I often get told by new and old patients alike “I would be in a better head space if I could just sleep,” and they aren’t alone in this feeling with approx 30% of the global population suffering from insomnia.

How are sleep and anxiety connected?

Anxiety and sleep within an acupuncture framework has always gone hand in hand with the ancient acupuncturists believing that the mind was housed in the heart.
Within this belief, when we sleep the mind has to return its house within the heart to have a period of rest. This is mirrored within modern research where it is found that sleep is where our unconscious mind goes through the act of processing, understanding and unburdening all the events that happened throughout the day.

Unsurprisingly, people who suffer from anxiety, or are unable to sleep due to recent stress for whatever reason, miss out the housing of the shen and the unconscious doing the hard work of processing the day. This is all due to the central nervous system which is the bodies processing centre and controls how we react to danger, or more importantly how we perceive danger.

Can’t I just take a tablet for that?

The short answer is yes but no. Within my previous profession as a shift worker many of my co-workers took this route of taking a sleeping tablet to catch up on missed sleep. There are a few issues with this approach one being that it very quickly becomes challenging to sleep without the tablets and the second being that this form of rest misses the very important process of mentally processing the day.
Due to this a vicious cycle can form where you can’t turn off your brain to sleep without a tablet and because you take the tablet your brain is unable to unload and reset.

Why acupuncture?

For those that have had acupuncture they will often report an intense feeling of relaxation during the session, as well as when going to sleep that evening. This can occur from a few different pathways but when talking through the lens of anxiety it is from acupuncture’s ability to supress the hormones in the central nervous system, which just so happens to be the system that initiates anxiety.

As a result the body experiences a reset away from a “fight or flight” response and instead enters what feels like a relaxed but is actually just the body without excess nervous tension. As a result sleep that night can often be achieved easily and the quality and quantity is typically improved meaning the brain has a chance to process and the body is able to maintain this clear rested state.

So, if you’re tired of your mind not turning off or waking up tired, Please reach out with any questions you have or better yet book in to see how acupuncture might help you sleep better.