Your questions about natural sleep aids

answers:

Depending on the season, a warm bath is a great way to relax. If you can’t take a bath, you can give yourself a foot massage with slightly warm massage oil, sesame oil, or castor oil from a health food store.

What was very helpful to me, especially when my mind was racing, was to lie in bed and listen to relaxation CDs, especially those that contain someone speaking with relaxing music in the background. Many of these CDs are available on eBay for very low prices.

A helpful technique is to relax your body one part at a time. So you could relax your feet, your lower legs, upper legs, moving up from your lower belly up to your chest, etc., etc.

Of course, guided relaxation methods can help, imagining yourself in the country, the beach, or whatever is most soothing to you.

If you have annoying thoughts or personal issues that run thru your mind when you are trying to sleep, you might have to deal with those issues first. You might want to talk to a counselor or therapist about that. I suggest avoiding prescription sleeping pills unless nothing else helps.

There are herbs that are helpful for sleep, eg, valerian root, kava kava, chamomile, hops, passion flower, skullcap. If you get the real herbs, you can make teas out of them. Otherwise get the herbs in capsule form. You can try a single herb or herbal combinations. Probably, valerian root and kava kava are the best.

You can also try trytophan, 5-HTP and melatonin (1-2 mg). I would not take melatonin for over a month. It is a hormone produced by the pineal gland. If you take too much, your pineal gland might get “lazy” and produce less melatonin naturally. Life Extension and TwinLabs are probably the best brands, in that order.

answers:

Sleep problems are asked regularly on Y! Answers, so i made up a compilation of things which have helped me:

Hare are some things you can do to help you get high-quality sleep:

1) Have your room as dark and quiet as possible at night. This REALLY makes a difference.

2) Drink more water than you usually do, before going to bed. I know this means you’ll probably have to get up to pee in the night, but you should be able to get back to sleep better when you have a “full tank” of water in you.. being properly hydrated really helps relax the mind, both while awake AND while asleep!!

3) Shower before going to bed, and after a while in the warm water (not too hot: this can harm your quality of sleep), give yourself a solid shot of cold water – 30 seconds or so. Then go back to warm, to get warmed up again. This sounds crazy i know, but it works!!! Do it a couple of times, but always end up with warm.

4) Even if you don’t have a shower before retiring, towel yourself off VERY well before hitting the sack. This will do two things: it will get you nice and dry, which always promotes better sleep, and it will increase your body’s ability to get rid of toxins while sleeping.

5) Shortly before going to bed, say a half an hour before or so, go for a walk in the fresh air outside. This can help relax you quite a bit.

6) Gently stretch before going to bed. This will help relax your muscles and promotes better quality sleep.

7) Don’t eat anything within a couple of hours of retiring: the energy and water used digesting food in the stomach is diverted from other places in the body, and the result is a poorer quality sleep.
Instead of just water before bed-time, why not try a relaxing herbal tea? Peppermint works well, chamomile is great, and there are “sleepy-time” brews available from some of the major brands of herbal tea makers. I like the one with the Pooh-Bear on it best.

9) Have your room cool at night: this promotes better sleep. Wear socks to bed, however – cold feet and good sleep do NOT go together, lol!

10) If you are in a place where you can open the window without letting in a lot of noise, the fresh air will help you sleep.

11) Always sleep with your mouth and nose outside of the covers. If you sleep with them under the covers, you are breathing in all the stuff you just breathed out – and this is NOT healthy!!

These are some things i have found to promote a good night’s sleep. Hope they work for you!!!
Source(s):
Lots of experience with irregular sleep patterns.

answers:

herbally – Valerian, Hops, Skullcap, Catnip

aromotherapy – Lavender, Clary Sage

/Jabril

answers:

If valerian or melatonin don’t help, you can try good old Benadryl, the antihistamine. Start with one, I take 2 myself.

answers:

there are teas
one is called Sleepy Time Tea
kind of silly but it is suposed to work