Many sleep issues result from interference to the hormones responsible for sleep and alertness. These hormones are extremely sensitive to their surroundings because their job is to interpret and prepare the body's response to them. At the heart of this interference lies the faulty assumption that the body and the intellect see their surroundings the same way - they don't. The intellect may see a sound as comforting and reassuring; while the body sees it as a threat to which it musts remain alert and ready to respond. When you spend the night in a bedroom that the body sees as threatening, it becomes very difficult for it to let you sleep.
What can I do?
Recommended Reading - Books
The Sleep-Powered Wellness Workbook: Better Bedrooms for Better Sleep, by Angela Hobbs
Hobbs guides the reader through the 24 hour hormone rhythm revealing the many ways that a person's surroundings can be used to support it. A workbook packed with simple, inexpensive suggestions for making the bedroom more conducive to sleep.
Sleep-Powered Wellness: Better Bedrooms for Turbocharged Zzzz's, by Angela Hobbs
Hobbs discusses the impact that noise, wireless, light, electricity, chemicals and air pollutants can have on the hormones responsible for sleep and alertness, and ultimately on many common symptoms of ill health.
The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep, by Lawrence Epstein & Steve Mardon
Epstein and Mardon describe the major sleep disorders and conventional therapies, including behavioral, cognitive and pharmaceutical options.
Sound Sleep, Sound Mind: 7 Keys to Sleeping Through the Night, by Barry Krakow
Krakow offers a drug free, mind-body approach to alleviating sleep problems that exploits the best of sleep medicine and behavioral and clinical psychology.
The Effortless Sleep Method; The Incredible New Cure for Insomnia and Chronic Sleep Problems, by Sasha Stephens
Stephens provides an approach to insomnia from the perspective of sleep hygiene and positive thinking.
Recommended Reading - Articles
Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep, by Geoffrey Lean, The Independent, Jan 20 2008
Lean discusses the findings of the nobel prize winning Karolinska Institute that wireless signals interfere with sleep.
Recommended Listening - Podcasts
Now It's time to Sleep a Podcast by the British Medical Journal
An interview with Fracesco Cappuccio discussing sleep deprivation's role in causing obesity and ill-health