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 do most insomnia treatments fail?
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…
Quantity vs quality of sleep
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…
Is it insomnia?
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…
When is the best time to start sleep therapy?
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…
How much sleep do you actually need?
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…
How hard is insomnia therapy?
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…