Insomnia can be one of the most debilitating diseases anyone ever has to deal with due to its unpredictability and how difficult it can be to manage. It is defined as an inability to sleep despite fatigue and a need for rest. It can also exhibit itself as difficulty in staying asleep once you get there or waking up too early and being unable to go back to bed.

At times, you may still feel tired when you wake up despite having had a full night of rest. Insomnia is terrible because it affects every other body function and can lead to the development of mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Insomnia is nothing new, and, in fact, various methods for its treatment have existed since ancient times. Modern medicine has enabled better diagnosis and treatment of the disease, but not even modern methods are foolproof.

How is Insomnia Currently Treated?

The condition first has to be diagnosed by a medical professional before drugs such as eszopiclone can be prescribed. At times, the problem isn’t insomnia itself, which may actually be characteristic of other conditions such as chronic stress disorder. Once diagnosed, the problems that exist due to the use of sleeping aids may start to show.

Patients are often advised not to use sleeping aids over the long term for a number of reasons. First off, they are more effective if used sparingly, and only when needed. For instance, after a long flight or when recovering from a medical procedure.

Long-term use of insomnia medication may lead to drug tolerance coupled with addiction. This requires the patient to use more and more of the drug while side-effects only worsen.

Additionally, taking sleeping pills over the long-term is also dangerous because it may help hide underlying problems, lead to withdrawal symptoms, and once you’re able to kick the habit, insomnia comes back even worse than before.

So, can sleeping pills be avoided, or do we have no choice in the matter? Thanks to recent developments due to studies carried out in medicine, we do have a choice, now.

CBD

You may have heard of CBD because of its popularity as a natural supplement for relieving pain and dealing with stress, but CBD is just as useful for inducing sleep. It interacts with various neurotransmitters in the body that are responsible for helping you fall asleep such as melatonin, while also ridding the bloodstream of cortisol, the stress hormone.

CBD is as incredibly useful for tackling insomnia because it does not have a lot of the same side-effects as opioid-based medication. In fact, there isn’t any drug that’s known to interact with CBD, and it’s virtually impossible to get addicted.

Avoid alcohol and stimulants like nicotine and caffeine

When dealing with insomnia, it’s important to avoid stimulants such as alcohol and caffeine because their effects can last up to 24 hours.

Caffeine’s effect on prohibiting sleep is well known, but alcohol’s tendency to cause frequent arousals at night must also not be ignored. People with medical stimulants like asthma inhalers should talk to their doctors to minimize their impact on sleep.

Keep regular sleep hours

It is essential to create a sleeping schedule and stick to it the best you can. Basically, you need to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day without deviating from it. If possible, you should also avoid using your phone an hour before bed.

Yoga

Yoga has always been touted as a useful remedy for helping to restore bodily functions to healthy levels. There is a lot more truth in this claim than most skeptics realize, because yoga engages the parasympathetic system and promotes relaxation. It helps to get rid of stress, the most common cause of insomnia. Additionally, certain poses, such as the corpse pose, are especially useful for aiding sleep and wakefulness.

Natural Supplements

Lastly, various natural supplements can also be used to help induce sleep. The most common of these is melatonin, the hormone that’s responsible for controlling the sleep-wake cycle, and l-theanine, naturally found in tea. A combination of CBD and melatonin or magnesium and calcium are also highly effective.