Amazing Ways to Fix Insomnia Through Meditation and Nutrition

How Stress Caused My Insomnia

If you’ve already read the Esalen blog, a beautiful meditation retreat in Big Sur, this blog post illustrates where my passion for meditation began. 2020 was crazy for the majority of people but my most stressful year was, by far, the year before that. So, I’ve always loved nutrition, and the thought of wellness but I must say I definitely didn’t practice it back then. Because my job as a nurse laser technician was so busy and basically an assembly line of patients in and out of the door, there were more times than not where I just didn’t have enough time to eat. “I’ll sacrifice this lunch but finish early and eat at home!” Well long story short, too many skipped breakfasts and lunches depleted alot of my nutrient levels that were vital for everyday functioning. On top of that I had the stress of going through a break up and eventually switching to a job that I ended up hating! The intense stress and lack of nutrition ended up coming to a head when I woke up one night from a nightmare and just couldn’t go back to bed. This was my first experience with anxiety and insomnia.

Anxiety & Insomnia 

Now I’m not saying before this I was never anxious (I hated public speaking and of course got nervous about things here and there) but those things always came and went. Never constant or relentless. I was able to recognize them and once the threat was gone, the nervousness was too. This, however, was different. It became maybe 2-3 weeks of insomnia (honestly its a blur how long it truly took to recover, my days got all meshed together) which heightened the anxiousness a notch more and more everyday. This was truly an awakening. I finally realized I’m not as bulletproof as I once thought I was and if I don’t take care of my body, my body and my mind will shut down. And if you’ve never experienced insomnia, it’s truly the most mind boggling thing. You can be completely exhausted but wired at the same time. I would close my eyes hoping to sleep but it’s almost as if my body became a separate entity and decided to rebel even though I was trying so hard to finally give it what it needed. My body and mind were fighting back and they weren’t going to give in easily.

Road to Recovery

We all know that not sleeping well for one night can instantly affect your mood, but did you know that just losing one day of sleep is similar to being under the influence where it would be deemed unsafe to drive. Within days of insomnia you can begin to hallucinate and have trouble communicating with people.1 I knew that nothing good could happen if I didn’t seek help. I finally went to a doctor for unrelated pain I was experiencing and she asked me questions that led me to tell her about the insomnia I was also experiencing. I truly had not been able to sleep for more than 30 mins to 1 hour a night and I was desperate for any advice. The doctor told me that her husband had experienced insomnia and took vitamins called magnesium glycinate with melatonin and that had helped him. I was so desperate that anything she said I would’ve tried, however I had already tried melatonin. It was the worst. Made me even more tired but not able to sleep. I could feel that there was just some physical or mental disconnection that wouldn’t allow me to pass that threshold from awake to asleep. I had no other options though.

The Cure

Went straight to a vitamin shop and bought a huge bottle of magnesium glycinate 400mg. I went home, took both the melatonin and 2 tabs of magnesium glycinate.. and woke up 4 hours later. It worked!!! 4 hours might as well have been equivalent to me hibernating all winter! I realized then that my lack of nutrition had truly interrupted the essential mechanisms to help me sleep and de-stress me. Magnesium has many forms but the magnesium glycinate is meant to help with anxiety, maintain normal heart rate and work as a muscle relaxant, relaxing not only the body but the mind. We don’t tend to think about the work that all of our macro/micronutrients are doing until we’re depleted and the effects are catastrophic. Thankfully, the body is always ready and willing to repair when given the proper tools. With the magnesium glycinate, the insomnia slowly went away. The more food I ate, as well, I was able to ween off of the magnesium glycinate (but it is a vitamin and such an amazing muscle relaxer, so when I feel like I didn’t get a restful night the day before, I still will take some magnesium to ensure a deep sleep that night).

Meditation Stepping In

Thankfully the insomnia going away had helped me quite a bit but now I had to face the ongoing anxiety I hadn’t experienced before (the anxiety now became me being anxious that I was anxious or nervous that I would accidentally fall into insomnia again!) This is when meditation became my second medicine. I remember moving to LA and being so anxious about moving to a new place, it was the most anxious I had been, so I thought I’d finally give meditation a try. I laid down on my friend’s sofa, closed my eyes and youtub’d a meditation to guide me through whatever I was supposed to do. It’s strange but my mind felt clear almost instantly (which I hear is pretty rare so don’t feel defeated if it doesn’t resonate with your experience). It felt as if my mind had been dying for this! I thought with my anxiety it would be so hard to focus and quiet my mind but it was like returning to a familiar place and my mind just started acting accordingly. After that, meditation became a normal routine in my life. Of course it’s normal for anxiousness to occur as it’s the body’s signal to you that an important decision needs to be made, or a possible threat is imminent; but I no longer have the constant anxiety I once had and it has taught me that anxiety is truly an illusion. When it comes down to it, it’s you fighting with yourself which I had to face and realize how nonsensical that was. Having that control is what scared me at first but now truly empowers me. It’s a fearlessness that’s based off of going through hardship vs being able to avoid it. As cliché as it sounds, I truly believe all negative experiences bring a positive outcome and the more you encounter negative experiences, the more notches you’ll have on your belt when you get pass them.

Lessons to be learned: Don’t skip lunch, Listen to your body, take magnesium Glycinate, and meditate.

References:

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23970-sleep-deprivation 1