Cure for Insomnia: The Fruit Alphabet
Anne has a tip on her insomnia problem. It is not counting sheep or reading books – she discovered replace your thoughts with a subject that interesting but repetitive enough can make her sleepy. So she uses the fruit alphabet:
While falling asleep recently, I was thinking about all the fruit out there, and whether there is a fruit for every letter of the alphabet. You know, apple, banana, cherry… I didn’t get far. I fell asleep around ‘honeydew.’ The next night, I tried again. Same thing. The fruit alphabet, it turns out, is a perfect cure for insomnia.
I don’t know if the fruit alphabet works for chronic insomnia, and it definitely won’t conquor sleeplessness induced by three cups of coffee before bed. Where it’s proven to work is those occasions where your body is exhausted and ready to sleep, but your brain is running all over the house, pants on fire, frantic with anger, worry, or plain old excitement…
Thanks Anne for the tip!
Cure for Insomnia: The Fruit Alphabet – [I Had an Idea This Morning]
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Comments
Al says on July 18th, 2006 at 10:56 am
I do multiplication tables to put me to sleep. I’m up to the 29*29 table and can’t get past it before I’m asleep.
chris m || hunk du jour says on July 18th, 2006 at 11:00 am
I put a new spin on counting sheep also… I count sheep, but with hats from all around the world.
Sure, I get the giggles everytime I picture a sheep with white bonnet, golden braids and wooden shoes… but as I run out of countries I always seem to conk out… =)
Sydney says on July 19th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I find those word games really helpful too… if you are a chronic insomniac, you’ll have to remix it periodically to keep it interesting enough, but it really works to keep away the spinning-circular-thoughts thing.
I use the old Victorian game:
I love my love with an A because he’s adorable
I hate him with an A because he’s aggressive
His name is Andrew, he lives in Amsterdam, and he lives on Absyinthe and Avocados.
I’ve never made it past J.
kide z says on July 29th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
thanks
Lisa says on July 25th, 2007 at 7:42 am
It is also fun to do this with authors/books or using a Harry Potter theme!
Natalie says on April 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Disney Films by alphabet is a good one and also 5 films for a movie star ie Brad Pitt, and then try to think of 5 films he has starred in and so on, i usually try to do this for 20 actors but never get past 10.
Kira says on September 17th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
i’ll try this tonight. i sure hope it works.
Pete Josephs says on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:55 am
I have used the alphabet technique very successfully for over ten years.
I have moved on from fruits and I now have some fun with makes of cars, people’s names, football teams, almost anything you can imagine. Sometimes I try something more abstract such as adjectives, or even words ending in different characters, for example ash, bash, cosh, dosh, eyelash etc.
The beauty of the ABC method is that even in the unlikely event that it does not get you to sleep, it does a fantastic job of blocking out those worrying and niggling thoughts that would otherwise keep you fretting through a long and stressful night.