Sleep Deprivation? Take A Second Look At It

What’s normally overlooked when individuals say they are “sleep deprived” is exactly HOW your sleep deprivation presents itself.

The answer to how your sleep deprivation occurs can be the most valuable lead to your tailored sleep solution.

For example, difficulty falling asleep usually has a completely different underlying problem to waking up too early in the morning. Waking up in the middle of the evening anxious and worried, is a different underlying problem to getting up in the middle of the night with twitching legs. It’s fairly obvious, but not normally investigated.

Here are a couple of sleep deprivation problems and possible solutions:

Waking too early in the morning. Evidence has shown that this can have a direct relationship to depression and grief. It can even be linked to food additives and colorings which have been associated with depression (e.g. calcium propionate 282, that occurs in some manufactured breads and frozen foods). And there are also common drugs which have the side-effect of depression and/or waking too early in the morning. Solutions here include day-to-day exercise, omega-3 supplementation, discovering the side effects of your prescription medications, and making decisions to change your life to overcome the problem.

Waking in the night anxious and worried. Clearly anxiety could be a problem here. Not so obvious might be an intolerance to a particular food additive or coloring that increases agitation and anxiety - and at times the reaction does NOT show up the night instantly after having eaten that specific food item - it can take days. Evidence shows that most people don’t think that a food item was a problem unless the adverse reaction happens in the next hour, which makes the diagnosis rather tough. Few food additives, even natural food substances have been related to increased feelings of anxiety, frequent night waking, even nightmares, night terrors as well as weird dreams.

Remember that if you have a restless, crying baby (sometimes even screaming!) - it might be behaving in this way because the chemicals you are eating are passing to them through your breast milk. (To clarify - we aren't saying breast feeding is the problem, but that the mother’s diet could be the problem).

There are a variety of chemical free diets and organizations to help you if you want to investigate this option. Food chemicals are also addictive, so there may be few withdrawal symptoms that require managing during this process. Joining groups that could assist with this a great idea.

These are just some examples (nowhere near a conclusive list), but they will give you an idea of some of the underlying sleep deprivation problems. Do not just think of insomnia in broad terms any longer, your mission is to get down to detail, and self-diagnose your problem(s) in order to find your unique solution.