Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. This may seem like a lot but water is essential to keep our bodily functions working properly. Dehydration can also cause you to wake at night, but try and avoid drinking too much just before bedtime as you may find yourself waking up constantly to go to the toilet.

Drinking alcohol before bedtime may make you feel relaxed, but generally should be avoided. Although it may help you to fall asleep, you will experience lighter, more fragmented sleep. This is partly due to the fact that it metabolizes during sleep, which causes mild withdrawal symptoms.

You should avoid drinking too much Caffeinated drinks in the day and at least 3 hours before bed time. Nicotine is also a stimulant that should be avoided before bedtime. We all need a boost in the morning to wake us up and indeed caffeine does promote alertness, however it can also cause nervousness and irritability.

Caffeine is a stimulant which increases your brain waves, heart rate and blood pressure, and can last up to 6 hours in your system. If you don’t like the taste of water but like a hot beverage in the day, try a herbal tea, or decaffeinated drink. Chamomile tea is caffeine free, and is a soothing and relaxing drink which can aid a restful night’s sleep if drunken before bedtime.

Most people dread exercise, the idea of sweating, hard work and aching muscles isn’t the most alluring past time. But, exercise doesn’t have to be intense and strenuous. If you don’t like playing sports like basketball or football, try swimming, Pilates, yoga or other low impact exercises. Even housework and a brisk walk can be beneficial to your health.

Exercise is not just good for you physically but also mentally. It is effective at improving mood, confidence and self image, and also effective at reducing anxiety, stress and depression. Exercise increases your metabolic rate and your body temperature, making you more awake. This aids the body’s natural rise and fall in temperature during the day, which can improve sleep.

It is worth noting also that when you exercise, our brain increases deep sleep to compensate for the physical stress caused on the body. Ideally we should exercise everyday for at least 20 minutes during the day, but avoid exercising at least 3 hours before sleep to give your body enough time to cool down.

As well as physical exercise, we need to exercise our brains! Lack of mental stimulation during the day can affect our body’s need to sleep. During the day you should engage yourself in mental activity.

Try learning something new and fun, or creative like painting, cookery or writing. Even playing Sudoku or other puzzles will help stimulate the brain. Mental stimulation increases alertness and improves memory and mood. Similarly to physical exercise, you should avoid too much mental exercise before sleep.

As you already know stress and anxiety can disrupt the normal sleep cycle. Even before you attempt to sleep you may have already decided that you are not going to be able to sleep. Experiencing stress and negative thoughts during the day can affect sleep. Later we will look into some useful techniques that are quick, easy and highly effective at tackling stress.

Find out here how to sleep peacefully every night

Your bed is supposed to be for sex and sleep, it is not for work, watching TV or eating in. If you learn to associate your bed with wakefulness, you will inevitably find it more difficult to fall asleep in. So that is the first tip, which to most is obvious, but we have all been guilty of having a mid-morning snack in bed!

Your bed itself needs to be comfortable, with a supportive and comfortable mattress. Mattresses can be expensive to buy, but an alternative option is to buy a mattress topper, which can be inexpensive. You also need a good pillow that’s right for you, and is both comfortable and supportive of your neck and head. A bad pillow can cause neck and back ache and can sometimes be the cause of a sleepless night.

Sometimes the result of a poor nights sleep is due to backache or neck ache. This might be due to stress, bad posture, lack of fitness or a bad sitting position. In fact it is common for office workers to complain of back and neck ache due to this.

It is always important to be seated correctly on a chair, especially if you are going to be seated for long periods. A lumbar support for the back is helpful, but the general rule is to think tall! Keeping your chin tucked in, this applies when standing too.

A good duvet is also important as you don’t want to be too hot or cold at night. You can buy duvet sets which come in two parts a thinner and a medium duvet. This is ideal as you can use the thinner duvet during the summer and combine the two, during cold winter nights. But, if you have a perfectly fine set and it’s not having a negative affect on your sleep, then you don’t need to. What you want to achieve is a comfortable and peaceful place for you to sleep.

The bedroom itself needs attention, if it’s too noisy, not dark enough or too warm it can adversely affect your sleep. Noise can be a problematic area to try and overcome. If the noise is coming from outside i.e. traffic or from noisy neighbors it may be a good idea to get double-glazing.

If you have a snoring partner, they can seek medical advice or wear a nose strip which increases airflow and generally reduces snoring. A cheaper and effective solution is to wear earplugs, you can buy earplugs online made from putty, they’re great because you can shape them and they are reusable.  Listening to soothing music may also help, as it draws your attention away from background noise. If the cause of the noise is for example a noisy clock, it’s probably best to move it into another room.

It is also important to keep your room tidy and organized a cluttered room, is a cluttered mind. You want to keep your room clean and comfortable, so that it is inviting and calm, not chaotic. Junk can be distracting and can affect your mood negatively. A tidy clean room can help relax and lift your mood.

Too much stress and tension can be bad for our psychological and physical health and can wreak havoc with sleep. In this day and age, people are so accustomed to experiencing stress in the day they often accept it as part of life.

Most people might associate stress with feelings of anger, however feelings such as resentment and frustration are triggers for stress. Simply working in a dull job or just not being appreciated at work can cause negative emotions.

In many cases a person may not have any strong thoughts about their position or remark that they feel particularly upset. This is because over time a person can grow used to particular situations and environments. Just like a worker can grow use to working in a noisy factory.

They may get home feeling no different than usual, but once they get into bed or relax on the sofa. They realize how tense and exhausted they feel. Conscious thoughts start bubbling to the surface and they begin to feel restless and irritable.

They may feel tired and sleepy, but feel tense when they get into bed. They might also find it hard to relax their muscles and get comfortable – experiencing aches and pains frequently. Racing thoughts is another common problem that affects poor sleepers.

Tension can build up in the mind and body and over the day. So it’s important to be able to release some, if not all of this tension before we sleep. You might think an hour in front of the TV is enough to relax you, but believe it or not, watching TV can be highly stimulating for the brain.

Even such activities such as reading or surfing the net can be highly stimulating. What your mind needs is deep relaxation to help release mental tension. Activities such as listening to relaxing music, having a massage or hot bath can greatly reduce muscle tension.

It’s important to realize the importance of relaxation. Our minds and bodies are not designed to be barraged with constant stress and tension. Make an effort to reduce stress through relaxation in both the day and evening. Simply spending 10 minutes twice a day in a quiet place meditating can do wonders to reduce stress and improve health and well-being.

Hypnosis works by tapping into your subconscious and implementing gradual changes to thoughts and behaviors, through visualizations or affirmations. Hypnosis works because the mind cannot tell from reality and vivid imagination.

Positive changes can be made in a very short space of time. In fact, hypnotherapy has been used to treat insomnia with great success. Through relaxation and positive affirmations the subject can drift into sleep much more easily and experience deeper and restorative sleep.

Hypnotherapy believe it or not, can be performed without a hypnotherapist. In an ideal situation you would have a hypnotherapist by your bedside guiding you into sleep, however this would be rather impractical and expensive. Many people use hypnosis CDs to help them drift into sleep. Hypnosis CDs work very much in the same way as a hypnotherapist does.

There is another alternative however which may surprise you and that’s self-hypnosis. Just as the hypnotherapist works as the facilitator, you can become your own hypnotherapist. There is nothing complex about self-hypnotherapy, it only takes time and practice to slot into the practice.

Through regular practice you can guide your mind into deep and relaxed states, enabling you to drift off into sleep. Using positive affirmations and visualizations you can communicate with the subconscious mind and ingrain positive thoughts, behaviors and habits.

You can learn how to self-hypnotize and tackle more than just your sleep problems. For more information on how to self-hypnotize, visit How to Beat Insomnia.

You may have heard about the health benefits of meditation and how it can help with sleeplessness and insomnia. Some other health benefits include:

• Increase oxygen levels in your body.
• Increase in blood flow.
• Reduction in heart rate.
• Lowered blood pressure.
• Reduction in muscle tension.
• Increase in self-confidence.
• Increase in serotonin production.
• Improves mood and behavior.
• Reduces stress and tension.
• Strengthens the immune system.

Insomnia can often be caused by poor mood, stress, worry, anxiety, tension and low serotonin levels. What’s more a lack of deep sleep can reduce the body’s immune system leaving it prone to diseases and viruses.

Deep meditation can help relieve these underlying issues so that sleep comes easier. What’s more through practice of meditation your brainwaves will slow and may even produce waves in the Alpha and Theta range. Theta waves are associated with REM sleep. With practice you can learn to enter the Theta stages at will – your gateway to sleep.

Confused? Here’s a little More On Brainwaves…

The brain constantly produces waves that flow through its neural pathways which are called brainwaves. There are four brainwave patterns; Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta. Each one is defined by a different set of frequencies measured in Hz (Hertz).

The following is a basic look at the four common types of brainwave patterns, their frequencies and mental states each pattern is associated with:

Beta Waves (13 – 30 Hz)
Commonly found during an active or waking state. It is also associated with busy or anxious thinking, active concentration, arousal and other mental sates such as fear, anger and worry.

Alpha Waves (7 – 13 Hz)
If you’ve ever been relaxed and at peace, perhaps sitting in a park, soaking up the sun then your brain was probably producing alpha waves. Alpha waves are associated with a tranquil state of consciousness, on the edge of deep relaxation and meditation.

Theta Waves (3 – 7 Hz)
Associated with deep meditation, dreaming and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. During this state your mind wanders where it will and you are in the prime state of creativity, visualization and imagery.

Delta Waves (1 – 3 Hz)
When your brain is producing delta waves you are in deep dreamless sleep or a deep trance like state. This stage is essential for repair and rejuvenation of the mind and body.

So What Is Brainwave Entrainment And How Can It Help?

Brainwave Entrainment is the practice of synchronizing or tuning one’s brainwaves to a desired frequency.

How It Works:

If you play a tone of say 96 Hz in your left ear and 102 Hz in your right ear, your brainwaves will resonate at the differential frequency – 6 Hz. Playing this set of tones will produce a frequency in the range of Theta Waves.

Because of this naturally occurring phenomenon the brain has a tendency to change its dominant EEG (electroencephalograph) frequency towards the frequency of the dominant aural stimuli, in effect ‘synchronizing’ the two hemispheres of the brain.

The use of Binaural Beats can achieve exactly this. When listening to binaural beats, each ear is sent pure sine waves of different frequencies. As I mentioned the brain will resonate at the differential frequency. We can create a range of desired frequencies using binaural beats.

How can this help? Well I guess it’s obvious now, but if we can create a set of tones which create a frequency of between 1 to 3 Hz, your brain can be entrained to resonate at the same frequency. If you look at the brainwave chart above, you’ll notice that Delta Waves are produced at that frequency. Brainwave entrainment can be very helpful in getting into deep meditative states.

Brainwave entrainment can be used for other purposes other than to aid and guide you through meditation. Using binaural beats can actually help with sleep and guide you into deep sleep states.

Many insomnia sufferers have experienced dramatic improvements in the ability to fall asleep through brainwave entrainment alone. It has even been used to effectively treat psychosomatic illnesses like depression. As well as improving mental and physical health it can also increase concentration, memory functioning and even creativity.

If you’re interested in giving brainwave entrainment a try, sign up for my Free Newsletter and you’ll get a free Brainwave Entrainment Audio worth $29 – Click Here to visit www.HowtoBeatInsomnia.com

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On one side you have the sleep mechanism and on the other you have the wakefulness mechanism. With a majority of insomniacs, the wakefulness mechanism often beats the sleep mechanism. This is usually due to a number of reasons. For one when our conscious mind is too awake at night, we find it nigh on impossible to sleep. Often this is due to excessive worry, stress or anxiety. Psychological disorders such as depression can also affect the ability to sleep.

It’s the subconscious that knows how to sleep, not the conscious mind. You may have tried, but it’s absolutely impossible to will yourself to sleep with the conscious mind. What’s more lack of sleep is habit forming. In time your body and mind get use to not sleeping, you get used to the spiralling thoughts that keep you awake and sleeplessness becomes a habit.

To top it all off, sleep deprivation reinforces the inability to sleep. When we are exhausted in the day, we can sometimes sense that our body and brain wants to shut off. The only thing we can do is to fight the tiredness. You drink caffeine to keep you awake, you go get some fresh air, you force concentration, you try and wake yourself up anyway you can.

By fighting off sleep, you’re weakening your sleep mechanism, it becomes a habit. Even when you’re completely exhausted and ready to sleep, your internal wakefulness mechanism keeps firing up from habit, breaking up sleep and keeping you awake. You’re natural ability to sleep is weakened and your sleep/wake cycle becomes imbalanced.

People wonder why sleep medication fail to work. Well for one, sleep medication cannot substitute natural sleep. In fact the chemicals in sleeping pills affect brainwaves and disturb deep sleep. Deep sleep is the most essential stage for energy and restoration, without it, you will most probably wake feeling groggy, tired, dazed and irritable. Headaches and muscle aches are common symptoms of sleep deprivation and light fragmented sleep.

It’s not surprising that in recent tests a placebo (sugar pill) had a far better impact on its test subjects than sleep medication. It’s a myth that sleep medication helps you sleep faster and it’s a myth that it can improve sleep and daytime performance. What’s more sleep medication is addictive and unhealthy for the body and mind (it is a drug after all).

You might be thinking right now, that there is no hope, that if sleep medication don’t work, what will? Insomnia is just as much a psychological disorder as it is a physical disorder. So it’s really essential for a sufferer to be treated on both the mind and body to successfully cure insomnia or at least improve sleep.

Grab a coffee and watch this now:

Quote from Dr Mercola: “For over 100 years conventional medicine has seized control of the US health care system and as a result we have over 800,000 people who are killed by interacting with this system. It is likely that over 50 million Americans have died prematurely from this abuse.”

Check out his site www.mercola.com A truly awesome guy who knows what he’s talking about. I love coffee, but I try and avoid it (caffeine is a stimulant that can disturb sleep), so go grab yourself another drink, a herbal drink or better still a glass of fresh water and check out this next highly acclaimed video at www.mercola.com/townofallopath/index.htm

Burning fat can seem tedious and boring, not to mention hard work. People, who want to lose belly fat quickly, believe that if they could only be bothered to go to the gym or the pool just for a few hours a week, they could be sporting washboard abs even Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud of.

Going to the gym is going to help, of course it is, however it is not the only important factor in how to get rid of belly fat. Reducing that waste line with a well balanced diet as well as a good exercise regime will ensure that you get rid of that belly fat with far more efficiency and speed!

Who on earth wants to spend hours a week in the gym, doing endless crunches, reps and sit-ups without seeing any results? The sweating, the aches and pains for absolutely nothing? Oddly this is far more common than it may seem. Many people will try to lose weight over years and still not see results. Worse still, they gain weight!

Why is this? Calories play an important factor in your success in losing belly fat. Most people assume that if they just eat less, they will lose weight. But if they do not burn more calories than they consume, they will inevitably gain weight.

Eating foods like junk food that contain high calories need more than just a few hours at the gym to burn off. What’s worse is that some people even believe that an hour at the gym deserves a cream donut or a slice of cheesecake just as a small reward –how wrong they are. They’ve just spent an hour at the gym only to pile it on again in a fraction of the time.

Eat less calories + burn more calories than consumed = lose belly fat quick; simple right? However where people often go wrong is by exercising when crash dieting or eating foods that lack the right nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, fiber and fats. This can be damaging for the body’s health.

The food you eat is your body’s fuel, so it’s important to pay attention to what you eat and not just the quantity. Junk foods contain high fats and little nutrients to cater the basic needs of the body.

Going at it in the gym or pool on a poor diet will only make you burn out in the end. You’re body and mind will start to suffer, you’ll be prone to illnesses and fatigue. You’re body will dig into its reserves and you will weaken as a result. What’s worse is that your belly fat will remain. Of course you’ll have the six-pack underneath the fat, but it won’t be visible.

Knowing how to get rid of belly fat begins with knowing how to eat well, especially if you want to lose belly fat quickly. By eating the right foods in conjunction with your healthy exercise regime you will no doubt see better results.

To get a head start for the New Year, go to How to get rid of belly fat. Merry Christmas and Have a Great New Year!

Using prescription or over-the-counter sleep aids to catch up on your sleep should be avoided. You should consult your doctor before taking sleep medication. You should also avoid taking them for more than 2 or 3 nights in a row, as prolonged use can cause ‘rebound’ insomnia.

Sleeping pills are generally bad news as they will break down your body’s natural sleep cycle and make sleep very difficult in the long term. It may also affect the amount of deep sleep you attain during the night as most major sleeping pills interfere with normal brain wave patterns. Without deep quality sleep the body skips the vital stages of sleep that are required for restoration.

You may find that you wake up feeling groggy, drowsy or tired this is because most sleeping pills take time for the body to break down. In fact sleeping pills do not improve daytime performance whatsoever; they only help tackle the symptoms. Even so, in studies it has been shown that insomniacs that rely on sleeping pills took on average 45 minutes to sleep. This destroys the belief that sleeping pills help you sleep faster.

Sleeping pills may help you get to sleep but with continual use your body will build tolerance, and you may find that you need to ‘up’ your dose to attain the same affect. Since they do not tackle the root cause of insomnia, many users become dependant and even worse ‘chronic users’. Taking sleeping pills is definitely not a long term solution to insomnia.

So if they don’t improve daytime functioning and they do more damage than good including; reducing brain activity in the day, affecting memory and judgment as well as being highly addictive, then why are they being relied upon by millions of adults?

Many sufferers feel powerless and simply do not know how to tackle insomnia effectively. An insomnia patient who seeks advice from their doctor week after week can leave the doctor feeling desperate to help and more likely to resort in prescribing sleep medication.

With only 10% of doctors rating their sleep knowledge as good in a recent survey, we can assume that the general public knows significantly less in terms of sleep education. Sleep medication can seem the only way to get a night sleep.

However insomnia medication is not a long term solution. They will only worsen the condition. With this in mind it’s best to seek alternative therapies and medicines.