A guide examining the causes of poor sleep, and how to treat it with herbs and natural healing
Insomnia is a major problem for many people, and a minor one for most, often caused by things such as stress, pain, digestive issues, urinary problems and hormones. In the author’s twenty two years of herbal practise, at least half of the people seen have had some kind of sleep issue. It may be waking at 5am, when they would rather not, or it may be impossible to get to sleep, or if they do go to sleep they wake every hour.
Sleep problems are inextricably linked with whole body health – fix one and the other gets fixed too. The way to fix it will vary from one person to another and requires detective work to establish the problem which will then offer the answer.
Read a magazine article, or an internet feature, or most books on sleep, and you will learn all about sleep hygiene and also maybe about a few sedative herbs such as valerian or chamomile. However most people with sleep problems are very well aware of all these things and they just haven’t worked for them. There are also the books on sleep where one person has found the way that works for them so they evangelise this one way for everyone else.
Sleep: The Elixir of Life is different from all the rest because it looks at all the many reasons for poor sleep – such as stress, pain, digestive issues, urinary problems and hormones – and goes through ways to treat them and hence solve the sleep problem. The methods used to treat them include herbal medicine, dietary and lifestyle changes, flower remedies and essential oils. This book is all about finding a way through an individual’s health problems to fix sleep in the best way possible, by actually treating the cause of the problem.
Jadual kandungan
Preface
Introduction
1: Sleep – what is it, how much do we need, why do we need it. Why can it be called the elixir of life?
2: Helping babies and children to sleep better
3: The effect of diet and digestion on sleep
4: The effect of stress and anxiety on sleep
5: The influence of hormones on sleep; from premenstrual syndrome through pregnancy to menopause
6: The urinary system and sleep disturbance
7: Pain causing sleep disturbance: muscle pain, joint pain, menstrual cramps, mastalgia and headaches
8: Other health problems that commonly cause sleep disturbance
9: Materia medica of herbs that appear in the text; glossary of herb actions; methods of taking the herbs
10: Other ways of taking herbs to help with sleep – flower essences and essential oils
11: Diet, supplementation and natural healing, including guides to a dairy free, gluten free, nightshade free and low salicylate diet
Endpiece
Notes to the text
Resources
Bibliography and further reading
Index
Mengenai Pengarang
Christine Herbert FAMH, Dip AET, BA (Hons) qualified as a herbalist in 1997, after spending nineteen years in the NHS as a biomedical scientist. She retired from practice in 2019 in order to dedicate her time to sharing her knowledge through teaching and writing. Christine is an Honorary Fellow of the Association of Master Herbalists.