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I am following the Eat for Heat Protocols, but I just can’t sleep without some kind of aid. Rosea Rhodiola used to do it for me and then seriphos (Phosphytidal serine) bu it seems like my body readjusts every three months and overrides them. I know my sleep issues stem from high cortisol. I have 3 small children so I have full days and I need my sleep. Any suggestions…I am getting desperate!
My best suggestion is the Deepak Chopra sleep CD. He gets you doing breathing exercises during the day to lower stress, and then a sleep visualization at night.
It’s been shown in research that sleep aids don’t actually help insomnia. You sleep about 10-20 minutes longer, but the sleep is of worse quality. What the medications do is cause amnesia so that you don’t remember how poorly you slept, and this is why people think the sleeping pills are working. This is all well-known by sleep doctors.
The best thing you can do, IMO, is figure out how to lower your stress levels which will bring the cortisol levels down. Things like breathing exercises and meditation are unmatched here. (and also maybe figuring our why your cortisol is so high – diet, stress, unhappiness?)
Magnesium and epsom baths can also be helpful in my experience.
Thanks Amy – I will look for his cd. I know that nursing really raises my cortisol levels because I don’t have sleeping issues when I am not pregnant/nursing. My little guy is only 9 months so I would feel bad weaning him right now, but I may have to if my sleep doesn’t improve.
You can and should try the meditation and breathing. One of the best pieces of advice I can share that is simple but most people don’t follow it: just get out of bed when you can’t sleep. The more you TRY to sleep, the more you excite your sympathetic system, the harder it is to sleep. I know how hard it is to follow this piece of advice, but do try it. Of course, this is all complicated by the fact that you probably have to get up during the night to feed your baby. Is the baby eating any solid food yet? If so, feed it very well before going to bed. That’s an obvious suggestion.
However, I can’t fully agree with Amy. Sleep medications DO work if this isn’t a serious, long-term chronic problem (and it sounds like it isn’t). I don’t know which ones are safe to take while nursing, so that could be a problem. Trazadone works…at least for a while. Your body will always re-adjust eventually. Gabapentin also works for some people. I don’t think these are problematic in the short-run. Just don’t let them give you benzos or anything like that.
I also found an amino acid l-tyrosine to help with my sleep, but it usually energizes others. I am currently going to try Taurine to aid with sleep and OCD as I am coming off a prescription medication slowly.
Thomas, they DON’T work, at least not how people think they do. Short-term or long-term. They extend sleep by 10-20 minutes, and make sleep of poor quality. Because they create sleep amnesia, people feel like they work. I guess if you want to “feel” like you got sleep, yes they work for that. But they will not give you a good night’s sleep.
Sorry Amy. I disagree. I have a lot of personal experience with this, since sleep tends to be my Achilles heel. They work, if you find the right one. The only problem is that your body gets used to them after a while and then they stop working. Of course, there is a problem taking them long-term.
There’s more than one reason for poor sleep, and I doubt that a blanket statement like that is accurate in all cases. Those drugs didn’t do a damned thing for my sleep problem. However it’s not insomnia.
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