What is normally disregarded when people say they’re “sleep deprived” is exactly HOW your sleep deprivation presents itself.
The answer to how your sleep deprivation happens can be the most valuable lead to your tailored sleep solution.
For instance, trouble falling asleep generally has a completely different underlying problem to waking up too early in the morning. Waking up in the middle of the night anxious and worried, is a different underlying problem to getting up in the middle of the night with twitching legs. It’s pretty obvious, but not normally investigated.
Here are a few sleep deprivation issues and possible solutions:
Waking too early in the morning. Evidence has shown that this could have a direct relationship to depression and grief. It can also be related to food additives and colorings that have been associated with depression (e.g. calcium propionate 282, that occurs in few manufactured breads and frozen foods). And there are also common drugs that have the side-effect of depression and/or waking too early in the morning. Solutions here include every day exercise, omega-3 supplementation, finding out the side effects of your prescription medications, and making decisions to change your life to conquer the issue.
Waking in the night anxious and worried. Clearly anxiety can be a problem here. Not so obvious may be an intolerance to a particular food additive or coloring that increases restlessness and anxiety – and sometimes the reaction does NOT show up the night instantly after having eaten that particular food item – it can take days. Evidence shows that many individuals don’t think that a food item was a problem unless the adverse reaction happens in the next hour, which makes the diagnosis rather difficult. Some food additives, even natural food substances have been linked to increased feelings of anxiety, frequent night waking, even nightmares, night terrors and weird dreams.
Remember that if you have a restless, crying baby (sometimes even screaming!) – it may be behaving in this way because the chemicals you are eating are passing to them through your breast milk. (To clarify – we aren’t saying breast feeding is the problem, but that the mother’s diet can be the problem).
There are many chemical free diets and organizations to assist you if you wish to investigate this option. Food chemicals are also addictive, so there may be few withdrawal symptoms which need managing during this process. Joining groups that can help with this a great idea.
These are just a couple of examples (nowhere near a conclusive list), but they will give you an idea of some of the underlying sleep deprivation problems. Don’t just think of insomnia in broad terms any longer, your mission is to get down to detail, and self-diagnose your problem(s) so as to find your unique solution.