The Insomnia Debt of America

And How Self-Hypnosis Can Relieve It

insomnia1As a country we are going into debt. Sleep debt that is. Prudent concern about sleep debt is just as important to healthy relationships as concern over the national economic debt is for maintaining an acceptable standard of living. Sleep deficit, or debt, is sleep that you owe to yourself. There is a national debt of sleeplessness.

The debt is the total hours of sleep that Americans are not getting for a variety of reasons. There are probably even regional clusters of sleeplessness that accumulates,for example, in geographic areas where there are a lot of retired people, like Southwest Florida and the Sun Cities!

Probably seniors that have a variety of health problems have a more difficult time sleeping. Consider also areas where people are more likely to have two jobs, or 24 hour cities like Las Vegas and Miami. It’s easily understood how people in those places may have problems trying to get enough sleep.

When you think about it, if two people get together that are normally close, but one of them is in a bad mood because of lack of sleep, the relationship is bound to be stressful. What’s worse is if both are not getting enough sleep. The combined sleep deficit is a sure fire recipe for irritation, disagreements and higher stress levels – all of which could have been avoided by getting sufficient sleep.

Is there a way to measure this sleep deficit? Can you know how much sleep you actually need? Life would be easier if we all had our own sleep meters and that everybody could tell how much in sleep debt we might be. Sort of like a pedometer or a smart watch that help others understand where we might becoming from. The fact is that even the sleep-deprived individual may not understand why they are feeling stress, depression or moodiness.

On rare occasions some people have been known to sleep too much. However, most sleep problems result from too little sleep. The generally accepted range of what is enough sleep lies somewhere between seven and nine hours. But other factors such as age, work schedules, and overall health affect appropriate sleep.  So the right amount of sleep is an individualized judgement.

Sleep is important for healthier functioning of both mental and physical performance. It is a sanctioned time when the world allows us to do nothing. A kind of universal bedtime. As you have no doubt heard many times, about a third of our entire lives is spent with our eyes closed. For that period of time we are to do nothing but do it well.  For most of the human race, the time set aside for this ‘inactivity’ is the time between sundown and sunrise. But in the modern world, with industrialisation, the time to sleep is often squeezed in between work schedules’ This includes the odd schedules during the night of those who keep our communities going while the rest of us try to sleep.

There is new research (NYTimes, Sept 6) that suggests that even though your body appears to be still and quiet, seemingly resting from the challenges of the day, your brain is actually quite busy. It is apparently cleaning up the frazzled synapses in your head – sort of like the cleaning personnel that comes into offices and schools at night to straighten up and set things up keep for the next day.  Sleep provides
your brain with the proper and necessary maintenance that it needs to keep your daytime activities running smoothly. If you don’t get enough of it, then you’ll  be short changed during your waking hours.

So you need to have “lights out” – a time when it looks like “nobodys home”. There’s really a lot going on during that period of time. So much so that it can have a profound effect on keeping you sharp and high functioning during the day – in your relationships of business, love and play.

Maybe you have a tough time getting this kind of restorative sleep. If so, you may have seeked help by using sleep medications that are most certainly intended for short-term sleep problems. On one hand the medical community will tell you there is too much addiction to sleep aids and on the other they are being prescribed in record amounts.

A better and proven solution to sleep problems is a behavioral approach. Just about anybody can learn self-hypnosis as a way to relax and prepare for sleep. Once you learn the basics of self-hypnosis, it’s easy to formulate your own customized method that works best for you!

Self-hypnosis simply involves useful imagery from your favorite peaceful memory, or an imagined situation that allows you to drift into a pleasant state of mind and quickly into a restful nights sleep.

Two of the top self-hypnosis programs for insomnia are listed below. Read the introductions to each and decide which one would be best for you. And to read more about the benefits of a good nights sleep you might want to read  the article How Your Subconscious Mind Works with the Wonders of Sleep.

1. Insomnia Beater Pack – a complete program with five MP3 downloads to cover all types of insomnia issues. Sessions are also available individually but the pack is a much better deal and frankly more effective as it addresses many aspects. From the leader in Hypnosis downloads.

2. Insomnia Hypnosis – this is a one MP3 session from a Natural hypnosis provider at a reasonable price. There are other downloads in this area as well that might be of interest to you.

Based on an article by William R. Morrow appearing on News-Press.com

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