Depression: Failure to Learn Depression stops you. You can’t start. You can’t think. You want to rest but can’t sleep. Simple acts become unendurable. You retreat, then hide. You can’t burden others with what you are now – stuck. In previous centuries personality changes so abrupt led depressed people to be burned at the stake. Things […]
How to Treat Insomnia Part II (Including When You’re Older)
Insomnia afflicts the majority of Americans over 65. It makes many people miserable, but can be aided or even erased by relatively simple techniques. Insomnia’s causes are many and complex, including changes in body clocks, types of illnesses, effects of medications, and the process of aging itself (see part I.) Fortunately, most treatments of insomnia, […]
How to Prevent Depression
In the 1990 Global Burden Disease study, depression was listed as the fourth largest cause of disability worldwide. In the 2000 study, it was third. In the 2010 study, second. Perhaps a third of Americans will eventually get clinically depressed. It’s also hitting younger ages. Recent surveys point to perhaps 17% of American female secondary students […]
Simple Ways to Treat Insomnia
America is increasingly sleepless. It’s no surprise. Insane politics and politicians cause many sleepless nights. But insomnia can be caused by sleep apnea and shift work; hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism; depression and anxiety; alcohol and marijuana; chronic lung disease and congestive heart failure. Just as there hundreds of causes of insomnia, most people who suffer sleeplessness do […]
Returning to Sleep
People complain to me ceaselessly – they can’t get back to sleep. Yet returning to sleep engages the same tools that help you fall asleep. If sleep is as necessary to life as food, why is returning to sleep so difficult? It seems many of us have forgotten how to rest. To fall asleep most […]