What causes chronic insomnia? Well in clinic as a sleep clinician I often get told, “my sleep problem has been caused by menopause”, or by high stress at work, or an illness, or a life event. It doesn’t really matter – there are many things that could cause you to have asleep problem, but the problem…
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…
What it means to be a good sleeper? I think all of our goals when we have a chronic sleep problem is to be a good sleeper. A good sleeper is not somebody who sleeps well all the time. The ratio is they have good sleep most of the time but about 15-20% of the…
‘Will coffee kill my sleep?’ This is probably one of the most common questions that sleep clinicians get. In reality, everyone has a different sensitivity to caffeine. Someone might have caffeine late at night and not feel any effects… While somebody else might swear they cannot have it any time of day because it’s definitely…
I have been studying sleep for a long time. Dealing with many different types of patients. I even worked at Harvard labs doing studies around astronauts’ sleep and blue light. And, a really interesting subject that comes up is sleep debt. Our natural tendency As humans, we feel that we need to recover when we…
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 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…
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…