My first meeting with Dr. Gregg Jacobs was a memorable one. He had just completed his doctoral research—a groundbreaking study on the effects of the relaxation response on brain waves—and was applying for a postdoctoral fellowship under my direction at Harvard Medical School. I was so impressed with Dr. Jacobs that I not only offered him the fellowship but also invited him to accompany me and my research team on an expedition to India and Sikkim to perform physiological studies on the meditative practices of Tibetan monks.
Soon thereafter Dr. Jacobs began to investigate what would become a primary focus of his career: the nondrug treatment of insomnia using the relaxation response and other cognitive-behavioral techniques. He eventually developed the only nondrug treatment scientifically proven to teach insomniacs to become normal sleepers: 100 percent of patients treated with this intervention report improved sleep, 75 percent become normal sleepers, and 90 percent reduce or eliminate sleeping pills.
Using this treatment, Dr. Jacobs developed the Behavioral Medicine Insomnia Program at Harvard Medical School’s Deaconess
Hospital in Boston in 1991, the first nondrug insomnia program of its kind in the country. Since then, Dr. Jacobs has taught his insomnia program to thousands of individuals, including his patients, employees of major corporations, and health care practitioners. So successful is his insomnia treatment that the National Institutes of Health awarded him a prestigious four-year grant to compare the effectiveness of his treatment to sleeping medication. As Dr. Jacobs’s mentor, I have taken pride in watching him distinguish himself as scientist and clinician.
With the publication of Say Good Night to Insomnia, individuals everywhere who suffer from insomnia can now benefit from Dr. Jacobs’s program. In this book, Dr. Jacobs uses case examples and interactive exercises to clearly and concretely tell you what you need to do to conquer insomnia and how to do it. In a user-friendly, practical, organized fashion, he expertly guides you through a thorough six-week program for overcoming insomnia that parallels the program he developed here at the Harvard Medical School. You will also find that Say Good Night to Insomnia is more than just a book about insomnia; it is a book about improving yourself and your life. In it, you will learn scientifically proven relaxation-response and stress-reduction techniques for achieving greater mind-body control and improving your health and well-being.
Say Good Night to Insomnia reflects Dr. Jacobs’s commitment and dedication to his patients as well as his experience, enthusiasm, and wisdom as a clinician and scientist. His program represents not only the future treatment of insomnia; it is the approach that should be adopted by all health care practitioners. Insomniacs everywhere finally have a safe, highly effective alternative to sleeping pills. I am confident that this program will change your life as it has for so many of Dr. Jacobs’s patients.
—Herbert Benson, M.D.
Boston, Massachusetts