A Drug Free, All Natural Sleep Aid

I bet you are thinking that I am going to tell you about some kind of tea you can drink, or vitamin you need to take. Well, I'm not.

My husband is a very light sleeper and has always had trouble falling asleep. When our kids were little, he would always be the one who woke up first when the babies were crying. While I loved this problem of his back then, it has developed into a bigger issue these days.

When he does not get enough sleep, he gets severe debilitating migraines that pretty much take 2 or more days to recover from. So, for him, falling asleep and staying asleep is a big issue.

For a long time he was taking Tylenol PM to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep for longer than 2 hours. Then he started having a few medical problems, and I worried that it was stemming from the over the counter sleep aids. I wanted him to stop taking sleep aid medication, so we started looking at other all natural sleep aids.

He tried many different things. Some were teas and vitamins, but I knew this was a problem that he has had for a long time and would continue to have. I didn't think that it would be a good habit to get him hooked on anything that required him to ingest it.

Relaxation techniques, mind visualization, light therapy ...

It came down to the fact that his problem actually stemmed from extraneous sounds and noise in the house. Anything from the dog whining to the air conditioner turning on would wake him up. It didn't really matter what kind of sleep preparation he did before going to bed because a dog barking or any little thing would wake him up.

Once we had that figured out, he tried listening to relaxing music through his headphones. Turns out this isn't really comfortable and the wires get all twisted up in bed. For some reason, playing music softly in the room didn't really help either.

I started looking online for a sound pillow. I was thinking of one that already had the speakers inside of the pillow and played a variety of relaxing sounds. When I came across a few, like the Sound Asleep pillow, I was concerned that while the sound feature was exactly what I was looking for, the pillow wouldn't be comfortable.

As a light sleeper, he has always been very particular about his pillow so I knew that this product might not be the solution I was hoping for. Then I came across the Pillowsonic.The Pillowsonic has given the gift of sleep to my husband.

It is basically a slim, flat set of speakers that can be plugged into any headphone jack. (He uses his iTouch.) The Pillowsonic can be slid into your pillowcase or just laid underneath your pillow. You can then plug it into your mp3 player and listen to anything you want. Relaxing music, an audio book, podcast ... anything.

It focuses his mind on the sounds coming from the pillow so that any other noise is not distracting. It is amazing how quickly he now falls asleep and stays asleep!