I’d been suffering from acute insomnia for about 2 months – the symptoms shifted from waking up too early to not being able to maintain sleep, and waking up in the middle of night and lying awake for hours. It was really confounding, considering I didn’t have any out of the ordinary stressors. One culprit is my advancing age 🙁 I’d gone to a useless sleep doctor who was prescribing sleep apnea testing, yet said nothing about women’s hormonal shifts, unless he was prompted by me and my google research. He eventually prescribed Doxapin which made me feel like a zombie for 36 hours. That’s the problem with medication – you spend 3x as much time fending off side effects, and medical doctors – their annoying one-track way of always turning to chemical medication. That’s why I looked for an integrative doctor, and found Dr. Perrin. She ordered a special hormone blood test, and we looked at the results and she put me on a combo of topical hormones and herbs, and I’ve been able to sleep well for the past weeks. I”m very grateful, and Dr. Perrin strikes me as someone who is incredibly knowledgable about her field, and doesn’t make alternative medicine seem alternative at all. She has a very analytical, scientific approach to it all – and yet, it’s holistic. Her specialty is hormone imbalances and weight loss, and it seems to be the sweet spot for women like me – over 40.