Sleep is essential for our physical and mental health, yet many of us struggle to get a good night's rest. A recent study from Harvard Medical School found that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was more effective at treating chronic insomnia than prescription sleeping pills. CBT produced the greatest changes in patients' ability to fall and stay asleep, and the benefits were maintained even one year after treatment ended. It's common for people to try sleeping pills that are sold without a doctor's prescription before seeking help for insomnia.
Some prescription sleeping pills can be an effective short-term treatment, for example, they can relieve you right away when you're very stressed or distressed. Some newer sleep medications are approved for long-term use, however, in general, sleeping pills are not the best long-term treatment for insomnia for many people. Sleep restriction therapy works for many people with sleep disorders, but it takes time. It usually takes several weeks of diligence. For this method to work well, it's important to stick to the schedule and to the very gradual extensions of time.
To learn how best to treat insomnia, your sleep specialist may ask you to keep a detailed sleep diary for 1 to 2 weeks. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i) is an evidence-based approach that combines cognitive and behavioral techniques to help people with insomnia. The five key components of CBT-i are sleep consolidation, stimulus control, cognitive restructuring, sleep hygiene and relaxation techniques. CBT-i produces results equivalent to those of sleeping pills, with no side effects, fewer episodes of relapse and a tendency for sleep to continue to improve long after the end of treatment. So, regardless of how serious you think your individual situation may be, if you have insomnia, sleep restriction therapy as part of a CBTi cycle is very likely to help you. Daytime sleepiness, driving performance, reaction time, and inhibitory control during sleep restriction treatment for chronic insomnia disorder can all be improved with this method.
Restricting sleep can also help you look forward to bedtime and can be a long-term solution to better and less irregular sleep patterns. Get useful information from leading sleep experts and practical sleep advice straight to your inbox, completely free of charge. For example, JL was able to improve his sleep and eliminate sleeping pills through behavioral behavioral behavioral therapy. The behavioral part of CBT helps you develop good sleep habits and avoid behaviors that prevent you from sleeping well. CBT may be a good treatment option if you have long-term sleep problems or are concerned about the possibility of relying on sleeping pills. It works by increasing sleep efficiency (i.e., the amount of time you spend awake in bed instead of sleeping) and prevents you from waking up for long periods in the middle of the night. Intensive sleep deprivation and cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia refractory to pharmacotherapy in an inpatient setting can also be beneficial.
At the end of my evaluation, I suggested to JL that he could improve his sleep and eliminate sleeping pills through behavioral behavioral behavioral therapy. In conclusion, CBT is an effective way to treat chronic insomnia without relying on prescription sleeping pills. It produces results equivalent to those of sleeping pills with no side effects and fewer episodes of relapse. Sleep restriction therapy is also an effective way to improve your sleep quality over time by gradually increasing the amount of time spent in bed each night.
