Imagine this: you really need a good night’s sleep – maybe you have an important meeting or athletic event in the morning – so you get to bed early and wait for sleep to arrive. It does not.
You toss and turn, plump your pillow, toss and turn some more and – big error this one – you check the time. Research says you have just added 20 minutes to the time it is going to take you to fall asleep.
So begins an insomnia episode.
Dutch sleep therapist Merijn van de Laar is the author of the recently published How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest. He is also a recovering insomniac. As he admits, it is rather ironic that a sleep therapist should have had insomnia. You might think he would have known better?
Van de Laar began to suffer from chronic insomnia in his late twenties. He sought answers in books but failed to find anything that helped.
His aim with his book is to deliver the science of sleep and bring comfort to the thousands of us who face our own insomnia battles.