Sleep and insomnia

Sleep is where a great deal of the rest of your health is decided, and it’s the input most often quietly missing when someone arrives exhausted.

Three different problems get called insomnia, and they don’t respond to the same things:

• trouble falling asleep — usually a wind-down, light and nervous system problem
• waking in the early hours — usually blood sugar, alcohol, cortisol rhythm or hormonal
• sleeping through and still exhausted — the one that most often means something else is going on

What your naturopath works on

A consistent wake time, which anchors the body clock more effectively than a consistent bedtime.

Morning light, which is free, underused, and one of the strongest available signals to the clock.

Blood sugar overnight, particularly for early-hours waking. What’s eaten at dinner and whether there was anything after it both matter.

Alcohol, which reliably gets people to sleep and reliably wrecks the second half of the night.

Caffeine timing. The half-life is around five to six hours, so a 3pm coffee is still measurably present at bedtime.

The bedroom — dark, cool, and without the screen you’re holding.

Herbal and nutritional support where appropriate, chosen for which of the three patterns you have and checked against anything you’re taking.

What’s underneath it, since anxiety, pain, reflux, restless legs, thyroid disease and perimenopause all show up first as broken sleep.

⚠ What needs a sleep study rather than a supplement

Snoring with pauses in breathing, gasping or choking in your sleep, or unrefreshing sleep with daytime sleepiness points to obstructive sleep apnoea, which is common, seriously under-diagnosed in Australia, and not something a herbal preparation addresses. It needs a sleep study.

Also get assessed for: falling asleep involuntarily during the day, acting out dreams, and severe restless legs. Where a sleep study or a referral is the right next step, we’ll refer you with a letter setting out what was found.

Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia has the strongest evidence base of anything for chronic insomnia, and we’ll point you to it rather than pretend otherwise.

Related: stress and energy, anxiety and low mood, chronic fatigue and brain fog, perimenopause and menopause.