Unfortunately, many people when looking for the ways to improve the quality of their sleep and solve their sleeping problems turn to sleeping pills and other medications. Why it’s a bad idea? Because they are trying to treat the symptoms, not the causes. There are other, more healthier ways to solve these issues that you could try first. If you suffer from insomnia or other sleeping problems, sleeping pills should be your LAST retreat, ONLY if prescribed by doctor and only for SHORT periods of time. Your sleeping issues may be caused by a number of reasons. You should focus on finding out what those reasons are and addressing them - by changing your habits, changing your thinking and sometime changing your whole lifestyle.

I won’t go into details on why sleeping pills can be bad. I have recently run into a whole site on this subject – The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills that I advise you to check. I will talk on how to avoid the medications treating yourself in a natural way – by changing your habits.

Bad habits that cause sleeping problems

Very often our sleeping problems are caused by bad habits we stick to. Start with analyzing your regular daily activities and how they may affect your sleep. Here is the list of just a few bad habits that may cause sleeping ailments. See how many of these are true for you and do what you reasonably can to get rid of them:

• you wake up late;
• you drink coffee after midday;
• you eat before going to bed;
• you drink energizing drinks a lot(cola, alcohol);
• you take long naps midday;
• you do not exercise your body and spend most day sitting at your desk;
• you spend very little time outdoors;
• you watch scary TV movies;
• you worry a lot about things you have no control over.

There are many tips on this web site that will help you overcome these bad habits and acquire new good ones. Some of the tips are focused and target one specific habit. Many tips are "universal" and can be applied to any habit, even those that are not sleep related. What you should remember is that YOU are the boss and YOU have the power to change ANY habit, if you have passion for this change and if you are disciplined and consistent in your actions.

Sleeping pills and early rising

Why sleeping pills are bad for early rising? Sleeping pills work by depressing the central nervous system, and they may still stay in effect after you wake up. If you think you would sleep well after taking sleeping pills and wake up energized, you’ll be surprised as your morning state may be quite the opposite. Sleeping pills may cause slurred speech, staggering gait, poor judgment, and slow, uncertain reflexes (source – Wikipedia). Sleeping pills may be addictive, too. So if you want to wake up early and start your day full of energy, sleeping pills are not for you.

P.S. I’d like to note that sleeping pills ads that may appear on this page are displayed by Google AdSense which is a contextual advertising engine. They display ads based on keywords found on the page and I have very small control as to what they bring up.

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