Sleep

Well, I am trying a new program I am currently reading about that holds some promise to at least improve my ability to go to bed and sleep. It's been well over 20 years since I have actually gone to bed and slept entirely through the night. They call it chronic insomnia, but have no cure.

While in the bookstore the other day I found a book by a doctor at the Harvard Medical School who specializes in treating chronic insomnia through behavior modification as opposed to the use of drugs. Given that drugs stop working after a few weeks anyway this sounds promising. It's a 6-week program. He claims that 70 percent of his patients begin sleeping normally by the end of the program. The other 30 percent show significant improvement. I could live with significant improvement.

I am on the base week now. This is when all you do is record your sleep information. Right now under the question about "how many times do you wake up at night" I am putting "too many to count" because I lose track after the first six times or so. On a bad night I am probably waking up every 45 minutes or so.

When I get to the first official week next week, I will begin working on my negative thinking regarding sleep. After that apparently it gets harder. For a couple of weeks I will actually spend less time in bed because of this. Fortunately I am not working at present so staying up later is going to be easier than it would otherwise. The one saving grace of this is that he encourages short naps midday. Short means like 45 minutes, which is about the length of time I sleep when I take a nap anyway. I think that I will have to actually lie down in my bed rather than doze off in my chair as I do now.

I don't know if this program will work, but I have nothing whatever to lose by trying it and a great deal to gain by following the program as closely as I possibly can. I'll begin doing things like drinking my morning coffee on the back deck in the sun. That won't be all that hard actually *grin* The sunshine has something to do with circadian rhythms or some such. We'll see. I refuse to get my hopes up too high, but I also won't be pessimistic about it. I'll do what has to be done and will see the program completely through to the end.