The ONE-WEEK INSOMNIA CURE

By a Professor of Sleep Science

PULLOUT INSIDE

NO ONE can say – handon-heart – that they have never had a bad night’s sleep in their lives. Insomnia strikes all of us at some point. For the lucky few, it might just be an irritating inability to drop off the night before a big meeting, but for many it can be a nightly scourge that leaves you staring at the ceiling for hours.

On any given night, almost half of the world’s population will be unhappily lying awake or trying desperately to get back to sleep after waking up.

Studies in the UK have shown that at least 30% of people are struck by an acute attack of insomnia (defined as one which lasts for anything from two weeks to three months) every year, and chronic insomnia (when poor sleep endures for more than three months at a time) blights as many as 10-15%.

What’s more, the numbers are rising as stress levels bubble ever higher.

Insomnia affects twice as many women as men and your vulnerability increases with age, peaking at 60.

And it seems Irish people have also been experiencing problems getting a good night’s sleep. Prescriptions for sleeping pills for medical card-holders doubled between 2005 and 2011 – from around 545,000 to more than a million. And according to a sleep study conducted by Amárach Research in 2010, one-third of adults in Ireland felt in some way sleep-deprived.

Insomnia is not just crippling, making normal daily functioning seem almost impossible; it can, in the long term, seriously affect your health, increasing your risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, obesity and even certain cancers.

But the existence of so many long-term sufferers underlines the bitter truth that most people don’t know where to go for help, and even many healthcare professionals don’t know what to do about sleeplessness.

I consider myself to be very lucky that my personal experiences with insomnia have only ever been short-term, but at times they have been excruciating and I have huge sympathy for those who suffer.

This, along with my frustration at the paltry selection of solutions on offer, has driven me to make the study of sleep problems my life’s work.

As part of my university psychology degree, I elected to spend a year in the sleep disorder clinic at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, working with people whose lives had been blighted by insomnia.

We were able to help many with neurological or biological problems such as sleep apnoea (a form of snoring where you momentarily stop breathing at intervals through the night) or narcolepsy (where people suddenly fall asleep during the day for no apparent reason).

However, even though the unit is a highly qualified centre of excellence, it had nothing to offer people with chronic insomnia.

We had no option but to send them back to their GPs, who could merely prescribe a short-term course of sleeping tablets or offer them leaflets about improving what’s called sleep hygiene (tricks such as keeping your bedroom dark and quiet).

The problem in the UK is that GPs generally feel ill-equipped to deal with insomnia due to a lack

of specific training. Proper clinical services for people with insomnia are also extremely few and far between.

Those 12 months at St Thomas’ marked the start of my 18 years of scientific investigation into sleep and my quest to bring techniques that really do help the people who need it most.

I am now director of the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research and one of very few university professors in the UK with a specialism in sleep.

Over recent years I’ve been at the cutting edge of research into all aspects of sleep and insomnia, specialising in the prevention of sleep disorders and the treatment of insomnia in both its acute (short-term) and chronic (longterm) phases.

Much of my work has focused on understanding and refining the science of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), which is a powerful series of exercises that can help treat insomnia without medication.

It teaches people to use techniques that address the ‘cognitive factors’ (thought processes) and ‘behavioural factors’ (such as snoozing on the couch) associated with their sleep problem.

It helps develop a ‘pro-sleep’ routine to build a strong positive link between bed and sleep, and encourages new habits that are conducive to a great night’s rest.

Like most sleep specialists I am convinced that CBT-I – not pills – offers the best solution to insomnia. There have been more than 100 studies in the past 20 years which have shown it works. However, in the UK, face-to-face CBT-I is available only at very few pockets of excellence around the country which, sadly, puts it out of the reach of most people.

I passionately believe this kind of expertise and personal care should be made more widely available.

That’s why I have written a book – exclusively serialised all next week in the Irish Daily Mail – which draws on my years of experience to give you a comprehensive course of selfhelp techniques. You will learn all of the benefits of CBT-I in the comfort of your home.

If you use it in conjunction with a sleep diary – which we will show you how to create in today’s paper, below – you’ll be able to develop a uniquely personalised plan to solve your specific problems.

If you want to really get to the bottom of what’s keeping you awake and get back to enjoying night after night of good, deep, restorative sleep, I urge you to work your way

through the course.

I will kick off the series in tomorow row’s paper by explaining how work out whether you are one of the many people worrying about sleeplessness when you might, in fact, be getting more than you think.

The focus in the following days moves to clever techniques to stop your mind racing in the middle of the night, along with methods of ‘dle catastrophising’ your sleep problems, and easy but effective tips induce relaxation before bed.

Finally, on Friday, I will introduce you to a powerful tool in your fight against insomnia called sleep rescheduling, which my studies

have shown to fix 73% of acute cases after just one hour of instruction.

Underlying the success of my methods is a secret weapon – your sleep diary.

I am passionate about encouraging all my patients to keep a sleep diary, as it is the best way to track your sleep (or lack of it) and all the factors which might be keeping you awake.

I urge you to start filling it in right away. The sooner you start logging your sleep patterns, the more personalised your treatment plan can be – and the more effective your recovery.

The techniques you will learn next week are gentle enough to correct a temporary period of poor sleep brought upon by something like jetlag, but powerful enough – if conducted in the right way – to correct years of debilitating insomnia, even if all other solutions have previously failed.

I can’t promise that you will be sleeping like a baby by this time next weekend, but you will notice a significant improvement in your sleep quality and a reduction in the time you spend awake at night – and your life will be transformed.

Adapted from The One-Week Insomnia Cure by Professor Jason Ellis, published by Vermilion on Thursday and priced €15.40.