Dr Dilis wide awake to the benefits of healing sleep

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy talks to a GP and herbalist who has turned her focus onto sleep problems

You know the feeling. You fall in to bed before midnight, eyes heavy with sleep, only to find that while you had been snoozing blissfully on the couch an hour before, now you couldn’t be more wide awake.  

Or maybe you manage to drop off, only to wake up in the middle of the night and find that sleep eludes you until it’s almost time to get up.

Anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that sleep deprivation is one of the biggest problems of modern society. Whether it’s because of small children, using high-tech gadgets, shift-work, stress, or generally poor lifestyles, many of us are facing into each new morning almost as exhausted as we were when we fell asleep.

Dr Dilis Clare, a qualified GP and herbalist, who runs Health and Herbs in Galway City’s Sea Road, says she can help, courtesy of a dedicated Sleep Clinic which she has just launched.

For some cases, it may take time to find a solution, but they do exist, she stresses.

“If someone has 33 years of sleeping problems you can’t expect to be better in a month, but if you aren’t sleeping better after three months, then I’d fire myself!”

Entering her shop and practice in Sea Road is to discover a world where natural medicine reigns supreme. There is an array of tinctures and dried herbs for a variety of conditions from the menopause to stress and, of course, insomnia. These are all made by Dr Clare, who also produces a range of skin creams and teas, using herbs and other natural ingredients.

Just inside the door, there is a dispensing drawer containing a selection of the most popular herbs that people can buy individually, including elderflower, rose, slippery elm, marigold and sage. These were available to people long before the recession, says Dr Clare, who set up on Sea Road in 1992.

But, as she points out, she is also qualified to prescribe more conventional medicine as she is a qualified GP.

Her Sleep Clinic, which was launched by Consultant Respiratory Physician, Dr JJ Gilmartin, follows on from a Heart Clinic, which she also runs out of Health and Herbs.

it’s all part of raising awareness of Health &Herbs, where both herbal and pharmaceutical medicine are offered – integrated medicine is how Dr Clare describes it, saying it offers the best of both science and tradition.

One in every three people will die of heart disease, but most won’t do anything to prevent it, because heart problems don’t hurt until you get an attack, she observes. But lack of sleep does hurt, so people look for help.

Broken sleep can be caused by various factors, she explains. It can be stress, it can be pain such as arthritis, it can be problems with digestion – there are many reasons. If there’s a problem with sleep apnoea she will refer people to Dr Gilmartin’s Sleep Clinic, which specialises in that area. Dr Clare deals specifically with insomnia and sleep problems – although people who have these may also have sleep apnoea, she points out. In any case, everybody here is treated individually.

The first step with a client is a consultation with nutritionist Michelle Hanley, who studied at both UL and NUI Maynooth, and who has been working with Dr Clare for five years. Clients will keep a three-day food diary and then have a diet and lifestyle analysis with Michelle. Working from their food diary, she will offer practical help on changing eating habits, providing menus, shopping lists and recipes for food that will help aid sleep.

She will teach them the benefits of eating certain food, including fibre and essential fatty acids – people forget how important these are in maintaining health, she says. Any food intolerances will also be analysed – it might just be that someone is eating too much of a certain type of food and needs more variety.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.