Treating Insomnia without Drugs

Two studies being presented as posters later this morning show that non-pharmacological treatments for insomnia can be effective.

One study (#0821) concludes that when applied in a “real world” clinical setting, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia appears to be an effective treatment approach for various types of chronic insomnia such as sleep-onset insomnia and sleep-maintenance insomnia. Treatment produced significant improvements on presenting complaints as well as other measures such as sleep efficiency, average nightly awakenings, total sleep time and average nights of sleep medication use per week.

A small pilot study (#0874) involving 11 adults with chronic primary insomnia shows that another effective behavioral intervention may be Kriya Yoga – a type of meditation that combines different yoga techniques. Results indicate that sleep latency, total sleep time, total wake time, wake after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, sleep quality and depression improved in patients who practiced meditation for two months.

In 2006 the American Academy of Sleep Medicine published, “Practice Parameters for the Psychological and Behavioral Treatment of Insomnia: An Update” in the journal SLEEP. View the practice parameters online.

You can download the SLEEP 2009 abstract supplement as an 11 MB file in PDF format.