What's Keeping You Up at Night? Learn to Get Some Shut Eye Without the Use of Sleep Aids

On occasion I have trouble sleeping. Sometimes I can't fall asleep and most nights I ca't stay asleep. For many Americans this is all too familiar. Millions of people take medications to help them with these problems, but I am not one of these people. I don't think drugs can help any problem, they only cover it up. If you want to get a good nights rest it is important to determine the factors that are not allowing you sleep properly. For me it is mostly stress and caffiene but it is different for each person. But, you can figure out what's keeping you up at night and learn how to shut the lights out without the use of sleep aids.

For many of us stress and anxiety is the number one contributing factor that leads to sleepless nights. In my opinion depression is a close second, and alcohol or drugs comes in third. Of course there are many other contributing factors such as caffiene, too much food before bed, lack of exercise, or insomnia. If you want to start sleeping better right away there are several things that will help. For me, exercise seems to be the cure when I find I cannot sleep. I wait to exercise until I am home from work in the afternoon becuase if I exercise in the morning I feel sleepy at work. Exercising in the afternoon helps me get rid of excess energy and prepares me for a restful night by making me feel tired.

It also helps to avoid chocolate, tea, and coffee at night or before going to bed because the caffiene will keep you up all night. I've seriously had nights where I saw every hour on the clock becuase I decided to have coffee after dinner. First it's getting late around 1 am, then 2 am comes, then 3am, and so on until about 7 am when I finally pass out due to exhaustion. Even then, I wake up tired because I slept so terribly and I'm usually a grouch the next day. I've also found that it helps to eat a small dinner, not to overeat, and to avoid spicy and greasy foods. Some nights I have terrible indegestion due to the fact I had spicy foods for dinner and it literally makes me wake up anywhere from 10-30 times in one night. I have found it best not to eat these types of food for dinner, for lunch it is fine, but not at night.

If it helps you sleep better by cutting out caffiene, or greasy/spicy foods than stick with it. If you are still having trouble sleeping you may want to dig deeper. When I am stressed out I find it terribly hard to sleep, even if I have exercised that same afternoon. Yoga, although another form of exercise, helps me calm down and destress before I sleep. I don't do Yoga everyday but if I am feeling especially frazzled it seems to work like magic. I don't reccomend exercising too close to bed time because you'll be wide awake, but sometime in the mid afternoon between 4 pm and 6 pm.

I've never tried it, but I've heard it said that removing the TV from your bedroom will help you sleep much better. If you can't stand to not have your TV like me just put it on mute when you are feeling sleepy. I sleep with the TV on almost every night and around 3 am every morning some loud infomercial comes blazing across the TV waking me from a dead sleep. Finding the remote while you're half asleep is not the easiest thing to do either. If you choose not to mute your TV, turn it off, or set the sleep timer so the TV shuts off on it's own. I find it very hard to fall asleep without my TV on for some reason so I just mute it when my eyes start feeling like they want to close, that way it won't disturb me later.

For me, it also helped to clean out my bedroom of clothes and other stuff. 3 months ago if you walked into my room you would have seen piles of clothes on the dresser, papers and bills stacked on bedside tables, and shoes and other random things strew about the room. Not anymore! Now my room is clean, not that it wasn;t clean before, but there is no junk lying around to distract me. It has really helped greatly. I used to get mad every morning because I would wake up to stuff all over the place now I just wake up peacefully. It also helped me to move my bedroom location in my house.

My original bedroom was on two outside walls with 4 windows. I could hear the neighbors dog barking, the garbage truck coming around, and the landscaper in the morning. Now my bedroom is located within the middle of the house, with only one wall that faces the outside and with only two windows. It's definitely helped.

If you are still having trouble sleeping after trying all the remedies you may want to make an appointment with a sleep specialist. Many people suffer from insomnia, anxiety, and depression which all make it hard to sleep properly. Accupuncture may also help as well as the use of natural herbs like skulll cap and chammomile. There's absolutley no need to take pills to sleep. With a few changes in environment and habit you too can sleep like a baby.