1. Medical Problems.

Physical or mental disorders including depression, anxiety, kidney disease, heart trouble, restless leg syndrome, asthma, Parkinson’s disease, sleep apnea, thyroid disorders (hyperthyroidism), chronic pain and diabetes can affect sleep. It makes sense why chronic pain and anxiety is one of the biggest causes of insomnia, because they force your brain to higher frequency taking you further and further from relaxation and theta frequencies. And these are just some of the medical problems which can cause insomnia, there are many more. The first step to curing your insomnia is managing or treating these medical problems first so that your brain has an opportunity to slow down.

2. Stress

Stress is one of the biggest causes of insomnia. The stress may be positive, such as the birth of a baby, a new job or marriage, or negative, such as financial concerns, bereavement or working odd hours. On top of that people with insomnia often worry, as night-time approaches, that they will not be able to sleep that night, so this becomes like an unending cycle. Once again if your mind is agitated it will not sleep and by thinking over and over again over a certain problem or situation your brain waves are unable to slow down. Is your stress causing your insomnia? Is this a stress that will go away? Or does it need to be managed?

3. Stimulants and Drugs

Caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol will negatively affect your sleep. Caffeine is a brain stimulant that can affect your body for 5 hours which interferes with good sleep. Alcohol may seem to initially help you fall asleep more rapidly, however it causes early morning awakenings and difficulty returning to sleep. These should be avoided so that you can have the best chance for sleep.

4. What You Eat

Spicy foods and those high in sugar will affect your sleep. These irritate the body and give it a ‘high.’ Also the amount you eat is also important. If you have a large meal before bed, your body is busy digesting eat which may cause insomnia. What are you eating throughout the day? What are you eating before bed? For some this might be a new revelation but what you do put in your body affects the mind.

5. Vigorous Exercise Before Bed

If you exercise vigorously up to 2 hours before bedtime your body will still be on a natural high of adrenalin and endorphins. This one is very simple to turn around by doing minimal exercise within 2 hours of bedtime. Sometimes a relaxing walk can help slow down the brain waves and prepare it to sleep.

6. Bad Sleeping Patterns

This is particularly relevant to students, who during exam time will spend long hours studying at all hours of the night. If this continues then it may form into a habit which will then affect your sleep. So you will find it impossible to sleep even when you want to.  Shift work also goes in this category. How can you sleep when your brain has been trained to be active at this time by either study or work? This pattern can be turned around easily with the right binaural beats audios.

7. Desecrating Your Sleeping Sanctuary

If you use your bedroom for more than just sleep and romantic moments, then maybe you are desecrating your sleeping sanctuary and telling your brain, this is not the place to sleep. For example if you watch TV, read, or argue in the bedroom, you are creating a pattern, that tells your brain now is not the time to sleep.  If you reverse this and use your bedroom only for sleeping soon you will develop a positive pattern so that bedroom equals sleep and your brain waves will slow down to the theta frequencies.

These are only some of the factors which affect your sleep, but it is not good enough just to know about these factors, you need to do something about them and act on it.

Insomnia is considered to be chronic if it occurs on most nights and lasts a month or more. It has a wide variety of causes, and affects as many as 40% of adults in any given year. If you are suffering from this problem you know how frustrating it is to toss and turn during the night, only to wake up bleary-eyed at the sound of the alarm and drag through the day exhausted.

There are no specific tests to diagnose insomnia. Still, it’s very important for you to have a thorough medical evaluation if you are having sleeping problems for an extended period of time. In order to correctly diagnose insomnia it is important to have a detailed record of sleeping habits. The patient’s spouse or sleeping partner may also be questioned concerning the patient’s sleeping patterns.

Insomnia Is A Symptom Not A Disease

Please note that insomnia is not a disease but a symptom. It can be caused by an underlying sleep disorder, or might be brought on by something as simple as a change in schedule, a stressful event at work, or an afternoon cup of coffee. External factors, the most common of which are stress and anxiety rob you of your ability to relax at bedtime and therefore prolong the time for you to fall asleep and reduces the quality of your sleep as well.

A good doctor will not just treat the symptoms but will help you to identify the causes. Of course you can do this yourself. The best way to do this is by taking a direct approach to determine the exact root of your insomnia; we must look at it in a direct, organized, logical method. The cause is likely rooted in the unconscious mind, directed by the right side of the brain, but in order to access it we must appeal to the left side. When we systematically clear the air in the conscious, or logical left brain, we get far greater access to what goes on in the unconscious, or right side of the brain.

The Scientific Method for Insomnia Treatment

Are you familiar with the scientific method? The scientific method involves altering a single variable in an experiment, then comparing it to a control group. You may remember this when you completed lab experiments in high school – manipulating a variable and comparing results. There are no quick fixes to completely cure your insomnia overnight, and we will be focusing on other factors that may need to change. However, it’s these steps that are important.

Keeping a personal sleep diary can help you to identify what we really feel, and determine the undermining causes of insomnia. Your sleep diary can do this with a few simple, but powerful exercises. This first exercise I recommend must be done as soon as you wake up, so be sure to keep your diary with a pen by your bedside. Duration of exercise: 5 minutes

1.)    Think back to yesterday. Write down the day and time you went to bed, and approximately how long it took you to fall asleep.

2.)    Rate your sleep on a scale of 1-10 (10 is Restful, 1 is Fitful)

3.)    Write down how many times you woke up during the night, and why (sweating, thirst, etc.)

4.)   Write down your bedtime routine (did you watch TV, read, have intimate encounters, etc.)

5.)   Write down any substance intake, such as caffeine or alcohol.

6.)    Write down any exercise that you did, and the duration.

7.)   Use five adjectives to describe your emotions yesterday (e.g. overwhelmed)

8.)   Last but not least, write down any anomalies. Did you fall asleep in the living room? Did you go to bed earlier? Write down anything you think of.

Repeat this exercise every morning for seven days. When seven days are over, read over your diary. Take note of similar emotional triggers (i.e. do you wake up more often at night when you feel stressed) as well as physical ones (i.e. do you feel more rested after you exercise). Underline or highlight similar words. Read your diary entries aloud and write down any noticeable patterns that would indicate consistently poor sleeping habits.

By following these simple instructions you will be well on your way to discovering what is causing your insomnia.

Click on our next article => 7 Common Causes of Insomnia.

This process is called entrainment not to be confused with entertainment. Entrainment, also called brainwave synchronization, is the practice of altering one’s brainwaves frequency by means of a periodic stimulus with corresponding frequency.

The stimulation can be aural, as in the case of binaural beats, but the stimuli can be visual, like in the case of dream machines. It can also be both aural and visual. You can also entrain someone’s brain wave frequency through electromagnetic radiation.

Every brain wave frequency range will produce a state that will correspond to a certain mind state. For example, if you brain is operating in the beta brain wave frequency range, the area of external activity (physical, muscular, nervous, emotional and intellectual) will be dynamic in your personality. This is the range in which your brain waves are usually in when you are practicing activities that require your utmost attention.

If you brain is in a theta state, then you will feel a bit drowsy like in a relaxation state. This is the range where most of our daydreaming takes place. If you ever were once on the freeway and couldn’t remember what happened in the last 5 miles, chances are you were in a theta state.

If you’re brain is in the Delta state, then you are probably in deep sleep. The delta state can also be reached by skilled meditation practitioners. This is the lowest brain wave frequency range. If you go below the delta state, you will be in what is called a “brain dead” state.

But if you are in an alpha state, you will be in a state of relaxation but still be well awake. The alpha state is the state between the beta state and the theta state and this is the zone you want to be in when you are trying to achieve better relaxation.

So if you want to achieve that goal with binaural beats, you have to go with binaural beats mp3 that targets that specific range. There are plenty of different binaural beat audios out there specifically made for that purpose.

These recordings are designed to bring your brain waves into the 8 Hz to 14 Hz frequency range. This is the range in which your brainwaves are when they are in the alpha state. You will then feel as relaxed when you listen properly to these recordings as you usually would if you were to reach the same state through some other method.

But you will need a very good set of head phones to take advantage of all the benefits of binaural beats. Since binaural beats will only work if each separate ear is stimulated with a clearly distinct frequency, you will not be able to get results if you use standard speakers.

Never before have we been given the opportunity to “tune” our mind up to specific mind states with external sources of stimuli. If used properly, binaural beats mp3 can be a very effective way to release stress.