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CBT, and How It Helps Treat Insomnia Problems

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CBT, and How It Helps Treat Insomnia Problems

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Home Page > Health > Sleep > CBT, and How It Helps Treat Insomnia Problems

CBT, and How It Helps Treat Insomnia Problems

Posted: Feb 01, 2011 |Comments: 0
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CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is essentially a psycho-therapeutic method for dealing with some insomnia problems. It’s an approach which aims specifically at cognitive, emotional, and behaviors considered dysfunctional or problematic and in turn, lead to sleeplessness. There is enough empirical evidence to suggest that CBT can be useful and effective as one of many insomnia cures and treatments. There’s even a fantastic deal of testimonial evidence that suggests CBT is most beneficial when used to augment other insomnia treatments, such as meditation, white noise, and audio therapy. CBT uses 4 basic components to try and combat people afflicted with sleeplessness.

Stimulus control
Sleep scheduling
Sleep restriction
Sleep hygiene education

When deciding whether or not to go the route of CBT, it’s critically vital that you first rule out other possible culprits for your insomnia. This is a excellent general rule for any sleep disorder. In order to be sure your issue really requires one or more insomnia cures, the following must be eliminated, or upon discovery, properly addressed:

Other psychological issues, such as mood disorders, depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, e.t.c…
Unknown physical illness or disease that remains undiscovered. Insomnia can manifest as the body’s immune system reacts to a new problem, sending alarm signals to the brain that can cause insomnia.
Known medical conditions, such as chronic pain, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, menopause, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, e.t.c…
Medication side effects, whether being used as a prescribed treatment or a simple over the counter self medication. It’s always vital to note the side effects, and to watch out for those drugs that contain large amounts of caffeine. (a substantial amount of over the counter pain medication has caffeine included)

For all these reasons it is vital to be assessed by a medical professional first and foremost, and properly tested for any possible ailments and conditions that could either be the cause, or a significant contributing factor to your insomnia. Otherwise you may end up finding insomnia cures that you don’t even need. The second step in CBT for dealing with sleeplessness is to have you author a sleep journal. Some therapists require 1 week of notes, others like to have 2 weeks or more data on your sleep habits before suggesting further treatments. When writing this journal, the patient is questioned to note the following:

alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine use, (and when)
the timing of meals,
how many naps are taken (and when).
when you go to bed,
how long before you turn out the lights,
what time you fall asleep,
when and how many nighttime interruptions or awakenings occur,
when you wake up, and
how long after waking before you rouse from the bed.

Diagnostically, properly noting these things is critical to finding an appropriate treatment within the main components of CBT. Some therapists have journal templates for use, which can make jotting these things down simpler. That said, there are other vital reasons to journal your process for sleeping, otherwise the therapist will struggle with many different potential insomnia cures before finding one tailor made to your own condition.

You should be as candid as possible inside the journal, elaborating on your thoughts regarding slumber. These thoughts can be noted at any time you have them. For example, when you have negative thoughts about sleep at night causing you to dread that slumber won’t come, it will keep you awake. Often called somniphobia, this problem is really known as “excessive nocturnal mentation”. Noting thoughts like this for a qualified CBT therapist is extremely helpful in correcting your problem.

Also vital is your sleep hygiene, which is another area CBT can be beneficial to you. As an example, if you are doing your daily work out at 9pm and need to sleep by 11 pm, your sleep hygiene is, for lack of a better term, crap. If you’re eating heavy meals or egregious amounts of snacks late at night or close to bedtime, a) you won’t sleep well, and b) insomnia will eventually be the least of your health problems. If you are required to be awake at 6am, and you place on your favorite video game at 12 am for a quick run through, well, you have issues with sleep hygiene without a doubt. CBT can advise you how to right these lifestyle faux pas.

Finally, CBT is effective for dealing with stress, which can be the worst culprit for sending you in search of insomnia cures. Qualified therapists can teach you ways of better managing stress – which in turn can allow you the respite you need from the chaos of the day.

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Irene Mckay -
About the Author:

CBT can be extremely helpful to those suffering sleeplessness. To learn more about what to expect and how to best prepare for a therapist, visit Insomnia Cures where Irene critiques and clarifies various cognitive therapies.

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I want to do CBT at home myself , help me pliz
I am a women of 53 years and since for the past 01 year I have been suffering tremendously from an intense claustrophibic feeling coupled with a grave insomnia problem.Please suggest a way out
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Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/sleep-articles/cbt-and-how-it-helps-treat-insomnia-problems-4149888.html

Article Tags:
insomnia cures, sleep hygiene, sleep restriction, sleep scheduling

Anybody Interested In Diagnosing Sleep Problems?

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:55:41 +0000

Diagnosing sleep problems is sometimes best done with the help of professionals. Trained professionals have sufficient know-how when it comes to accurately diagnosing sleep problems. Inadequate sleep, whether chronic or acute, is known to have significant impacts on quality of life of affected individuals. In the process of diagnosing sleep problems, people can unearth such adverse effects as diminished cognitive abilities, mood instabilities and reduced physical activity or performance.

The impairment levels are quantitatively related to sleep deprivation severity. In the course of diagnosing sleep problems, the ultimate recommendation is nearly always the same – getting adequate and excellent-quality sleep. This is vital if a person is to remain in the peak of health and achieve optimum productivity.

Diagnosing Sleep Problems Now

When diagnosing sleep problems, doctors need to provide timely treatment remedies. But before heading out to the doctor’s office, consider doing a sleep problem symptom check on yourself first. Individuals experiencing sleep difficulties often are experiencing one or more of the symptoms listed below.

* Inability to remain awake during daytime
* Stupor or lethargy at inappropriate times throughout the day
* Choking or gasping while asleep
* Occurrence of unusual events during sleep – nightmares, walking and talking
* Inability to doze off or stay asleep during the night
* Pronounced snoring
* Uncomfortable or restless legs at night

Part of diagnosing sleep problems is zeroing in on the cause of the sleep woes. Even if you’ve spent weeks in bed staring at the ceiling and never get to sleep, it doesn’t automatically mean you’ve got sleep disorders. Oftentimes, people have distress sleeping because they’re in the middle of life’s major or minor crises.

In these instances, you’re probably just restless and sleeping terribly. Diagnosing sleep problems of this nature usually ends up with the conclusion that you’re not suffering from a sleeping disorder. The sleep troubles here are associated with easily identifiable, highly specific stressors so resolving the stress source will address the sleep problem.

Still, in some cases, the sleep troubles persist long after the source of the stress is history. This is when you should entertain thoughts of possible sleep disorders being the culprit for your lack of decent sleep.

Accurately diagnosing sleep problems usually entails the conduct of a sleep study or polysomnogram (PSG). This is a multiple-component exam that electronically sends out and records specific physical activities while a person is asleep. In diagnosing sleep problems this way, the recordings are a data source that gets analyzed by qualified sleep specialists. Diagnosing sleep problems can lead to an actual determination of whether or not someone indeed has a sleeping disorder. http://www.about-sleep-disorder.com

http://www.about-sleep-disorder.com

Sleep Problems Can Lead to Living Less

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:42:46 +0000

I have read varying opinions as to the impact distress sleeping has on oneâs overall health. One of the most vital things to remember, if you canât sleep for a night or two, is it will not have much of a negative impact on your performance the following day. So, if you are lying in bed at 2:00 in the morning and canât sleep, donât start worrying. You will be fine tomorrow. You will have an occasional night where you will not sleep well; you will then call on your adrenaline supply a small more than normal the following day. Also your fatigue after one night will not be that terrible. The problems will be worse if you worry too much about the lack of sleep. Worrying about it will make it harder to fall asleep. Any sleep and rest that you are able to get will help you tomorrow, so donât get so stressed that you end up getting no sleep. There is no question that, if your lack of sleeping lasts over a period of time, your performance will ultimately start to diminish.

Our bodies change in many ways as we get older. Sleep is no different. Realizing that changes in sleep are a common part of aging will provide you with a sense of control over sleep. As we age, the amount of sleep we obtain changes, sleep decreases from sixteen to eighteen hours a day in newborns to nearly ten hours for ten-year-olds and to approximately eight hours during the teenage years. We sleep about seven hours a night in middle age and by our seventies sleep time decreases to roughly six and half hours. But, we compensate by obtaining about an hour of additional sleep in the form of daytime naps.

Experiments have been done with volunteers who tried to reduce their sleep from the usual seven and half hours to five and a half hours by decreasing their sleep by thirty minutes every two weeks. Most of the volunteers had small distress reducing sleep by a half-hour, or even an hour, but they started to notice some difficulty when sleep was reduced by more than this. They were able to awaken on time, and they were able to function at work and in their social life, but they found themselves simply more fatigued. The sleep reduction did not seem to pose a threat to anyoneâs health, but they found themselves to be more irritable, more pessimistic, and less fun to be with. For most adults, reduction in the amount of sleep is possible, but fatigued and changes in mood make it undesirable. It is estimated that about half of the adult North American population is already sleep deprived and any further reduction would have marked changes on mood and performance.

The amount you sleep does affect your chances of living longer. There was a study conducted by the American Cancer Society for over a period of six years with one million Americans in San Francisco. Their survival was rated against many lifestyle factors, including sleep patterns. Surprisingly, men who slept four hours a night or less had a mortality rates ten times greater than that of those who slept between seven and eight hours. It seemed that any deviation from usual sleep requirements for adults of six to eight hours was accompanied by a significant increased risk of mortality. In fact, the National Center for Health Service Research in the United States considers adequate sleep one of the six most vital factors affecting illness and death rates; the other lifestyle factors include regular exercise, not smoking, limited consumption of alcohol, regular meal schedules, and maintenance of proper weight.

Linda has spent the last 30 years studying the role of nutrition and lifestyle in the prevention of diseases and optimizing health. Visit this well loved website

to learn how to get a better night’s sleep.

Parasomnia: the Truth About Bedwetting, Teeth Grinding, and Other Sleep Problems

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:52:19 +0000

At first mention of the phrase sleeping disorder, the thing that would probably pop out of your mind is insomnia, or a condition whereby a person is experiencing difficulty in maintaining or initiating sleep. But, the more common sleeping disorder, which affects the very young to the very ancient, is really called parasomnia. All of us, at one time, have really experienced at least one type of parasomnia in our lifetime.

Uncovering The Truth About Parasomnia

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, parasomnia is defined as any type of sleep disorder that commonly inhibits sleep. Parasomnia can either occur during non rapid-eye movement sleep, NREM for small; or rapid-eye movement sleep, more commonly known as REM. Therefore, a person who has parasomnia may experience sleep disruption or arousal when he or she is in a simultaneous stage of being partially asleep and awake. The sleep problems can be passive, such as talking while sleeping or bedwetting; or perilous, such as sexually assaulting or harming other people.

What Causes Parasomnia?

Biological factors, depression, and stress are some of the most common causes of parasomnia. People who have problems and are plagued with guilt, tension and anxiety are believed to be at risk of experiencing various sleeping disorders, most of which can fall under the category of parasomnia. Some experts also believe that heredity plays a huge role in some of the types of parasomnia, including bedwetting, sleep talking and teeth grinding.

Although numerous studies have already been conducted to get a definitive answer to what really causes parasomnia, sleep experts were still unable to come up with a sufficient explanation as to the cause of some sleep disorders. One thing that experts agree on is that parasomnia sets off, in an inopportune moment, one or several physiological systems while a person is in the sleeping and waking cycle.

Common Types Of Parasomnia

Bedwetting

This type of parasomnia, which is also known as Sleep Enuresis, is more common in children. Usually, a person suffering from this problem is incapable of controlling his or her urinary functions during sleep. A lot of people who experience sleep enuresis claim that they thought they were dreaming about urinating or relieving themselves.

Bruxism During Sleep

Teeth grinding, or what is called sleep bruxism, is quite common. Usually, a person who exhibits this disorder involuntarily clenches or grinds his or her teeth at night. Soreness of the jaw and quicker wear and tear of teeth are some of the effects of this nocturnal habit. One way to remedy the situation is by wearing a mouth guard during sleep.

Confusional Arousals

Basically, when you wake up in the middle of the night and feel temporary confusion and alienation, then you have just experienced confusional arousal. For some people, but, this sleep disorder may also affect their small-term memory and reaction time.

Nightmares or Night Terrors

Nightmares, although honestly common, are considered as a sleep disorder because a person who suddenly wakes up in the middle of his or her sleep because of vivid frightful events usually find it hard to sleep again. This type of parasomnia is more common in children.

RBD

This type of parasomnia, which is called REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, is really the acting out of perilous and violent dreams. Thus, a person who has RBD may produce sounds or show bodily movements that demonstrate his or her dream. Some people who are suffering from RBD really beat their sleep partner or do violent acts against other people while they are asleep.

Somnabulism

This sleep disorder is more commonly known as sleep talking. Somnabulism frequently occurs during the middle of a sleep-wake stage. Most of those who talk in their sleep do not remember that they have uttered words, phrases or even sentences while they were asleep.

You really do not need to undergo treatment or medication in most cases of parasomnia. More often than not, these sleep problems disappear in time. But, if your problem is already getting worse, interfering with your sleep, and are hurting other people, then you immediately need to see a doctor.

If you are just having difficulty in finding sleep, you can take sleeping aids. One product that will help you with your sleep problems is Sedamine. For more information about this supplement, visit www.Sedamine.com.

Sharon Bell is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and published author. Many of her insightful articles can be found at the premiere online news magazine http://www.healthnfitnesszone.com.

Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference With Sleep Problems

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:21:32 +0000

If you suffer from sleep problems during the night, then your days probably aren’t going very well either. Nearly one out of every three adults is affected by conditions that hurt the quality of their sleep. Some of the more commons problems reported include restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea, periodic limb movement disorder, and insomnia.

Sleep disorders can be caused by a wide range of factors, but they essentially add up to one thing: sleep deprivation. Each one of us requires a different amount of sleep at night. Although the amount that we need can be different, we all share one thing in common. If we don’t get enough sleep, the effects of sleep deprivation will start to affect us nearly immediately.

Lack of sleep will have different effects on different people. Some may notice difficulty concentrating at work. Another common effect that lack of sleep has on people is irritability or sleepiness throughout the day. Losing sleep at night can lead to a day filled with aching muscles or feelings of fatigue. There could be mental effects as well, like difficulty remembering things and an inability to cope with stress.

Insomnia is the most common sleep problem. Whether insomnia is transient, intermittent, or chronic, it interferes with your body’s natural ability to heal itself. Instead of awaking refreshed and energetic, insomnia sufferers deal with a decreasing quality of life, and could be putting themselves and others in danger.

Insomnia can have many causes and there are a variety of alternative treatments available. But the quick and simple answer for many is to use a sleeping pill. Although sleep aids may offer some small-term relief, in the long run they could be damaging your body’s natural sleep rhythms. Taking sleeping pills for an extended period of time could place you in a worse situation than you are in today.

Before you start to rely on sleeping pills, you should explore other options. There may be some simple lifestyle changes you could make that would have a positive effect on your ability to sleep. Sleep problems are often related to choices and actions that we can easily change. For example, making some adjustments to your diet would be much better than becoming dependent on prescription drugs. A excellent first step is to educate yourself about sleep, the stages of sleep, and the ways that you can develop your own healthy sleep habits. This will place you on the way to finding a healthy solution that doesn’t involve depending on a bottle.

Have Sleep Problems and don’t know what to do? Click Here and get information on Sleep disorders and Insomnia. Sign up for our free newsletter at http://www.howtobeatinsomnia.com/main.html