Sleep, as casual as it may seem as a part of daily routine, makes people realise its importance only when it starts to become difficult. Good sleep is an essential ingredient for a healthy mind and body, ensuring you are ready for a productive, fulfilling day at work/school/college or even for a relaxing day at home. When sleep is hindered, it causes problems in almost all other areas of life as well.
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that refers to not just the inability to fall asleep, but also difficulties in staying asleep or having consistently low quality sleep that leaves you feeling down and tired. Both physically and mentally. This can affect people of all age groups and can be due to one or more of a wide variety of causes ranging from interpersonal issues or occupational stress to underlying health problems.
When does Insomnia become dangerous?
Difficulties in getting a good night’s sleep is definitely not such a rare event. But it becomes a matter of concern when the difficulty persists for days and starts affecting your daily life functioning. Constant lack of quantity or quality of sleep affects both the mind and body, leaving you feeling perpetually tired, and overall unwell. Such problems can also lead to a decreased tolerance to stress which in turn increases vulnerability to many physical and mental health issues.
Hence, proper diagnosis and efficient treatment without much delay is important for insomnia.
What are the Insomnia Treatments in India?
Ideal treatment for insomnia differs from person-to-person depending on the root cause of the sleep problems in each individual. It is always good to establish the reason for the issue, so that the most suitable way towards improvement can be adopted.
Insomnia treatment can start from yourself. Through lifestyle and behavioural changes. Other treatments for insomnia in India include therapies and medication. Let’s look into each of them.
- Sleep Hygiene : A set of healthy habits to adopt that promote better sleeping patterns. These are small steps that you can take up and make a part of your daily life. Some of the changes that would ensure sleep hygiene are;
- Establish a fixed sleep schedule and stick to it.
- Set your room/sleeping environment in a way that makes you feel relaxed and comfortable (Sufficient air flow, optimum temperature, lack of noise, dark/ideal lighting of your choice etc)
- Avoid phone/screen time, alcohol, heavy meals, and caffeine before bed.
- Avoid taking unnecessary naps during daytime and keep your daytime activities (work, study, gaming, etc) off the bed. Make the bed a place for relaxing and sleeping.
- Maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise also can go a long way!
- Therapies : When just lifestyle changes and healthy habits are not quite effective, professional healthcare providers can administer therapies catered specifically for symptoms associated with insomnia.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) deals with sleep problems by treating the deep rooted causes behind them. This therapy focuses on identifying negative thoughts and thinking patterns that are causing problems, and enables one to challenge those thoughts as well as to create and apply alternative thoughts that leads to healthy behavioural changes. Stimulus control, cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction, etc are some procedures in CBT-I.
- Relaxation techniques are a variety of methods and tactics that aim to relieve the mind and body of unnecessary, taxing tensions.
Breathing exercises help in calming yourself down and getting control over racing thoughts.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a simple procedure of progressively tensing and relaxing various groups of muscle tissues of the body in a systematic manner that relieves tightness from the body and helps reduce stress and anxiety. A relaxed body makes the mind more free paving an easy way for sleep to take over.
- Light therapy uses direct sunlight or artificial lights in specific ways to treat insomnia, mostly when the problem lies in the circadian rhythms or the biological clock.
- Medication : Insomnia treatment in India by using medicines mainly include prescription medication like benzodiazepines and hypnotics. Many over-the-counter medications which mostly include antihistamines, are also available. But it is always better to seek professional advice before taking any medication.
In addition to these, many ayurvedic treatment methods and natural remedies including herbal supplements, teas, oils etc are also quite famous as insomnia treatment in India.
Sleep is important. When it becomes hard, don’t hesitate to seek help.
As that one Irish proverb goes, “A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”
Sleep tight. Live bright.
- Experienced Psychologists: We are a team of licensed RCI-registered clinical psychologists. Our team is well-experienced in Insomnia Treatment in India both – offline and online.
- Personalized Approach: We are dedicated to treating our clients in the best-suited way, carefully curated as per the client’s needs, and adhering to one-on-one, client-centered therapy.
- Scientific Techniques: Our treatment plans and therapeutic methods are based on highly researched scientific findings such as CBT, DBT, and Narrative Therapy among many other therapeutic techniques.
- Quality service: We at CoachForMind ensure quality services in our treatment regime and therapeutic approaches. Our clients hold most value to us, so we ground our techniques in empathy while maintaining professionalism.
For more information, please visit our website or contact us directly at coachformind@gmail.com
