Many people with bipolar disorder also experience symptoms of insomnia and sleep disturbance. Researchers have been investigating treatments for this condition that do not involve medications. After numerous clinical trials, there has been significant success with CBT-I treatment. CBT-I is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and it involves sleep restriction and stimulus control. The purpose of the first treatment is …
SHUTi: Work towards a better night’s sleep
Having trouble sleeping? We think the website SHUTi may be helpful to you. Sleep is a crucial component for the happiness and well being of an individual. An appropriate amount of sleep can lower anxiety levels, help prevent overeating, and improve memory. On the moodsurfing website, we recommend SHUTi as a resource to individuals struggling with insomnia. SHUTi provides an …
Sleep Strategies
One of the most frequent causes of insomnia is anxiety. Insomnia of this kind is caused by increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system at night. The body releases norepinephrine (the flight or fight hormone) at night when that system should be inactive. You wake up and you feel “wide awake.” A current patient of Dr. Forster’s is having difficulty sleeping …
Nature’s Cycles
It should be raining. It is March in the San Francisco Bay area, and we have had hardly any rain for the past three months. It’s a funny thing, but even though I have been taking advantage of the good weather to go out bicycle riding and hiking, there’s a part of me that doesn’t feel quite right about this …
Sleep and Memory
An interesting story published in the New York Times suggests that the reason we are less able to remember things as we get older is that we sleep less well. The article is based on a report posted online on Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The report suggests that as the brain ages, changes take place that interfere with sleep quality, which …
Time Change: Fall Back
The time change in the United States is the classic “time of challenge and time of opportunity.” First, the challenge – If you wanted to do something to make America more depressed you would be hard pressed to come up with a better intervention. Shift everyone’s schedule so that they wake up an hour later (according to the solar clock) …
Bay Area Blues
If you live in the bay area you probably noticed that this past week you felt a little less energetic. It was the first cold and rainy week of the season, and the days have been getting noticeably shorter (maybe you used to wake up after dawn and now it is dark). We are naturally seasonal animals trying to live in …
Insomnia: Counting Sheep
Maybe Grandma was right. After all of the years of research and development trying to find medications to help with insomnia, we ran across a recently published paper which suggested that a single session devoted to teaching people with chronic insomnia to focus their attention on some idea, image, song, memory, that was not associated with strong emotions (especially negative …
Night Shift
A young ER doctor came in to see us because he works the night shift, and found that he was having trouble getting enough good quality sleep, and also being alert enough during his shifts. He worked four or five night shifts in a row and then he had several days off. And his goal was to work 9 pm …
The End of Summer
Every year we notice two weeks that seem to affect a number of folks who have had seasonal depressions. The first period is the “End of Summer” – a foreshadowing of the coming fall that happens in late August or early September (depending on the weather, we guess). The second period is the “Beginning of Winter” – which usually takes …
How to Change Your Sleep Pattern
One of the best studied and fastest treatments for depression is not a medication, it is waking up earlier and get bright light exposure… We will write at a another time about the evidence for this, and maybe even why it works. But for now let’s talk about the practical question. How do I change when I get up? First I …
The Best Relaxation Technique
OK, that may be an exaggeration. But it may not. In any event, Progressive Muscle Relaxation is the technique that we have had the most success with, and we have tried many of them. Many people we know use these techniques every night before lying down for sleep and find that it helps them to have a much more restful …
Riding the Waves
MoodSurfing is about the idea that the ups and downs of mood are normal (we aren’t trying to achieve some elusive “stability”). But dealing with moods requires focus, discipline and some common sense. You can’t go to Maverick on your first day surfing and not get hurt (see photo to the right). The first step for many people is to …
Mood and Cognitive Functioning
Mood can have a profound impact on cognitive functioning. In fact, over the years, we have found that the most likely diagnosis when someone comes in complaining of “suddenly becoming demented” is a mood disorder (people with dementias tends to have a more gradual onset of symptoms and often don’t notice the impairments). There seem to be three types of …
Sleep: Helpful books for Insomnia
It’s one of great ironies of working with people with trouble sleeping that often the path to better sleep heads first in an unexpected direction. Most of the people we see with complaints of fatigue are having problems because they are sleeping too long, and with poor quality. In fact, most people can get by with just seven to seven and a …