Sleeping problems can be caused by a number of reasons. Often insomnia can be the symptom of some other problem, such as medical condition, stress, depression or life style related. Insomnia can even be learnt, this happens when you worry excessively about not being able to sleep and try too hard to fall asleep.

Medication can be an effective short term solution but as a long term solution medication has many disadvantages. Trying to remove the cause is the best solution, but that is not always possible.

Some of the natural remedies for insomnia are:

Make sure that your sleeping environment is dark, quiet and cool. You need a comfortable mattress and a good pillow. Also, don’t read or watch TV in bed. You need to teach your brain that your bed is only for sleeping, with the possible exception of sex.

Don’t eat heavy meals in the evening. Too much food before bedtime means that your body will be busy digesting the food which will prevent you from getting the quality sleep you need.

Avoid drinks containing alcohol or caffeine in the evening. Alcohol makes it more difficult to reach the deep sleep you need to feel refreshed. Caffeine makes it harder to fall asleep, so no coffee or coca-cola in the evening. You may want to be careful with chocolate as well, chocolate contains some caffeine.

Cool down and relax before going to bed. Forget everything that went wrong during the day, you can not do anything about it any longer. Write down what you need to do tomorrow and decide to worry about these things tomorrow. You can try meditation or just a simple exercise, like breathing slowly and picturing yourself relaxing on a tropical beach.

Listen to a tape with slow background music to slow down your brain. Special tapes exist that can reprogram your brain, create new neural pathways, to teach it to automatically prepare for sleep. After listening to the tapes your brain eventually learns to fall asleep and reach the deep sleep you need to feel refreshed.