Further methods to combat insomnia

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Three further ways that may help to promote sleep are: relaxation techniques, exercise and sleep restriction.

Relaxation techniques These aim to reduce your mental and physical arousal before going to bed. Relaxation techniques may help even if you are not anxious, but find it hard to get off to sleep. There are a number of techniques. For example, progressive muscular relaxation has been shown to help promote sleep. This technique consists of tensing and relaxing various muscle groups in sequence.
Your GP or a counsellor may be able to recommend a tape or CD that takes you through deep breathing exercises, and other methods to help you relax.

Daytime exercise Regular daytime exercise can help you to feel more relaxed and tired at bed time. (However, you should not do exercise near to bed time if you have insomnia.) If possible, do some exercise on most days. Even a walk in the afternoon or early evening is better than nothing. However, ideally, you should aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise on five or more days a week.
Moderate exercise means that you get warm and slightly out of breath. You do not nead to go to a gym! Brisk walking, jogging, cycling, climbing stairs, heavy DIY, heavy gardening, dancing, and heavy housework are all moderate-intensity physical exercises.

Sleep restriction This is a treatment strategy that may be advised by your doctor. It is best done only under the supervision of a doctor or sleep specialist. Very briefly, the principle of this treatment is that you limit the time that you spend in bed at night. As things improve, the time in bed is then lengthened. An example of the way that this may be done in practice is as follows.

First, you may be asked to find out how much you are actually sleeping each night. You can do this by keeping a sleep diary.
You may then be advised to restrict the amount of time that you spend in bed to the time that you actually sleep each night. For example, if you spend eight hours in bed each night but you sleep for only six hours, then your allowed time in bed would be six hours. So, in this example, say you normally go to bed at 11 pm, get to sleep at 1 am, and get up at 7 am. To restrict your time in bed to six hours you may be advised to go to bed at 1 am, but still get up at 7 am.
You then make weekly adjustments to the allowed time in bed depending on the time spent asleep. (You need to keep on with the sleep diary.)
When 90% of the time spent in bed is spent asleep, then the allowed time spent in bed is increased by 15 minutes by going to bed 15 minutes earlier. In the above example, you would then go to bed at a quarter to one.
Adjustments are made each week until you are sleeping for a longer length most nights.