I think one of the saddest things to hear as a sleep clinician is when people come to me and tell me that they feel they are forgetting how to sleep. That they don’t get sleepy, they’ve forgotten how it feels… and that’s quite a scary feeling. It’s an horrible fear to have, and actually…
In my clinics, my patients often talk about their insomnia as a problem. I prefer to see insomnia as a pattern… A pattern is something that happens over time, and is built over time. And we can potentially break it and change it. When we talk about a problem we assume something’s wrong with our…
What’s that one piece of advice — as a sleep expert — that I would give to everyone, regardless of whether you’re suffering from insomnia or whether you are a good sleeper? If you just want to get more out of your sleep… Wake up at the same time every day. How is that going…
I’m an NHS sleep clinician and if you are looking to find the right sleep therapy this is what I would recommend for successful treatment: We use something called cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia or CBT-i for short. There are many different ways to get CBT-i, for example: We can read it in a book;…
Is it quantity or quality of sleep that’s important? I often get GP referrals and the letters will say something like, “John has had three hours of sleep”. There’s a real emphasis on the quantity of sleep the patient is getting and whether I can improve it. Actually, I try to get people to understand…
We focus a lot on what we do before going to bed because we like to make ourselves feel like we’re doing something that is going to quickly lead to results. An example of this are evening routines. There isn’t much evidence to support most of the hints and tips that you might have for…
Insomnia isn’t just a sleep problem We’ve talked about the different types of insomnia and what happens in your sleep…But you know that this isn’t just a sleep problem. From all the patients I’ve treated, a lot of the same themes keep coming up… Insomnia is one of the most lonely conditions I’ve ever heard…