Difficulty sleeping is a common trouble for cancer patients. This problem may fade away as soon as you no longer bother with the depression and anxiety of knowing your cancer diagnosis at the first beginning, but may still last due to discomfort and pain from coming treatments.
Here are some ways to help improve insomnia for cancer patients.
Medication therapy
Medication therapy is commonly used to help cancer patients relieve sleep disorders, and it is an effective way to treat sleep disorders. If you have severe insomnia, you might be given sleeping pills when your pain is severe.
However, sleeping pills addiction can bring side effects, and some patients with severe sleep apnea syndrome, liver and kidney failures, myasthenia gravis, and encephalopathy shall not take sleeping pills.
Music therapy
Music therapy is also a popular treatment for sleep disorders. Light and relaxing music can help reduce the excitability of the nervous system, relieve anxious mood, and regulate blood pressure, heart rates and breathing rates, thus promoting sleep.
Doing muscle relaxation activities is advisable during music therapy.
Aerobic exercise
Aerobic exercise can improve sleep quality because it can increase slow waves for deep sleep. Exercise near or at bedtime is bad for sleep and can keep people up. The right exercise time is late morning or afternoon on a regular basis.
Outdoor brisk walking or running can be perfect if possible, and moderate exposure to sunlight can also help improve sleep disorder.
Reading
It is already revealed that reading is effective to facilitate sleep for many people. If you were a bookworm, reading relaxing materials would be highly recommended to help relax your body and reduce stress levels. Reading activities involve eye movements and brain working, in which you have to look through the materials and interpret them in your thinking ways. This process makes your brain tire and you will feel sleepy soon.
In addition to the above, other tips like no coffees, cigars, alcohol before sleep are also helpful.