What Acupuncture Does for Insomnia

Take snoring with pauses in breathing, or daytime sleepiness that affects driving, to your GP: that is a sleep study question and sleep apnoea is very treatable. For insomnia, CBTi has the best evidence of anything and is available in Australia including online.

Being straight about acupuncture and sleep: the research is mixed, and no honest practitioner will tell you it fixes insomnia. What people report is being calmer in the hours after a session and, over a course of weekly appointments, finding it easier to switch off at night. That is worth having and it is not the same as a treatment for a sleep disorder.

A session in Freshwater runs about an hour, mostly lying down, with fine needles and usually points on the limbs and scalp rather than anywhere alarming. A lot of people fall asleep on the table, which is not the treatment working but is not nothing either after weeks of bad nights.

There are two local patterns worth mentioning. Shift work is everywhere on the Northern Beaches — hospitality, nursing at the hospitals, trades starting before six — and a rotating roster is a circadian problem, not an insomnia one, so the approach is different and light timing matters more than anything else. And the surf: early swims and paddles are excellent for sleep, but a 5am alarm on top of a midnight bedtime is a sleep restriction you have chosen, and it is worth naming.

We are ten streets from Balgowlah and about twenty from Manly. Bring two weeks of notes.