Insomnia is very common in older adults — around half of people over 65 report sleep difficulties — but it is not an inevitable part of ageing. The most effective treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), recommended by NICE and the NHS ahead of sleeping tablets, alongside simple changes to routine and environment. […]
The insomnia treatment that actually works over the long term is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) — the first-line treatment recommended by NICE and the NHS for chronic insomnia. It is not a luxury but an important health intervention: rather than waiting for the problem to pass, CBT-I identifies what is holding the difficulty […]
If you feel exhausted all day yet can’t sleep at night, the reason is that tiredness and sleepiness are not the same thing. Tiredness is a lack of energy; sleepiness is the biological signal that it is actually time to sleep. In insomnia the body is tired but the nervous system stays switched on — […]
You should seek help for insomnia when the difficulty lasts more than a month, sleep has become something you worry about during the day, you dread the night before it arrives, or you are running on empty. At that point it is no longer a run of bad luck — it is a pattern. And […]
Sleeping tablets often stop working because they bypass the problem rather than solve it. They don’t strengthen the sleep mechanism, don’t change unhelpful habits, and don’t address the anxiety around sleep — so over time the body learns “without the pill, there is no sleep”, which weakens your confidence in your natural ability to sleep. […]
If your child only falls asleep with you beside them — holding a hand, being stroked, or with you in the room — and wakes in the night needing you back, this is not about spoiling. It is about learning. Children learn to sleep through association: whatever conditions they fall asleep with, they will need […]
The sleep effort paradox is simple: the harder you try to fall asleep, the harder it becomes. The thought “I must fall asleep now” tells the brain this is an emergency — and the body responds by raising your heart rate, tensing your muscles and sharpening your mind, the exact opposite of sleep. CBT-I doesn’t […]
CBT-I is not “talking about your childhood”, and it is not a collection of sleep tips. It is a focused, short-term, structured treatment that treats insomnia as a changeable pattern. It works across several levels at once — sleep habits, the thoughts that create pressure around sleep, the link between day and night, and the […]
When your child wakes in the night screaming, sweating and frightened but doesn’t really respond — and remembers nothing in the morning — it is usually not a nightmare. These are night terrors: a common phenomenon in childhood, mainly between ages 3 and 8, that happens during deep sleep. The child is asleep even though […]
Feeling exhausted all day yet unable to fall asleep at night is one of the most confusing experiences in insomnia — and it comes down to the difference between tiredness and sleepiness. Tiredness is a feeling of low energy; sleepiness is a biological state in which the brain is genuinely ready to fall asleep. People […]
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