Most people don't sleep well. You should be able to go to bed, fall asleep within ten minutes, and not wake up until morning, after 7-8 hours. You should feel refreshed upon rising. Sound familiar? Not for most people.

The majority of people get too little sleep or poor quality of sleep. Many people do not go through the necessary 4 stages of sleep to keep them healthy. A sleep study may tell you how you are (or aren't ) sleeping, but they do little to address the issue. Medications like Ambien or herbs such as kava kava or valerian may help you sleep, but if you need them, you really need to investigate why you can't get the adequate sleep you need on our own.

My article, "The Power of Sleep", addresses common sleep problems, so I will not go into too much depth here. But let me discuss some common sleep problems.

Can't fall asleep:
This is most commonly due to high cortisone levels at night. Cortisone, secreted from the adrenal glands, should normally be low at night. High levels due to stress will keep you up. You can have your levels measured by doing an adrenal stress index.

Always wanting to sleep:
This could be from an adrenal or thyroid issue, carbohydrate intolerance, an undiagnosed food allergy, immune system issues, or an energy production problem. Read about all these issues under Health Topics.

Wake up in the middle of the night at the same time:
Waking up in the middle of the night at a specific time and always at that time has a lot to do with the acupuncture meridians system 24-hour clock. For example, 3am to 5am is the time for the lung meridian to be more active. Constantly waking up during that time could very well be due to something irritating the lungs - poor air quality, lung congestion, smoking, etc. Waking up earlier than you'd like, say everyday at 5:30am, and you can't get back to sleep, is related to the large intestine. This could be due to something you ate, or shouldn't be eating.

Waking up throughout the night/tossing and turning:
Provided you don't have all your pets on your bed, this is usually due to spikes in the adrenal gland hormone cortisone, from too much emotional, nutritional, or physical stress. The number one nutritional stress is too much caffeine, even if you only drink it in the morning.

Waking up to urinate:
This is not normal. Check out the explanation in the "Is That Normal?" section as well as the correlating article.

Waking up tired:
Could be from all the waking up. Could be from a low thyroid function or low adrenal function.

Snoring:
This is caused by congestion. Many times it is due to a food allergy, a fat metabolism issue, or unfriendly yeast and fungus living in the digestive tract creating mucous.

Teeth grinding:
As usually reported by your significant other, or your dentist when he/she tells you you're wearing your teeth down and prescribes a night guard. The number one reason for grinding your teeth is too much stress. Interestingly, the number two reason is a parasitic infection - which although true, there is no direct explanation on this one. Here's a fun fact: Did you know that when you grind your teeth at night it is 5-6 times harder than what you are possibly able to do while you're awake?

Liked the movie "Sleepless in Seattle":
I can't explain this one. I'd love to, but it stumps me.

** The function of the pineal gland, which secretes melatonin, is very important for sleep. While all the other hormonal glands turn themselves down at night for a rest, your pineal wakes up. You can easily measure pineal function with a melatonin profile. Many people take high doses of melatonin for extended periods of time. This is not a good idea - you'll throw off your hormonal balance. I consider a high does to be over 1mg of melatonin and an extended period of time to be more than 3 days. A lot of people take 3+mg of melatonin for months, if not everyday. Not a good idea. Figuring out why you're not sleeping is a good idea.