Since my first post about insomnia in January 2013, things haven't got much better. A good night is often just 3 or 4 h of uninterrupted sleep. Until a few weeks ago, when - Eureka! I finally found something that helped me get a couple more hours of sleep each night. It sounds ridiculous after trying everything under the sun: herbal pills, sleeping pills, lavender spray, chamomile tea (bleurgh), turning off screens and phones, hot baths, warm showers, cooling showers (to aid the natural night-cooling of the body), not drinking, drinking, healthy eating, exercise, relaxation, reading, music, etc, etc. I thought I had exhausted all avenues. But a chance discovery of a Virgin Airlines eye mask made me try it, not really expecting anything, but *choir of angels, Hallelujah*, it really seems to work. I stupidly had assumed that because my bedroom curtains were lined, that my room was dark. But actually it gets pretty light in the mornings. The eye mask really allows me more time before I wake up, so even when I do wake in the night, I am more confident that I'll get more sleep in the morning.
One other thing I have been doing which does seem to make an appreciable difference is increasing the amount of leafy greens I eat. A bit of reading around the subject informed me that magnesium is important for sleep regulation among many other functions - see link here), so I include in my diet plenty of spinach, almonds, cashew nuts, avocados and pumpkin seeds. Apparently magnesium deficiency is pretty common but difficult to test for. I have also just started taking a magnesium supplement.
Good luck to anyone else trying to sleep, let me know if you have any other suggestions.
