Sleep disorders affect many people. This leaves many looking for a natural sleep aid. Sleep is as essential to health as diet and exercise. When you are unable to get a good, uninterrupted night's sleep it affects all aspects of your life.
There are many types of sleep disorders and massage can help treat a few of them. Let's take a look at some of the most common sleep problems and find out if massage can be used as a complimentary treatment for them.
Insomnia
Insomnia is the inability to get good quality sleep. This is one of the most common of all the sleep disorders.
Insomnia can have a variety of causes. Often times it results from stress and anxiety. It can also be triggered by an irregular sleep schedule, too much caffeine, chronic pain, or jet lag.
In most cases, insomnia can be treated with self-help techniques, such as relaxation exercises. Massage can help people with insomnia by decreasing stress hormones, relieving chronic pain, and balancing your nervous system. Massage can help calm the mind helping you relax and get the rest you need.
Restless leg syndrome is a tingling sensation in the legs that gives you a strong urge to move them. Moving the legs makes the sensation go away for a little while. This sensation usually gets worse at night preventing you from sleeping through the night.
Massage helps relieve the tingling sensation this syndrome causes. You can even massage the symptoms away yourself using various massage techniques. Simply squeezing and releasing the calf muscle a few times will help relieve symptoms.
I've written an entire page on this syndrome. You can find out more about it and how to use massage and other natural techniques to relieve it on the Restless Leg Syndrome Treatment page.
Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is another one of the common sleep disorders. It occurs when you stop breathing during the night. This is characterized by shallow breathes and loud snoring with pauses between breaths that last 10 seconds or more. If you have this condition, you wake up frequently during the night to breathe. Some symptoms of sleep apnea are long gaps in breathing, very loud snoring, gasping or choking and not feeling rested in the morning.
This condition usually occurs because of some sort of obstruction in the air passage.
Massage cannot be used to treat sleep apnea. There are some things you can do to help your sleep apnea though. It usually occurs in people who are overweight. So losing weight can help. Some people find relief by sleep with their head propped up on several pillows. Sleeping on your side can also help. It is a dangerous condition so if you think you have sleep apnea you should see your doctor.
Narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a brain disorder that makes you very sleepy and even makes you fall asleep suddenly. People with narcolepsy are lacking hypocretin. Hypocretin is a chemical in the brain that regulates sleep.
This condition is also very dangerous. It disrupts normal life because sufferers could fall to sleep while walking, driving, or doing any other daily activity. If you fall asleep in the middle of activities, are extremely tired during the day and have short periods of time where you lose your motor control, you could have narcolepsy.
Narcolepsy is genetic. Massage cannot help treat it. Medication is often used to treat people suffering from this disorder.
Massage for Sleep
The inability to sleep seen in insomnia and chronic insomnia can be connected to a hormone imbalance in the body. People with insomnia tend to have low serotonin levels. Serotonin is a hormone produced by the body that is the precursor to the sleep hormone melatonin. Massage affects the biochemistry of the body. Besides lowering the amount of stress hormone cortisol it also increases serotonin production. The increase in production of serotonin promotes a good night's sleep.
Massage also activates your parasympathetic nervous system. This slows your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure and makes you feel much more relaxed.
For massage to help you get sleep get a massage as close to the end of the day as possible. After your massage avoid brightly lit areas and physically strenuous activity. You should use the time between your massage and sleep to wind down and relax. Try doing some meditation or read a good book. Then prepare for sleep.
Other Natural Sleep Aids for Sleep Disorders
There are other things you can do besides massage to help with sleep disorders. Avoid stimulants in the evening. Caffiene, chocolate and sugar should all be off your list after 3 in the afternoon. These substances will stimulate you and will make it more difficult for you to sleep at night.
Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule. Doing this will help train your body as to when to make the appropriate hormones to get you to sleep. Try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time daily.
Before electricity was invented, people tended to sleep when it was dark and be awake during the daylight hours. In the summer, we could stay awake longer because there are more daylight hours, but in the winter we slept more. With electricity, we live in an artificial summer where we are awake for long hours all year around. On top of that most people get less than the eight hours sleep most of us need.
In order to prepare for sleep and get the body producing the hormones needed for sleep, you should do some relaxing activities about an hour before bed to get your body ready for sleep. Avoid looking into the bright light of a television or computer. Use lamps in your house a few hours before bed and avoid overhead lights that mimic the position of the afternoon sun. In a dimly lit environment your body starts preparing for sleep.
It can also be useful to take a warm bath before bed. The raising of your body temperature in the bath and falling of the body temperature when you get out makes you feel sleepy.
You can take melatonin if you suffer from sleep disorders to help you get to sleep also. I recommend starting with the smallest dose to see if it will help you sleep and slowly increase the dose each night until it starts to work for you. Never take more than 5mg of melatonin. Take the melatonin before bed. It will take about a half hour to take effect. You can find it in most health food stores.
Another option is to take 5-HTP. This is a natural supplement that helps your body produce serotonin . You can take it before bed with a starchy snack. This supplement does make some people feel nauseous. It also takes about a half hour to work. It is available in most health food stores.
I hope this information about sleep disorders has been helpful for you.
