![]() Why does it work? It works because of the daily practice, Brewer says. “It’s about helping them see how unrewarding that is.” It helps people identify that they are stuck in a habit loop - a loop of worrying and anxiousness, he explains. “Mindfulness helps people disengage from those thoughts,” Dr. Mindfulness teaches people to recognize and set aside the agitating, arousing, or worrisome thoughts that repel sleep. “I ask them: ‘When your head hits the pillow, do your thoughts ramp up? Do you start thinking and regretting or worrying?’ And 95 percent of the time, people say yep, that’s it,” he says. He says that a lot of people who come to his clinic report sleep problems, and runaway worry often seems to be the cause. He’s currently looking at the benefits of an app-based mindfulness program for sleep improvements among people with moderate-to-severe anxiety. Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has led or contributed to dozens of studies on the therapeutic uses of mindfulness training. These recent studies offer more data to support what previous research has shown. “At this point, mindfulness-based treatment for insomnia is established and considered effective,” says Fiona Barwick, PhD, clinical associate professor and director of the Sleep and Circadian Health Program at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who coauthored the mindfulness-CBT study. More recently, a study published in February 2023 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health revealed that online mindfulness-based interventions like mindfulness-based stress reduction improved sleep quality and reduced insomnia symptoms (among Italian participants experiencing interrupted and poor sleep during the pandemic). That study found that adding mindfulness to CBT significantly improved several measures of sleep quality and also reduced pain among a group of poor sleepers with chronic pain conditions. Another study published in the same issue of Sleep coupled mindfulness training with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). One study, published in May 2020 in the journal Sleep, found that older adults who underwent mindfulness-based treatment for insomnia (MBTI) fell asleep more quickly at night and also spent less time lying awake at night. ![]() Wellness gurus preach that stress management techniques like mindfulness and mediation can help with our slumber deficit. adults report not getting enough sleep every day and approximately 40 percent report falling asleep unintentionally during the middle of the day at least once in the past month, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Statistics show lots of Americans are struggling to get a decent night’s sleep. ![]()
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