Natural insomnia treatments are, basically, any treatments you can do that don’t involve introducing harsh chemicals or side-effects. For example, there are herbs, like rosemary and lavender, that are great for relieving the symptoms of insomnia. There are several other good options too.

Diet:

Your diet can have a huge impact on your insomnia. You’ve probably heard, for example, that you shouldn’t eat spicy foods before bed. That’s absolutely true, since they could give you heart burn or nightmares and keep you from resting comfortably. What you do eat and drink can be just as important as what you don’t, though.

Milk, Honey & Tea:

Warm milk, tea and honey are all great natural cures for insomnia. Taking one of them before you go to bed can make all the difference in the world. In fact, you could even put some honey in your milk or your tea, if you want the best results. Chamomile tea is a great one for sleep, but almost any hot tea is soothing and relaxing, as long as it’s not caffeinated.

Exercise:

Exercise is another great cure for insomnia. The idea is to exercise enough during the day that your body is tired when you want to go to bed at night. If you don’t exercise, your body still has a lot of stored up energy at the end of the day, so it can be hard to sleep.

Light Limitations:

As humans, we naturally tend to be awake when it’s light out and tired when it’s dark out, except for a select few people who work night shifts. So, if your bedroom is too bright, you aren’t likely to sleep well. So, be sure that, before bed, you close blinds and curtains, shut lights off and even shut off your TV.

Aroma and Music Therapy:

Although light is not good for sleep, sound isn’t bad at all, if it’s the right sort of sound. Soft music or a recording of a relaxing noise, like waves washing up on a beach, can help you drift off to sleep at night. Obviously, the same isn’t true of loud music, which can interrupt your sleep cycle.

Along those same lines, certain oils have been found to help people sleep, especially lavender oil. The scent of it is soothing and sleep-inducing.

So, as you can clearly see, there are lots of simple and natural insomnia cures and remedies that can work for you. It doesn’t always require prescription medication. You may just need to have a little patience and take a few steps to help yourself along the path to getting a good night’s sleep.

Ambien/Ambien CR:

You’ve probably heard of Ambien and Ambien CR. They’re both advertised on television all the time. You may not understand the difference between them, though.

The original Ambien works perfectly fine for what it does. Its purpose is to help you get to sleep. So, if you find yourself staying up all hours of the night, your doctor could prescribe it. The down side, though, is that it doesn’t necessarily help you to stay asleep.

Think of Ambien CR as being a bit like the updates you sometimes get for computer software. It’s a new and improved version. CR is designed to not only knock you out, but keep you out for the night, too.

Lunesta:

Lunesta is another of the common sleep aids that you may see advertised on your TV. Like Ambien CR, it’s designed to not just put you to sleep, but also keep you that way for up to seven or eight hours.

The side-effects of all of the above medications are what you might expect. You could experience impaired thoughts or judgments and dizziness, for instance, since the medications are designed to make you drowsy and groggy.

Benzodiazepines:

This sort of sleeping medication has been around for a long time. Although there’s nothing wrong with them, they act differently from the newer medications, like Lunesta. Benzodiazepines, in fact, can have a tendency to make you want to sleep too much. You could find yourself drowsy even in the middle of the day if you’re on them. The other big problem is that they can be addictive. So, you should certainly only take them under your doctor’s close supervision.

Antidepressants:

Finally, since depression and insomnia often go hand-in-hand, many doctors prescribe anti-depression and anti-anxiety pills to treat the issue. Although they aren’t really insomnia medications, they can calm you down so that you can sleep better at night.

Depending on your age, any allergies you have and any possible drug interactions if you’re on multiple medications, though, your doctor may not choose to go that route. Since some of these drugs can cause dizziness, for example, doctors don’t usually recommend them for older people. So, your particular treatment will depend on your specific situation.