Tired but Can’t Sleep? 5 Tips to Falling Asleep Faster

You are tired after a long hard day at work. You almost fell asleep while brushing your teeth, yet can’t get to sleep when you hit the bed. Toss, turn, yawn, stretch, shift, toss some more – but you just can’t seem to fall asleep.

You are still wide-awake when your bedside clock shows 1:00 am. If this is a regular problem, you may have insomnia. There could a variety of reasons for your sleep disorder. Some common causes for trouble sleeping are:

Feeling depressed, anxious or having obsessive thoughts, your mind just doesn’t shut down enough to allow sleep. If you experience a major loss and are grieving, sleep can be difficult.

Sudden changes in your lifestyle can also cause sleep interruptions. Starting a new job with different hours than what you are used to can take time to adjust your sleep cycle. Constant stress at work or school that you just can’t let go of will definitely make a good night’s sleep elusive. Trying to drown your frustrations in alcohol, caffeine, or through smoking will only cause more sleep interruption problems.

Staying up too late watching TV or surfing the Internet doesn’t give your body enough time to wind down from the day for effective sleep.

Some sleeping problems may be related to other medical conditions. Breathing problems, back or leg pain, acid reflux and indigestion can disturb the body in ways that make sleep difficult no matter how tired you are.

If you’re fed up of being tired all the time, here are 5 things you can do to overcome your sleep disorder or insomnia:

1. Don’t focus on going to sleep, instead think about relaxation. Visualize a pleasant, satisfying, relaxing place and see yourself in that place.
2. Turn down the bedroom lights. This allows your body time to wind down and adjust easier than going from a fully lit room and to a completely dark room.
3. Reset your body clock by getting on a manageable schedule. Don’t try to exhaust yourself with exercise, work or activity as a way to fall asleep. You already know that doesn’t work. Write down a schedule that allows an hour to prepare for sleep. Take a warm shower, turn off the TV, cell phones and PDAs and turn on some calming music (an instrumental CD, not the radio). Stretch and slide into bed at the scheduled time.
4. If after resetting your sleep cycle, you find yourself getting tired too early, increase your light exposure. Go outdoors in the sunshine or turn up the light in the room. The body responds to light and dark cues for sleep.
5. Cease any work or stressful activity at least three hours before bedtime. Let go of the frustrations and allow your mind to focus on less intense things.

When some of these natural methods can’t solve your sleeping problems, you may need to get on prescription medication. Whatever you do, don’t self medicate with over-the-counter sleep aids at night and wake-up pills during the day. That makes the problem worse. Don’t take any sleep medications unless a physician is monitoring you. You don’t want to develop drug dependency problems while curing your sleep disorder.

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