Sleep Disturbances and Insomnia

Characterized by a reduction in the length and quality of sleep, with serious effects on activities the following day. Insomnia, the severest form of sleep disturbance, is very widespread. Sleep, an extremely delicate function is immediately affected by the smallest personal or professional setback, the slightest stress, anxiety, or depression.

Sleep occurs in successive passages of an hour and three-quarters or so, becoming shallower and less refreshing with the approach of the early hours. The first two cycles are much more refreshing than the two that follow Sudden arousal by the telephone is much more traumatic when one has just gone to sleep than at the end of the cycle.

Those who keep watch or navigate alone know that just a little sleep can suffice, but only if the precise rules dictated by our rhythms are followed. In this respect we all differ: some need many hours of sleep, others, like Napoleon or Margaret Thatcher, for example, very little.

General advice

• Avoid a siesta
• Do not take tea or coffee after 5.00pm because they are too stimulating
• Do not dine too heavily or richly
• Choose lettuce, fish, lean meats, pastry, and rice, which improve sleep, and eat foods containing magnesium and lithium
• Do not take violent exercise before retiring to bed; instead a little exercise in the afternoon is recommended
• A glass of warm milk or an infusion with a little honey is the classic way to obtain a good night's sleep.
• Always try to go to bed and get up at about the same times
• Do not go to bed unless you are sleepy
• Be careful about altitude (above 1,800 metres) if you are already a poor sleeper at sea level

Acupuncture

Almost indispensable because of its sedative action and ability to restore equilibrium.

Treatment schedule: four to eight sessions spread over a month are generally enough, especially if the insomnia is a relatively recent development. Then monthly maintenance treatment can take over.

Relaxation

Relaxation is essential if one is to learn to take charge of the emotions, control muscular tension, and to reduce, channel, and even suppress the effects of stress. Naturally, learning to relax can take some weeks, but it may then help with going to sleep or going back to sleep.

Homeopathy

Coffea

- Four granules at 9c, to be sucked like sweets a few minutes before retiring to bed

Coffea cruda

- Vegetable origin: coffee
- Homeopathic remedy for insomnia with a state of excitement - as after too much coffee

• You can use Valerianaheel@, which contains mother tinctures of Crataegus, Valeriana, Chamomilla, Avena (oats) and Lupulus (hops) combined with Hypericum (St. John's Wort) D 1, Kalium bromatum D I
  - Available in drop bottles of 30 and 100mg
  - In general, 15 drops 3 times daily, in the evening 25 drops. Single dose for infants and young children: from age 2-6 years, 5 drops; from 6-12 years, 10 drops

Oligotherapy

Uthium, magnesium

Supplies of trace elements are normally provided by the diet, which should be varied and of good quality. When there is a deficiency, as there frequently is in this case, these elements may be taken as supplements.

Sources of lithium and magnesium

You will find them mainly in cereals, chocolate, green vegetables, eggs, fish, meat, and dried fruits.

• Lithium and magnesium preparations: Organic Minerals (Colloidals) which contains 70+ trace minerals:
  - Available in 946ml bottles
  - Take 1-3 caps just before breakfast and/or evening meal
  - Children 1 teaspoon daily for each 20lbs of body weight
  Or Maximol (Ionized colloidals)
  - Available in 500ml bottles
  - Take ) 1/2 capful once or twice daily on an empty stomach
  Or Lithium orotate (Vitamin Research Products) 120mg:
  - Available in containers of 120 capsules
  - One capsule twice daily with meals

Possible Prescription: one dose of magnesium during the day, one dose of lithium at bedtime.

You can take Multi-Guard@ (Lamberts), a mixture of trace elements (calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, zinc...) and vitamins (betacarotene, D, B, C and E )
- Available in containers of 30 and 90 tablets
- One tablet to be taken each morning

Herbal treatment

A number of well known plants such as lime, verbena.
Others such as sweet woodruff, white horehound, California poppy are increasingly used.

Some of them, such as hawthorn, passionflower, and valerian have a tran quillizing effect. which makes them useful. if not actually indispensable.

These plants can be prepared by your herbalist, singly or in combination, as mother tincture, powder in capsules, dried extracts...

Sweet woodruff/Eschscholtzia

Sweet woodruff is added to silage to scent cows' milk, and is also used to freshen the air at home, to repel insects, and to give a fruity aroma to Amsterdamer pipe tobacco. Eschscholtzia or California poppy is antispasmodic, analgesic, and sedative.

For hawthorn, passionflower, and valerian, you can use a fresh whole plant suspension which, thanks to a method of cold stabilization, provides the full therapeutic effect naturally present in the whole plant.

Possible Prescription: obtain from your herbalist a 60ml bottle of fresh whole­plant suspension of one of these three plants. Take a half-teaspoonful in a little water at bedtime.

Lime

The pale yellow flowers of the lime tree, whose pleasant and characteristic scent is familiar to all, are antispasmodic, sedative, and mildly laxative in action.

• You can ask your herbalist to prepare a 60ml bottle of lime buds macerated in glycerine at Ix. Take 50 drops in a small sedative infusion at bedtime.
• Those who like infusions can buy the plants in speciality shops or from herbal suppliers. Allow one dessertspoonful of plant for a cup of boiling water and leave it to infuse for ten minutes.

Plant essential oils

Lavender, sweet marjoram, petitgrain bitter orange

-Two drops of one of them to be taken in a little honey at bedtime

Petitgrain bitter orange

Petitgrain bitter orange is one of the constituents of the bitter orange leaf. whereas neroli, which is used to make 'orange-flower water', is prepared from the flowers.