Counting sheep…………..

 

I never ever thought I would suffer from Insomnia, me? no… never ever…. I was a hit the pillow and sleep through WW3 type…. but as I became a women of a certain age… Insomnia hit me like a sledgehammer… and I could not function…. I couldn’t get off to sleep, and I couldn’t stay asleep and quite frankly it was actually very distressing on many levels. Not only are you exhausted mentally and physically, but to add to the mix, that the bogey men comes out at night and every teeny, tiny problem becomes enormous…   you see the start of a very tiring vicious circle.  So you lay there worrying and worrying… or get up, drink tea, watch night time TV (which I must tell you is complete rubbish!) and well tea is full of caffeine and makes you pee!  Then at 6 in the morning you crawl into the bed and yes, sleep like a log…. for an hour!!! Only to repeat the same exercise the following night…..sound familiar

So Insomnia is something I have experienced and still do on some occasions… but I am lucky! This is one condition where I can actually poke myself with needles….
Acupuncture is REALLY effective in the treatment of Insomnia. There have been a few research projects conducted in the last few years and the results give an out right YES, acupuncture really is a wonderful way to treat insomnia…. in fact it is 90% effective!
Insomnia is quite complicated scientifically speaking. In order to sleep we need adequate levels of serotonin and melatonin racing around our body especially if we are anxious too. And guess what Insomnia makes us very anxious…. if we don’t have enough of these lovely neurohormones we just don’t sleep and become more anxious!
Melatonin is a Central nervous system depressant with anxiolytic, mild hypnotic and anticonvulsant actions …definitely what we need at bedtime… The pattern of melatonin secretion over a 24-hour period is widely accepted as a measure of circadian activity (our internal body clock… the one that makes us wake up at the same time each day without an alarm clock especially on Sunday morning!) in humans. This pattern is disrupted in insomnia. Compared to normal patients, those with insomnia have suppressed nocturnal outputs of melatonin and are more likely to have histories of depression.
The good news is…. Acupuncture consistently raises the Melatonin level (tested by 24 hour monitoring of levels in urine) Urine analysis showed that nocturnal physiological levels of ‘aMT6s’ (melatonin) increased following acupuncture and decreased during the morning and early afternoon.

So this is all wonderful proof that acupuncture is a safe and effective treatment for Insomnia…. So if you are counting sheep on a regular basis here is your answer.

You can find the research project here: http://journals.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?Volume=16&page=19&journalID=62