As a sleep specialist I often get referrals from neurologists such as Dr Guy Leschziner, a sleep medicine neurologist, with people who have been prescribed sleeping medications. Sleeping medications can actually be quite helpful in the short term. They can help alleviate some of the symptoms of insomnia such as anxiety… But at the end…
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…
It’s quite normal for most of us, even me as a sleep specialist, to wake in the night. It’s normal to have short-term sleep problems. But if this is happening to you on a regular basis it can be a sign of maintenance insomnia. That’s right… you don’t need to have a problem getting to…
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;…
Why is it that over 90% of insomnia treatments fail? I’m a sleep clinician and in the clinic I hear my patients list all the things that they have already tried. Things like CBD oil, relaxation, magnesium, other herbal supplements, massage, different types of therapy and hypnotherapy, CBT, sleep sprays… Tech stuff to help them…
When I talk to patients who have insomnia and sleep problems, it’s not the actual symptoms of sleep that they describe to me… It’s how insomnia can make anyone feel so lonely and isolated from our society, family and friends. It makes us feel like we don’t have control over our own bodies anymore or…
When I was working at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS hospital I saw thousands of cases of insomnia. And it would present differently with everybody. I saw people who had menopause and then they got insomnia. People who went through illnesses, took new medications, had a lot of stress in their lives… Others having the…
I get asked this question a lot as a sleep clinician… I have many different types of clinics within the NHS hospitals… In all my clinics it is the most common question. You might be moving house, you might have a new job or you might have lots of stress at the time. You wonder…
The important element when fixing the problem One of the keys to fixing a sleep problem is timing, which is often overlooked… We talk a lot about changing the duration and quality of our sleep, but we miss out the timing. Why is this important? I worked for Harvard Sleep Labs on a NASA funded…
We know that we have a treatment for insomnia that works… I’ve been doing it for the last 15 or more years, treating hundreds and if not thousands of patients. And this question often comes up… And my answer is always: It’s a lot easier than having the condition. It does take some time because…