Get A Good Night’s Sleep — For Good

If you’ve been having trouble getting a good night’s sleep, you know what it’s like to be dead tired and wide awake. Sleep is like the night maintenance crew in a corporate building: it dumps the trash, makes repairs, and refreshes overworked organ systems so your body and mind can be at the top of their game the next day.

Prescription sleep aids interfere with that rejuvenative process, putting the user into a daylong fog. Natural remedies can help a lot of people by getting them off the mental hamster wheel without prescription side effects, so they can sleep well and wake up refreshed. But there’s another kind of insomnia for which calming a fretful mind isn’t enough. It’s related to physiological changes that happen simply because you’ve had more than a few birthdays.

Prior to middle age, our bodies naturally produce two to three times more cortisol (the “stress” hormone) in the morning than at night, so we can power through the physiological transition from sleep to the awake state. Naturally lower evening cortisol levels reverse that process, so we can step off the hamster wheel and fall asleep.

But in middle age, baseline cortisol levels start rising, particularly at night. As a result, the alertness and energy we need to function during the day extends into the night, making it tough to fall (and stay) asleep. It also makes us more sensitive to additional cortisol (from, say, the stress of not sleeping well). Rising cortisol levels also accelerate the age-related decline already happening with other hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and testos¬terone, further accelerating the aging process.

The Secret to Sleep

Sleep disorders are a great example of why the sloppy science of treating symptoms rather than the root cause of a problem only makes things worse. When excessive cortisol is at the root of insomnia, addressing sleeplessness with any remedy that doesn’t normalize the underlying imbalance is doomed to fall flat. With that in mind, here is a “new” cortisol-curbing sleep aid with an age-old history of going to the roots of insomnia. It is used extensively in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), where the philosophy of creating inner harmony and re-establishing balance is the ultimate goal for vital health and natural healing. To me, my naturopathic training is interwoven beautifully with TCM. They both aim to treat the root cause, elimi¬nating the source of the problem and restoring internal balance — so your body can better heal itself.

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) aka Winter Cherry

As you might be able to tell from its Latin name, ashwagandha has a long history of use as a sleep aid. It’s sometimes called “Indian ginseng” for its ability to help the body adapt to stress. This is a herb that regulates the production of cortisol-releasing factor in the brain. The recommended dose is 250 mg daily, taken in divided doses.

Taking this herb before bedtime will give you some immediate short-term relief, allowing you to drift off naturally. Keep taking them long-term, and your system becomes naturally balanced and you’ll restore your natural sleep patterns.