Getting adequate sleep is essential to good health. Sleep deprivation has been linked to medical problems such as hypertension, obesity, and heart attack.
It can also lead to psychiatric problems such as depression and other mood disorders. Many accidents have also been blamed on sleeplessness. The consequences of sleep deprivation are serious or even fatal.
Many turn to medication to get a good night’s sleep. This is not a good idea because benzodiazepines and other hypnotics are potentially addictive. The risk of an overdose is high.
Some people who use sleeping pills find that they need to increase their dose from time to time to get the effect they want until they become resistant to their drug of choice.
One tragic example of this is Michael Jackson, who used propofol, a powerful anesthetic, just to get some shuteye because sleeping pills were no longer doing it for him.
Fortunately, there is a safe alternative to hypnotics.
Many people say that guided meditation is the best sleep aid there is. Most people find it difficult to sleep because, as they close their eyes at night, thoughts rush through their minds. Meditation helps you sleep by quieting and relaxing your mind.
When you meditate, you focus on the present, away from the worries of the future and from your painful experiences in the past. You are not bothered by negative emotions. You feel calm and a sense of well-being begins to grow in you.
Some of the wonderful effects of meditation on sleep have to do with the biochemical processes that occur in your body while you meditate. Meditation causes your body to release endorphins, which produces a feeling of well-being. It also increases the production of melatonin, a hormone responsible for giving you a restful sleep.
If anxiety attacks make you sleepless, meditation can also help you. It increases your body’s production of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) which helps stabilize mood and relieve anxiety.
Some people doze off during meditation. That is fine if you want to use meditation to be able to sleep. However, some people struggle to focus to get into a meditative state and because of this struggle, they end up not getting any sleep. If you want to sleep, you need to take the struggle off meditation.
The easiest way to meditate is by using a guide. Guided meditation is usually done with a recording. If someone is guiding you through the meditation process, there is no need for you to think about what to do next. It will be easier for you to focus if all you need to do is just listen to a voice.
One of the best things about guided meditation is that it is usually tailor-fitted to a certain goal you want to achieve. If you have trouble sleeping and you think guided meditation can help you, be sure to download a recording that is specifically designed to help people get a good night’s sleep.
