Sometimes insomnia goes away on its own — but usually it doesn’t. Insomnia triggered by a temporary event can clear once things settle. But when the difficulty lasts weeks and months, a pattern forms, and insomnia stops being a “reaction” and becomes a mechanism that keeps itself going. The earlier you treat it, the shorter […]
CBT-I is usually better than both general talking therapy and sleeping tablets for chronic insomnia because it targets the sleep mechanism itself — the habits, thoughts and physical responses that keep insomnia going. General therapy may not focus directly enough on sleep, and medication treats the symptom rather than the root. CBT-I is short, structured, […]
You shouldn’t ignore insomnia because it tends to turn from a temporary problem into a chronic one if left untreated — and its effects reach far beyond the night. Treating insomnia is not a luxury but an important health intervention. The good news is that there is a research-proven treatment, CBT-I, that helps most people […]
Insomnia is one of the most common symptoms of perimenopause and menopause — affecting 40–60% of women — yet it is often under-treated. Falling oestrogen and progesterone, night-time hot flushes, anxiety and shifts in the body clock all disrupt deep sleep. The most effective treatment for the resulting chronic insomnia is CBT-I, sometimes alongside HRT […]
Sleep difficulty becomes insomnia when it occurs at least three nights a week, persists for three months or more, and affects your daytime functioning — despite having adequate opportunity to sleep. A single bad night, or even a few, is not enough for a diagnosis. Insomnia is a pattern, not a one-off event. We all […]
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. […]
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