This Morning star shares 'breakthrough' fix after 20-year insomnia battle
This Morning star Alice Beer has shared her 20-year battle with insomnia and the new technique she's found to manage it.
The 58-year-old TV star, who has been a consumer presenter on the ITV daytime show since 2014, discussed how her chronic inability to sleep well has impacted every aspect of her life for the past two decades. On Tuesday's episode of This Morning, she described her struggle with insomnia as a "form of torture". However, she recently discovered cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) through the website Sleepstation.
Over the past three weeks, she has been receiving coaching on altering her daily behaviour to improve her sleep. She expressed that she now feels like she is "winning" her fight against insomnia and compared the therapy to the 'from Couch To 5k' programme - where individuals gradually build up to running 5km over nine weeks.
Alice says she has struggled to sleep for the past two decades (ITV)Sleepstation is a "clinically validated sleep improvement programme", according to its website and can be access either via the NHS or privately.
Alice, who is best known for her role on BBC One's consumer investigative journalism programme Watchdog in the 1990s, revealed on This Morning that she has always struggled with sleep. However, her issues with insomnia truly began after the birth of her twin daughters, Phoebe and Dora, 20 years ago.
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She said: "I know so many women – especially women - who identify with what I've been through. It's not just, 'Oh I had a bad night last night'. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the chronic, on-going inability to get more than about three or four hours a night." When host Holly Willoughby expressed her disbelief at functioning on such little sleep, Alice responded: "You do function, but on a certain level. It affects everything. It affects what you eat. I started eating sugar and put on two stone."
"It affects how I am in my relationships with people, work colleagues. It affects whether I exercise. It makes you teeter on pre-diabetes. It affects your physical and mental health. It is torture. It is a form of torture. And all you want is to go to bed and sleep." Alice revealed she had "tried everything" to combat the insomnia but was beyond lavender "pillow sprays, magnesium and melatonin". She admitted she had been forced to take sleeping tablets every night, which is "not good for you".
However, she shared that she had read about CBT-I in a newspaper and visited Sleepstation's website. Alice added that, while she had helped train her twins to sleep through from a young age, she had never thought she could do the same for herself. She said: "And honestly I was tearful at the thought that there was something out there. And I was angry that my GP had never mentioned this to me before, in 20 years on my medical record."
Sleepstation, a programme that examines an individual's daily routine and habits to suggest behavioural changes for improved sleep, can be accessed through the NHS if one's GP practice is registered, or it can be joined privately. Alice added: "I have good nights and I have bad nights but I am winning. I haven't taken a sleeping tablet for three weeks and that is ridiculous for me. And at the weekend I slept for five and a half hours without anything helping me and that is a breakthrough. I hope other people access it as it's really important."
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to [email protected]
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