Grandma's 5 Best Home Remedies for Sleep Disorders

If you’re having trouble sleeping, you don’t have to reach for pills right away. We’ll introduce you to 5 home remedies from Grandma’s day that might help you get a good night’s sleep.

Do you suffer from sleep problems but want to try to manage them naturally first? Then it’s worth taking a look at Grandma’s home remedies. They’re often just as effective as sleeping pills, but they don’t have side effects and aren’t addictive. In this article, we’ll share the best natural remedies for sleep problems and explain their causes. After all, you could always count on Grandma, right?!

We all suffer from sleep disturbances from time to time. And that’s completely normal—as long as it’s just the occasional night of poor sleep and it doesn’t become a chronic condition. After all, unless there’s an underlying organic cause or psychiatric disorder, sleep problems usually subside quickly once the circumstances that led to them have passed.

Some common causes of insomnia are external (exogenous) factors. For example, disturbances such as light or noise, odors, jet lag, and shift work.

Poor sleep hygiene can also lead to you tossing and turning in bed at night instead of sleeping peacefully. For instance, an unsuitable mattress or the wrong pillow can result in a poor sleeping position, keeping you awake or repeatedly waking you up. But the blue light from electronic devices like tablets and smartphones—which we often take to bed with us—is also one of the factors that interfere with falling asleep—and this keeps pushing bedtime further and further back.

Acute psychological stress can also disrupt your sleep. For example, work-related and personal fears and worries that constantly occupy your thoughts and cause you stress.

You’ll notice the consequences of insomnia very clearly the next day: reduced resilience, difficulty concentrating, irritability, or headaches are just a few of the symptoms that result from not getting enough sleep. But before you immediately see a doctor or turn to chemically produced sleep aids, you can first try to manage your sleep problem with simple home remedies.

If, on the other hand, you have a diagnosed psychiatric condition, its underlying cause should be treated medically first. While our tips for sleep disorders (insomnia) can provide some support, they likely won’t be enough on their own to combat the problems. In this case, talk to your doctor or therapist about how to manage your sleep disorders and supplement that treatment with home remedies from grandma’s time. We’ll now introduce you to 5 home remedies for insomnia that have helped even our grandmothers enjoy sweet dreams.

You can consume all of the medicinal plants listed here as tea, which contains the dried plant parts. It’s best to drink your cup of tea right before bedtime and remove any sources of distraction from the bedroom. Ideally, you should wind down before bed by reading a book or meditating and prepare your body for the night with a regular evening routine.

However, all medicinal plants are also available as supplements from pharmacies or drugstores, such as capsules or coated tablets. Keep in mind, though, that the effects of taking supplements containing medicinal plants are delayed, so you’ll usually only start to benefit from the positive effects after about two weeks. A little patience can therefore pay off.

Most of the medicinal plants mentioned are also processed into essential oils. If you add a few drops to an aromatherapy diffuser, the soothing scent will spread throughout the room. Alternatively, you can place the dried plants in a scented sachet and put it next to your pillow, use them as a room spray, or apply a few drops to your skin in the form of body oils and rub them in. When inhaled, these scents have a calming effect on the nervous system, thereby promoting relaxation.

Unless you’ve been diagnosed with a sleep disorder or psychiatric condition, you can effectively manage your sleep problems with grandma’s home remedies—even without sleeping pills. In most cases, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep can be alleviated by making changes to your sleep environment and establishing bedtime rituals. However, if your symptoms persist for more than a month and occur at least three times a week, and if you feel severely limited in your daily life due to the effects of poor sleep, you may have a “real” sleep disorder. In this case, you should seek help from a sleep specialist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Once the cause of your problems is identified, you’ll quickly start to feel better and regain more energy in your daily life.