Insomnia: sleeping without pills

Joh Byung-jin

By Joh Byung-jin

The recent earthquake made many people wary and sleepless. A middle aged lady visited my clinic a few days after the incident. She had been using sleeping pills for over a year, and it became harder to fall asleep after the earthquake. Her medication use had increased from half a pill a day to a whole pill to no avail. She wanted sleep, but she also wanted to get off the sleeping pills since it made her feel foggy all day.

According to Korean medical diagnosis, she lacked “eum” due to internal heat, and I performed acupuncture and prescribed herbal medicine accordingly. After six treatments, her medication use has dropped to half a pill every two or three days. She is getting more sleep, and has more energy during the day.

Patients like her are quite common, especially among the aged. In many instances, it’s hard to get off the medication on one’s own due to their addictive nature. The drugs can cause common side effects such as dullness, headaches and dizziness to rarer but much more severe ones like sleepwalking and suicidal urges. That is why these drugs are not prescribed for long-term use, and generally for periods shorter than two months.

The main categories of current sleep medication are benzodiazepines, non-benzodiazepines and antidepressants. These sleeping pills commonly target receptors in the brain, and in practice the longer any pill has been used, it becomes harder to get off. Also, patients do not feel as refreshed during the day when on these drugs.

Korean medical treatment offers a way to avoid these problems by approaching sleeplessness from a different angle. A fundamental aspect in insomnia treatment is managing bodily parameters and distracting symptoms during the night. Body temperature, sympathetic nerve system activity, anxiety, and distracting factors such as pain and nocturia are among things that should be considered. If the right conditions are induced and correct sleep triggers are evoked, sleep is likely to come.

Traditional medical literature dictates pathologies and treatments for sleep loss. Randomized clinical trials on numerous modes of acupuncture, electroacupuncture, and herbal medicines for insomnia have supported their uses.

Researchers reviewed 30 papers and found that there was a very wide range of Korean medical prescriptions and acupoints used for insomnia compared to other disorders. This is because a large number of factors and personal characteristics may cause sleeplessness.

The most commonly used herb in these prescriptions is sanjoin, which are seeds of wild jujubes. This is a relatively safe herb in Korean medical prescriptions, but it has interactions with certain types of sleeping pills which make short-term effects of the pill more pronounced. Due to these facts, it should be noted that proper Korean medical care can be received through licensed professionals only.

Sleep hygiene is something for sleepless people to keep in mind. Patients should not use smartphones or watch TV one hour before getting to sleep. Also, if one can’t fall asleep for one hour, he or she should get out of bed and do some quiet activity such as reading for a while.

Also, alcohol is actually a stimulant. It will keep your brain awake, even if you feel sleepy. So having a nightcap for your sleepless nights is not a good idea.

Insomnia can be a very agonizing condition. Consultation with a Korean medicine doctor is a good place to start.

The writer practices Korean medicine at the Kyunghee Morning Korean Medical Clinic in Gijang County, Busan.