I’ve had several clients tell me they have trouble staying asleep.  Without going into too much detail on sleep hygiene or supportive herbs and nutrients, here are a few simple ways to help get yourself back to sleep:

  1. Buy herbal tea from the store that is designed for sleep, stress, or relaxing (one herb that is particularly useful here is chamomile). Prepare it and place it by your bedside.  Whenever you wake up in the middle of the night, drink ½ to a full cup of the tea and lay back down.
  2. Drink a cup of warmed almond milk. One of my clients said this works well for him.
  3. Work out in the evening – this works really well for some people, and for some it does the opposite. You have to determine which works best for you.  Also, if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can try doing a little exercise in the dark by your bed and see if that helps you to fall back asleep (yes in the dark because the darkness helps promote sleep).  If you are super clumsy in the dark, this may not be a good idea for you!  Please be careful.
  4. Go sit in the sauna at your gym if you work out in the evening – this leaves me super relaxed the rest of my evening.
  5. Go to YouTube and type in the search bar, “frequency music for sleep.” Instead of sleep, you could also type in other words like stress, anxiety, relax.  Find one that is at least 8 hours long so you can put it on right before you lie down.  Have it playing softly in the background, not so loudly to where it may wake you up.
  6. I you still have about 4-5 hours left of sleep to go when you wake up in the middle of the night, take melatonin then. The reason I say about 4-5 is because if you take it 2 hours prior to needing to wake up for the day, it may still be in your system when you wake and you may have a hard time waking.  When you wake up in the middle of the night, take a smaller dose than you would if you were taking it right before bed, because you will be needing it for a lesser amount of hours.  This same tip may also work for other sleep promoting supplements you use.
  7. I had significant trouble sleeping towards the end of 4 years of Naturopathic school.  Right after I graduated, I spent time on a farm in Hawaii and slept in a spot with only screens and no windows.  I was deep in nature and could hear what sounded like 100s to 1000s of loud frogs at night.  Yet to my surprise, I went to sleep, without any supplements, for the first time in a long time.  So I encourage you to camp sometimes in nature, as you may get the best sleep you’ve had in a long time.

Pleasant dreams 😊