This week, Professor Dorothy Bruck from the Sleep Health Foundation about whether "natural" sleep aides actually work.
Short answer: maybe. But Professor Bruck says poor sleep won't be improved by popping a pill if it's doesn't address the causes of a bad night's rest.
She recommends examining the behavioural issues that might be keeping you awake, offering these six strategies to help you nod off.
1. Understand when you're sleepy.
"A lot of people don't know the difference between being tired and being sleepy," Professor Bruck says.
"Sometimes a bit of nervous energy and stress makes you tired but being sleepy is feeling ready to fall asleep and is when you want to go to bed."
2. Don't go to bed too early.
"A lot of people with insomnia think, 'I am really tired and I'm not sleeping well, so I will go to bed at 9 o'clock tonight'. They expect to be able to sleep through until 7am – which is a 10-hour period," Professor Bruck says.
"If you're normally a seven-to-eight hour sleeper, then you don't want to be in bed longer than seven or eight hours."
3. Don't stress if you're awake.
"People can get sleep anxiety where they are anxious about their inability to sleep," Professor Bruck says.
"Understand that it's normal to wake up in the night and it's normal for people who are poor sleepers to not really be aware of whether they were asleep or awake."
4. You can be asleep and still thinking.
"If you are stressed and have a lot of thoughts going on in your mind, you can think those thoughts are awake thoughts but if we measured your brain waves often the person is actually asleep," Professor Bruck points out.
"So we often encourage people to think about being dozey, and move in and out of sleep during the night. It might feel like they were awake for quite long periods but in actual fact they may well have been dozing in and out of sleep."
5. Don't get up.
"Only get up if you are feeling really frustrated and really wide awake," Professor Bruck says.
"If you are dozing you are better off staying in bed and seeing if you can move in and out of sleep a bit more. People are often very relieved to be given permission that dozing is okay and waking up is normal and moving in and out of sleep is okay."
6. Stop forcing sleep.
"You can't actually force yourself to go to sleep. It's like if I gave you a biscuit and said, 'Digest it faster', you would think I was mad because just can't," Dr Bruck points out.
"You can't just will yourself to sleep better, so focus on breathing slower and thinking about the present moment."