Online CBT: insomnia

[Cort]

The New York Times published an article today indicating that CBT can be very effective in insomnia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/health/11slee.html?_r=1&ref=health

The News is kind of similar to that in ME/CFS - about 30% of people with insomnia significantly benefited from it. It was effective enough in treating this difficult problem that one doctor said it was kind of unbelievable.

It appears that it was all about managing your sleep behavior properly; going to bed at the right time (do not go to bed early!), having the environment support sleep, not getting tangled up negative and anxious thoughts about how much sleep you are or are not getting.

In the Virginia study, called SHUTi, patients enter several weeks of sleep diaries, and the program calculates a window of time during which they are allowed to sleep. Patients limit the time they spend in bed to roughly the hours that they have actually been sleeping.

The goal is to consolidate sleep, then gradually expand its duration the same technique that would be used in face-to-face therapy, said Lee Ritterband, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, who developed the program.

Stella Parolisi, 65, a registered nurse in Virginia and a patient in the study, said sticking to the restricted sleep schedule was hard, but toward the end, it started to pay off.

The Canadian study tested a five-week program that also emphasized sleep restriction, controlling negative thoughts and avoiding stimuli like light and noise in the bedroom. It also included readings, and audio and video clips to teach and reinforce its messages.

It shows that in some people this approach works very well.

 

[Cort]

My experience

I'd like to say that I realize that I have been doing something similar with the Gupta Amygdala Training. There was a time when I'd wake up early in the morning - as I usually do - and curse the fact that I wasn't getting enough sleep and that I was going to have a lousy day. (In fact writing this I can feel those bad symptoms welling up in my body!). Over the past year or so though those thoughts have died down. While I still often wake up early I'm relaxed about it - my body's physiology is not disturbed and I am more likely to be able to go back to sleep and I generally feel better when I wake up.

My experience it is is that in the state I'm in negative thoughts do you have physiological effects and controlling those negative thoughts really does help.