Say Goodbye to Sleepless Nights: Natural Insomnia Relief with Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine

Written By Jenniffer Conte

by: Nico Conte, PharmD, L.Ac

Restful sleep can be hard to come by, but it doesn’t have to be! Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine treat the root of your insomnia, helping you to reclaim your nights for good.

Sleep occurs in stages. When your nervous system is regulated, you transition easily into a deep restful sleep, where the body heals, grows and absorbs the lessons of each day. However, stress can keep the body stuck in alert mode, leading to difficulty falling to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling rested.

Pharmaceutical sleep aids work by hindering your ability to stay awake. They can help you get to sleep, but they don’t help you stay asleep. Additionally, pharmaceuticals can be habit forming, and they carry the potential for dangerous side effects, which I’ve outlined below:

  • Over-the-Counter (OTC) sleep aids, such as doxylamine (Unisom), diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Tylenol PM, Advil PM) cause morning hangover, dry mouth, urinary retention, constipation, blurred vision and increased risk of dementia.

  • Melatonin is often mixed with other supplements and useful only for shift-work disorder.

  • Antidepressants, such as trazodone, amitriptyline and desipramine cause morning hangover, dry mouth, urinary retention, constipation, arrhythmia and delirium. Whereas mirtazapine (Remeron) causes weight gain and increased appetite

  • Hypnotics like zolpidem (Ambien), zaleplon (Sonata) and eszopiclone (Lunesta) may cause sleep walking and other dangerous activities like driving or cooking wile asleep.

  • Benzodiazepines increase the risk of addiction, respiratory depression and daytime sedation.

Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine can help you sleep by shifting your nervous system out of alert mode and back into a steady rhythm. The effects are long-lasting, and they can be felt immediately. Over time, you may find that you are more resilient and less reactive to the stressors in your life.

 
 

In the meantime, you can follow these tips to encourage restful sleep:

  • Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day

  • Increase your “sleep drive” (adenosine)

    • Eat (multiple small meals increase levels of adenosine more than a few large meals)

    • Exercise (it takes as little as 30 min of walking per day)

    • Nap early in the day if you need to (napping later in the day erases the sleep drive you’ve built up)

  • Eat your latest meal before 7pm (according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the ability to digest your food is the lowest between 7pm and 9pm)

  • Eat your latest meal at least 4 hours before going to bed (according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, if your body is still digesting food, it’s unable to rest)

  • Create a bedtime routine

    • Drink a cup of warm herbal tea after dinner (avoid caffeine)

    • Turn off all screens at least 30 min before bed (blue light disrupts sleep - look up any number of studies about this)

    • Read in bed or journal about your day

    • Pray or meditate at bedtime (promotes “rest and digest” state)

  • Keep a sleep journal (see if you can find any patterns to when you have trouble sleeping)

  • Write down tomorrow’s “To Do list” so you don’t think about it all night

  • Keep your bedroom cool and dark

  • Use a sound machine (colored noise? - they create white noise, brown noise, green noise, etc) if you’re easily awoken by outside noise

Jenniffer Conte