinse your mouth with a glass of clean water by bedstand.
LAST ADVICE: Never leave a live phone in the hall or bedroom or even the room next door! Unplug wires! Get in the habit of unplugging every single night.
You will sleep like nobody's business and you'll
find that your body really feels best after 9 hours of sleep. This 8 hour
rumor is Protestant Work Ethic. You'll end up looking like a Grant
Wood painting if you only sleep 8. When you get GOOD at this,
you're going to be catching those nine HOUR SLEEP FESTS regularly!
3 hrs is enough
for us! We got hay to mow.
Right Edna?
EDNA?
Is that woman dozin'
again?
OTHER SLEEP SUPPLEMENTS: Try the amino acid ornithine*, a single amino acid, isolated. Try Vitamin C, Calcium citrate, magnesium ascorbate, a little of that new buffered 81 Milligram REGIMEN aspirin by Bayer, if your stomach isn't sensitive to the acidity of it, and niacinamide if you have a good liver, have had no hepatitis. And lately, MELATONIN is everywhere. Take two small pills of sublingual melatonin about an hour before bedtime. They don’t kick in FAST. But they do deepen the slumber. To sleep deeper, longer, take a cal/mag at bedtime. It's amazing how it sinks you into deep POPPY-like sleep. CAL-MAG supplements give good bones and calm nerves so sleep is easy. Time to start taking this wonder mineral supplement.
THE HOT BATH IS REALLY COOL! New research shows that a naturally-occurring drop in body temperature late in the evening triggers sleepiness. In older people, particularly, this drop in body temperature might have become attenuated, so that the trigger is not activated. To activate the trigger, researchers recommend raising body temperature with a hot bath and then letting body temperature fall naturally afterwards. Try taking a hot soak before bedtime and then, put on your PJ's and robe and let your body cool off naturally. If this technique works for you, you will notice a difference the first night!
READING TIRES THE EYES - Bedtime reading habits knocks you out faster than TV as it strains the eyes a bit, and that creates the feeling of fatigue. Now, what you read affects the psyche. Reading COLIN WILSON on psychic powers or the life of Carl Jung predisposes toward visions as you drift off. Reading mysteries which are gripping makes you read past the point of fatigue to the point where you have to put the book down as your eyes are crossing.
FOR THE BASIC NERVE CONDITION- Black cohosh, cayenne, misteletoe, lady’s slipper root, skullcap, hops, wood betony, ginger, St. Johnswort, ginger root, passionflower, white peony, Valerian, Yucca, taken 2 hrs before bedtime, either as tea or in capsules with a B-Complex capsule. Sub lingual melatonin taken an hour before bedtime. Standardized "Kava" herb extract in capsules is also effective. Kava reduces the adrenaline hormone that keeps you "hyper." There are many including the "Kava-30" capsules, Enzymatic Therapy brand. At http://www.enzy.com these people have a website. They also make the best B-12 on the market, the only real B-12 out there. To save some money, find whole kava powder in bulk via 'back of health magazine' small ad, for mail order. Dose: 1 or 1-1/2 teaspoons, shake in small bottle with water, then gulp it down. Buy 2 ounces at first, to see if you like the taste (not too bad), and if it does the job. Some powders are weaker than others—but kava capsules are standardized.
GETTING MIND OFF THOUGHTS- If there is a habit of mental stress, do mantra of any sort. Your auntie's phone number. "God and I are one." Oriental Sanskrit syllables. These things don't create peripheral stress like thinking of your boyfriend problems does.
GET OFF STIMMIES- If you aren’t sleeping you have to find the hidden stimulants in your diet. Chocolate has theobromine, so should only be eaten in first few hours of the day. SUGAR gets you up so only eat it early in day. Wine has a low blood sugar kick a few hrs after you drink it. All alcohol does. Caffeine is found in many soda pops, and certainly in tea, is an alkaloid, (part of nature’s arsenal of poisons) causes kidney and adrenal fatigue, irreversible heart disease later requiring pacemakers; birth defects, kidney stones, hypertension, strokes, bladder cancer, higher cholesterol & triglyceride blood levels; for women, fibroid breast tumors. It accelerates hypoglycemia into diabetes, causes ulcers, loss of stomach acid, causing kidneys to fail, insomnia, nervous system damage, hardening of the arteries in the brain, low brain circulation and might be implicated in Alzheimer’s. More than 4 cups daily boosts men’s heart disease rate 30%, women’s 60%. Coffee is somewhat diuretic, but any genuine oriental tea is worse. Those bathroom visits arecausing excretion of the body’s minerals and vitamins which ages us prematurely. As your minerals are your calcium, magnesium, trace minerals and BONES your SKELETON is dissolving and departing through your BLADDER. When examining why you crave stimulants look to stressed out, fatigued ADRENALS. You're dragging your butt all day, so you're using Pepsi and Coke. And then you can't sleep.
To get your ADRENALS back to health. Quit sugar and caffeine. Use de-glycyrrhizined licorice, (avail at HFS, and NOT a candy like you think., but an herbal root) siberian ginseng (eleuthro); jamaican sarsaparilla, Prickley Ash bark, safflower flowers, dandelion root, horseradish, hawthorn, freeze-dried adrenals (except that MAD COW is in our animal population so organic sources required. ) Lysine will have a healing effect on adrenals. Last, you can try UNISOM, ORIGINAL FORMULA, not GEL, the best of the over-the-counter sleeping pills. One 1/2 hr before you want to sleep, near bedtime. Watch only peaceful t.v. shows in that last 1/2 hr before it hits.
SAFE STIMULANTS- TO STIMULATE yourself during day so you are ambitious, dynamic and can do focused mental work, take ginko, KELP, (bladderwrack) gotukola, saw palmetto new brain products called 4-Thought, Brain Power or Perfect Energy or names similar to that. The Healthfood store is full of different formulas. TAKEN WITH BREAKFAST ONLY, they will jack you up all day, but still let you go to sleep at night, whereas coffee won’t always let you relax at night. Its effect is very lingering. Even though Herbs may get you MENTAL at night, and super stimulated, a 20 min hot bath, massage and few cups of your downer tea will knock you silly, let you sleep.
SAFE AND SOPORIFIC NIBBLES - Last secret to STAYING asleep, you people who wake after 4 hours: Keep a piece of cheese wrapped in saran wrap under the other pillow. (If there’s no one sleeping on it.) Every time you wake, take a bite, chew well, then rinse your mouth with the sleepytime tea mix, rinse several times, drink some more tea just to go down again. The high calcium of this snack is a knock-out pill. Hypoglycemics sleep badly and never know that because you can’t FEEL low blood sugar as HUNGER it still can be a deal breaker as far as sleep goes. Sometimes you can just drink herbal tea or a mug of stewed iceberg lettuce in French onion soup and have the hunger pass, but not always. If someone would cook a steak near your bed, YOU’D HAVE ACID flow AND then you'd KNOW that you were hungry But if they don’t, you won’t know why you're awake. It’s subliminal, low-threshold hunger or LOW BLOOD SUGAR which will give you insomnia. SO NIBBLE AT NITE! Or put an half cup of dark beer by the bed and drink a few sips every time you wake. The blacker the beer the better. And don’t worry about the weight that a little nibble of pure protein puts on you. Worry about your LIFE going down the drain for a lack of sleep! THAT can be serious! But do worry about tooth decay. You must rinse wi water after each slug of beer. Then hit the pillow again.
PITSTOPS- With beer/ water, you're going to need to urinate. Hit the chamber pot or bathroom, without waking up very much.
MELATONIN - Leaves me dazed the next day. So I don't like it. All commercial tablets are way too big. Correct dose is .01 mg, mini doses. Tablets in marketplace are l00 times that, 1. mg. So next day you are dizzy, blurry. Google this vitamin, you'll see some mom gave her baby 1 mg. I hate to think what that kids gonna be like by age two.
SEVENTH INNING STRETCH- The final nail in the coffin of insomnia is to get in control of the last wake-up and make it the second last wake-up. STRETCH that sleep two hours by pitstop first, then get in your favorite position, and keep from thinking. Any kind of thinking. Thinking you can't get another two hours appended to that six hours you just did. Thinking about family. Problems. To keep thinking from coming into your brain, you do silent mantra combined with long, slow deep breathing. GOD AND I ARE ONE tied to one, long slow inhale or any other mantra you were taught. Slow MANTRA with very slow breathing is so boring, it'll put you to sleep!
FINAL CAVEAT - All these methods combined, will help you sleep like a baby but once an insomnia sufferer has experienced the full horror of this malady, they will always be apprehensive at bedtime. This 'fear' effect lingers for years afterwards, even though they mentally, rationally know that now they're on top of it. The fear of sleeplessness returning will always be there.
*NOTE: L-ornithine HCL" is available at a "discount" price from Jo Mar -- 450 milligram Capsules - 335 count - $23.50. phone: 1-800- 538-4545 (northern California) http://www.jomarlabs.com/main/index.asp Call them to have a printed price list sent.
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