Choosing the Right Homeopathic Remedies for Insomnia Depend on Your Symptoms

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Insomnia, a condition simply defined as not being able to get to sleep, is the world's most common sleep disorder. The personal and societal costs of insomnia are huge.

Just in the United States, 200,000 people a year have car crashes because they drive without getting enough sleep. Insomnia has caused oil tanker crashes, space shuttle crashes, and a near melt-down at a nuclear power plant.

In any given year, about 100,000,000 people suffer insomnia in the United States alone. And of the millions of people around the world who take medication for insomnia, the side effects of the medications are often almost as bad as the condition itself. Homeopathic remedies do not have side effects and can be tailored to your particular combination of health symptoms, not just your problems with sleep. But there are some simple steps to try before taking anything for insomnia at all.

Before You Take Conventional or Homeopathic Remedies for Insomnia

It's only commonsensical to make sure you are not making your insomnia worse before you try taking a sleeping pill. Not taking any medicine at all is a sure way to avoid side effects! Some of the most basic rules for overcoming insomnia are:

• Avoid all sources of caffeine, including coffee, tea, chocolate, and soft drinks, for at least six hours before bedtime.
• Sleep in a quiet and dark room. It is especially important to avoid exposure to blue light, so your brain can make the natural sleeping agent, melatonin. Your retinas can sense blue light even when your eyelids are closed.
• Don't try to use naps to make up for lost sleep. You need to be asleep for at least 3-1/2 hours for the pineal gland in your brain to make melatonin. If you never get even 3-1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep, your insomnia will just get worse and worse.

Failure to get enough sleep doesn't just make you tired. It also can make you fat. One of the hormones the brain processes during sleep is ghrelin. This hormone's role is to make you don't starve.

If your ghrelin levels are high, it literally hurts not to eat. Ghrelin keeps pain fibers extra-sensitive to pain until the stomach sends a signal to the brain that it is full. If you don't get the shut eye your brain need to process ghrelin, you will want to eat, and eat, and eat. Fortunately, homeopathic remedies can be just what the doctor did not know to order for treating your insomnia.

How Homeopathic Remedies for Insomnia Work

Classical homeopathy was based on the idea that illness has physical, mental, social, emotional, and even spiritual causes. The remedies a classically trained homeopath gives out are chosen only after getting to know the patient. There is no one-remedy-works-all-the-time approach in real homeopathy.

However, it is not necessary for you to see a classically trained homeopath to get a remedy that can help you sleep better. The action of considering your own symptoms will help you make the subtle lifestyle changes that reinforce that action of the homeopathic remedy. Consider the following remedies:

• Aconitum napellus, recommended with agitation, anxiety, and fear prevent falling asleep.
• Arsenicum album, recommended for insomnia in people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder or who are obsessed with detail.
• Calcarea carbonica, recommended when insomnia is caused by arthritis or joint pain.
• Cocculus, recommended for jet lag.
• Coffea cruda, recommended when not being able to shut off either disturbing or happy thoughts keep the person awake.
• Ignatia, recommended for people who are grieving.
• Kali phosphoricum, recommended for insomnia when dieting.
• Nux vomica, recommended for insomnia after overindulgence in coffee, colas, other non-alcoholic beverages, or food.
• Silicea (silica), recommended for sleepwalking.
• Sulfur, recommended for itching, especially heat rash.
• Zincum metallicum, recommended for muscle twitches and restless legs syndrome.

Try a single tablet. See if it helps you the first night. If it doesn't, try it again the second night. If the treatment works for you, continue it, but if it doesn't, try another that meets your understanding of how insomnia works in your life.

When you use homeopathic preparations, you don't take more pills, you take "stronger" pills (which, paradoxically contain less of the active ingredient). Instead of 6C or 12C, you try 24C or 30C, looking for the higher number. It is only necessary to find the right match between the homeopathic preparation and the causes of insomnia that are uniquely your own.

Selected Reference:

Naude DF, Stephanie Couchman IM, Maharaj A. Chronic primary insomnia: efficacy of homeopathic simillimum. Homeopathy. 2010 Jan;99(1):63-8. Erratum in: Homeopathy. 2010 Apr;99(2):151.

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