Can't sleep? Many people today suffer from sleeplessness of one form or another. While there are many medications you can take as an insomnia treatment and many different ways of addressing this problem, have you ever considered your physical fitness levels and amount of exercise? It's true that the more active you are, the better you typically sleep at night. Many don't understand this since exercising gives you a burst of energy, so they assume that you shouldn't exercise in order to sleep. But in reality, while exercising does give you energy during the day and does increase your metabolism, it is also a very effective insomnia treatment for most. Why is this?
Exercise is a good insomnia treatment for many reasons. One is that it puts demands on the muscles. When you're physically active the muscles are pulled and stretched in order to support your movements. These movements actually cause tiny tears and rips in the muscles that need to be repaired during the day as well. How is this an insomnia treatment? The body needs to be at rest in order for the muscles to be repaired and renewed. They need to be inactive for them to be healed. The body makes you feel tired in order to get you to sleep so that it can have this inactive time for healing. This is often why you feel tired after strenuous exercise or physical exercise; the body is simply trying to get you to rest so it can repair itself.
In other words, being active means you'll be tired enough at night to actually sleep, which might not sound like an insomnia treatment but which is surprisingly effective.
Physical activity helps to regulate your blood sugar and metabolism. These too are involved in your sleep cycle and can be part of your insomnia treatment. When your metabolism goes up during exercise, it then continue to run higher or faster even when you're at rest. The heart beats more rapidly in order to send blood and oxygen to those muscles so they can go through that healing process. This too contributes to your being tired at night, which is a great insomnia treatment. When your blood sugar is regulated you do not have the highs and lows of those who have sugar problems and which tend to interfere with healthy sleep.
Exercise is good for you for many reasons; an insomnia treatment is just a side benefit to being physically active on a regular basis. You work your muscles enough to make your body want to sleep so they can be repaired. This makes you tired at night; it might even be impossible to stay up regardless of whether or not you want to sleep! So while you might not have thought of exercising as being an insomnia treatment, you may want to give it some consideration. You'll be able to fall asleep and stay asleep much better than if you're sedentary throughout the day.
