Tag: sleep
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How Sleep Problems Stick Around: The 3P Model of Insomnia
Bad nights versus insomnia disorder Everyone has a bad night from time to time. However, for some, the one bad night turns into a steady stream of bad nights. Suddenly, you are not having a bad night anymore. You have insomnia. The question is: why do sleep problems sometimes stick around? In this post, I…
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Simple Ways To Get Better Sleep If You Have Insomnia Based on Sleep Science
Introduction The world is full of myths, misconceptions, and misinformation about how to treat insomnia. For example, people talk about sleep hygiene as a solution to insomnia; in reality, sleep hygiene is not an effective strategy to treat insomnia. Even physicians tend to immediately jump to sleep medication, which most people do not prefer because…
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Optimizing Your Sleep: Six Components Of The Sleep Health Framework
The Sleep Health Framework (Buysse, 2014) helps us to understand sleep health in a multidimensional way, in which the sleep-wake cycle is broken into six important components that together optimizes our health and functioning. These sleep components include: In this post, I discuss each of these components in turn and provide strategies to optimize these…
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What Is Normal Sleep? From A Sleep Science Perspective
Introduction There’s a lot of myths out there when it comes to sleep and what is normal sleep. For example, many people fall victim to the idea that everybody needs at least eight hours of sleep to feel good and healthy. This is actually not true. Moreover, for people who are shorter sleepers (e.g., those…
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Should I choose medication or therapy for my insomnia?
Introduction When I am doing clinical work, my priority is always with the patient. And every patient is different – they each have their own varied lived experiences that come with a unique set of goals and beliefs. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to providing treatment recommendations. I am not in the…
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How the 8-hour sleep myth might be causing insomnia
The reality of sleep needs When I work with people with insomnia, one sleep goal I repeatedly hear from my patients is “I want to get 8 hours of sleep” or “if I could just get 8 hours of sleep, I would be so happy”. This is not surprising at all because many people have…
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Paradoxical Intention for Sleep Anxiety
The Insomnia Paradox It’s said that the dark is for dreaming,But for me, it’s a waking nightmare.And it goes on, and on, and on…Into eternity. It is the paradox of insomnia,The more I cry, the more it grows.The more I try, the further sleep goes.So it goes… To this eternal damnation, I have come to…
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The Three Causes of Insomnia and How to Fix Them
What is Insomnia Disorder? Depending on how we define insomnia, up to 50% of the population experiences some type of sleep problem. Insomnia disorder is defined as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early, at least 3 days a week, for a significant duration (>3 months). Insomnia is a 24-hour disorder and…
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Worry Logs for a Good Night’s Sleep
Introduction Have you ever gone to bed ready for sleep, and then your entire night is filled with thoughts such as: “I have to get the car fixed”, “I need to find a babysitter for the kids on Friday”, “what if I get sick and can’t work”? These thoughts can cause a lot of distress…
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What do I do when I am tired? Strategies for Fatigue Management
What is fatigue and how is it different from sleepiness? People often interchangeably use the terms “feeling tired/fatigued” and “feeling sleepy”. However, for us nerds in sleep science, we like to be pedantic and differentiate being tired from being sleepy because there is use is knowing which one you are feeling. In simple terms,…
Simply mental health 