If You Want to Fall Asleep Without Sleeping Pills — The Autonomic Nervous System and Sleep

If it bothers you that you have to depend on a sleeping pill every night to fall asleep, it may be worth taking a fresh look at the "reason" why sleep does not come.

Sleeping pills help you fall asleep, but they do not change the underlying cause of why sleep will not come. With chronic insomnia, the first thing I look at is whether the autonomic nervous system is staying in daytime mode even at night. In this article, I want to talk about the relationship between sleep and the autonomic nervous system, and about a direction that leans less on medication.

Sleep is a transition

On a healthy night, the side in charge of activity settles down and the side in charge of rest rises, and the body crosses over into sleep. It is not something that happens all at once, the way a switch clicks over; it comes on gradually, as a number of conditions fall into place.

But when the tension, stress, and irregular rhythms of the daytime carry on, the sympathetic nervous system does not turn off easily even when night comes. The body is tired but the mind is aroused — a "tired but can't sleep" state. Difficulty falling asleep, waking often, or not feeling refreshed even after sleeping all come from this.

That is why I do not look at sleep in isolation

Insomnia rarely comes alone. When the autonomic nervous system tilts toward tension, it is common for not only sleep but also palpitations, indigestion, and cold hands and feet to appear together. So I do not look only at sleep; I look at the whole picture of which way, and how far, that person's autonomic nervous system is leaning. When the root is the same, helping with sleep becomes, at once, caring for the other symptoms too.

Toward leaning less on medication

First, let me be clear. I do not recommend suddenly stopping a sleeping pill you are currently taking. Adjust it in consultation with the doctor who prescribed it, and herbal treatment works on top of that, in the direction of restoring the body's own power to set tension down when night comes.

• Acupuncture takes an approach that lowers an over-activated sympathetic nervous system.
• Herbal medicine is composed to replenish the depleted capacity for regulation and to support the night's rhythm.
• In daily life, we decide together, starting with keeping a consistent bedtime and reducing light and caffeine before sleep.

The goal is not to get rid of sleeping pills right away, but to gradually recover the body's own power to fall asleep. To the extent that this power is restored, the degree to which you lean on medication can naturally decrease as well.

Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)