Sleep is the new status symbol-and for good reason.
Non-restorative sleep, feeling groggy in the morning and needing an alarm or coffee to wake up, is a problem that dramatically affects how you feel and function every day and modern medicine has no good cure.
Pills have scary side effects and new research is proving that they can even age your brain faster if you don’t deal with the core problem.
Non-Restorative Sleep & Daytime Fatigue Symptoms
- Struggling to get out of bed in the morning
- Needing to use waking up to horrible alarms
- Needing coffee in the morning to feel human
- Feeling groggy and cranky in the morning
- Afternoon energy crash at 4pm, zero energy to finish your workday, or go to the gym.
- Struggles enjoying your day, your work, and your favourite people
- Chronic low energy and fatigue symptoms with all medical tests coming back as ‘normal’
- Belly fat that doesn’t budge and carb cravings
- Low stress tolerance
Brainwave Dysfunction Patterns of Sleep Problems
If you can relate to these things, you are suffering from an imbalance in your brain’s natural daily rhythm and ability to wind down the brain for deep sleep and rest.
The Hyperarousal Effect can explain insomnia by looking at HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) axis dysfunction from a brain level.
Modern lifestyles involving excess screen time, hectic work schedules + poor diets over years have led to dysregulated brains and nervous systems in huge numbers in western populations.
The hardest part about having sleep issues is that they are ‘invisible’ problems and most people suffer in silence for years.
It’s something that most doctors can’t help you with except to offer sleeping pills, and you can’t change it with willpower.
But you can take control over back, get energized again and restore healthy sleep so you can spring out of bed in the morning looking forward to your day, and have the mental clarity and energy to do the fun stuff you’ve been missing out on!
They key to understanding chronic insomnia, non restorative sleep and other sleeping issues is that this is not just an ‘at nighttime’ issue, it is a disorder related to a 24-hr hyperarousal or ‘no off switch’ on a brain level that has both daytime and nighttime brain differences involved vs. people who sleep deeply without sleep aids and wake up refreshed.
Healing sleep issues starts by changing some of these key brain and nervous system patterns, like the ones we can see on an EEG brainmap.
Higher P3 v.s P4 in alpha. This is another brain marker of chronic insomnia and often seen in people who are light sleepers and have daytime fatigue
High Posterior Beta Wave activity. The brain cannot shut down and turn off thoughts for sleep time
Low Powered Brainmaps. This is a pattern seen often in people who have chronic fatigue and low energy from years of sleeping issues. The brain can no longer make enough energy to keep up during the day.
Neurofeedback & Neuromeditation For Sleep
In sleep problems, the brain has lost the ability to shift into the correct state for sleep due to chronic stress, environment, food and/or genetic factors.
Neurofeedback is the quickest evidence based way to help you to restore your natural sleep rhythms without the side effects of sleeping pills (which do not actually restore normal sleep).
It works by training brain control and flexibility and also specific protocols proven to restore normal sleep from chronic insomnia so you can make a smooth transition in the brain and body from activation to rest naturally each evening.
‘Sleep Reset Training’
The problem with mind body techniques like relaxation and meditation you’ve tried before to help you sleep and failed is that they are too general and self-directed, which often doesn’t work well if you suffer from insomnia and you have brain hyperarousal.
We use a specific graduated holistic strategy to restore normal sleep at UltraResilience.
Eating For Sleep
If you are eating at the wrong times & eating the wrong combinations of foods it will be much harder to fall asleep before midnight.
Eating late at night is one of the most common sleep mistakes with food because often we work late and by the time we eat, it’s 8pm or later and this shoots up cortisol before bedtime keeping you wired.
You can increase the brain’s sleep hormones production from a neurochemical level with specific medicinal foods, supplements and herbal combinations that help support the production of GABA the brain calming neurotransmitter as well as specific amino acids such as L- theanine, calming adaptogens and sedative-hypnotic herbs in small amount such as chinese skullcap, passionflora and california poppy.
3 Quick Tips to Start Sleeping Better
- Shut off all screens 3 hrs before bed (and if you must look at a screen, wear good quality blue-blocking glasses, including smart phones, laptops and tvs since the blue light disrupts melatonin increases
- Wind down your mind before sleep with a breath-focused meditation done sitting up for 10-15 minutes. A racing mind is the most common cause of not being able to fall asleep normally.
- Take a total caffeine holiday for 2 weeks-including coffee in the morning as some people are slow metabolisers and combined with a busy mind, even 1-2 cups in the morning can fragment your deep sleep, even though it won’t affect getting to sleep.
Neurofeedback and Insomnia Research
There are dozens of studies on neurofeedback to help re-regulate sleep patterns in the brain without drugs.
- Bell, J. S. (1979). The use of EEG theta biofeedback in the treatment of a patient with sleep-onset insomnia.Biofeedback & Self Regulation, 4(3), 229-236.
- Berner, I., Schabus, M., Wienerroither, T., & Klimesch, W. (2006).The significance of sigma neurofeedback training on sleep spindles and aspects of declarative memory. Applied Psychophysiology & Biofeedback, 31(2), 97-114.
- Feinstein, B., Sterman, M. B., & MacDonald, L. R. (1974). Effects of sensorimotor rhythm training on sleep. Sleep Research, 3, 134.
- Hoedlmoser, K., Pecherstorfer, T., Gruber, E., Anderer, P., Doppelmayr, M., Klimesch, W., & Schabus, M. (2008). Instrumental conditioning of human sensorimotor rhythm (12-15 Hz) and its impact on sleep as well as declarative learning. Sleep, 31(10), 1401-1408.
- Mills, G. K., & Solyom, L. (1974). Biofeedback of EEG alpha in the treatment of obsessive ruminations [affecting sleep]: An exploration. Journal of Behaviour Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry, 5, 37-41.
Neurofeedback and Insomnia Research
- https://www.zotero.org/groups/80298/items/collectionKey/9TBDT2WN/itemKey/HNK6VH8I/itemPage/2
- http://www.indianjpsychiatry.org/article.asp?issn=0019-5545;year=2012;volume=54;issue=4;spage=359;epage=366;aulast=Sharma
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23574290
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22967281
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10617175
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10617175
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23594033
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23583625