In my 20 years of helping clients with sleep I have observed that the #1 reason people have poor sleep is that they do not see it as a practice that has to be done well and protected as we age.

Why Do We Have Sleep Issues?

If we don't floss and brush our teeth and the dentist tells us we have four cavities we immediately understand why.  Somehow with poor sleep, we do not make the connection with our sleep-inhibiting habits such as:

•  

  4 PM coffee,
• eating late and drinking alcohol before bed,
• little or no exercise
• watching a heart-pumping drama at night,
• thinking about work or problems as we try to fall asleep.

For those of us who know that they need to make changes, the #2 reason people chronically have poor sleep is that they don't give the new practices to improve sleep enough time and abandon their efforts too soon.