Bedtime can be a troubling time for those who often experience insomnia—trouble falling or staying asleep. The National Institutes of Health has estimated that a third of Americans struggle with occasional rounds of insomnia. For 1 in 10, it's a chronic issue. Before you have your doctor prescribe a sleep aid, try these simple things first.

Make Your Bedroom a Great Place to Sleep

Use good sleep habits, starting with ensuring that your bedroom environment will allow you to sleep well. Sleep experts recommend using your bedroom only for sleep and sex. That way, your mind will associate your bedroom with sleep. Also, keep regular sleep and wake-up times so your body will get into a regular flow. Eliminate caffeine from the afternoon on, so it doesn’t keep you up later. Be sure the bedroom is a dark, cool, quiet place. Lowering the room temperature allows your body to get into a deeper, more ‘hibernation’ style of sleep. Keep computers and TVs out of the sleep environment because their light stimulates the brain, which tells the body "it's daytime," disrupting your internal clock.

Night Time Relaxation Ritual

This will be different for everyone. Adults need rituals to help wind down every night. Develop your non-stimulating evening ritual, whether taking a hot bath or sipping a warm cup of chamomile tea. Reading, listening to soft music, or other calming pastimes can help with the relaxation process.

Don’t Use Antihistamines for Sleep

Over the counter sleep remedies like Tylenol or Advil PM use the antihistamine Benadryl to create drowsiness, which doesn’t solve the problem of missing out on restful sleep. Antihistamines, like Benadryl, have a sedative side effect. Those medications can induce next-day grogginess—what some patients call "sleep hangovers"—and they can actually have an alerting or a disorienting effect on seniors.

Alcohol Doesn’t Help the Problem

Of course, a nice glass of wine or beer will put you to sleep, but as the alcohol is metabolized by the body, it fragments sleep, which tends to cause nighttime awakenings and next-day tiredness. It is a common misconception that alcohol will help you sleep, but it is quality sleep that we need, want, and are trying to achieve. The higher the alcohol consumed, the less restful the sleep.

Separate Work and Sleep

M a break from the day's stress before going to bed. If you know you're going to bed at 10:30, stop your day at 10:00 or sooner if you can. Shortchanging yourself from that break can be a recipe for insomnia. Write down everything you need to worry about on paper and do your best to leave them behind. You can do nothing about them, whether asleep or awake, until tomorrow, anyway. This, of course, means don't bring paperwork into bed.

Exercise, Exercise, Exercise

Exercise is great for sleep. Those who consider themselves exercisers report better sleep than self-described non-exercisers, even though both groups say they sleep the same amount each night.

Those who engage in rigorous, moderate, or light exercise are much more likely to say, “I had a good night’s sleep” every night or almost every night on work nights than those who don’t. If you are not getting much exercise, adding a 10- minute walk every day could improve your likelihood of getting a good night’s sleep. This small change and gradually working up to more intense activities should help you sleep better.

Don’t Sit So Much

Separate from exercise, spending less time sitting may improve sleep quality and health. Those who sit for less than eight hours per day sitting are significantly more likely to say they have “very good” sleep quality than those who sit for eight hours or more

Did you know that sleeping one extra hour a night can lower your heart attack risk by 33 percent? Skimping on sleep raises your risk for everything from high blood pressure to heart failure, stroke, diabetes and heart disease.

A Natural Solution

An excellent 100% natural solution to healthy sleep is Sleep Support Formula™. A great way to achieve better sleep and better health, it’s formulated with seven ingredients that let you drift into a restful slumber and wake up feeling revitalized (with a mind clear of grogginess).

This scientifically advanced all-natural supplement contains the nutritional requirements that help the body relax and sleep. By providing the body's natural sleep hormone, melatonin, plus a collection of calming herbs, the body is encouraged to eliminate restlessness and anxiety naturally.

Sleep Support Formula™ complements the body's natural ability to promote fast, safe, and deep sleep - like the kind we experienced when we were younger. The ingredients in this formula also offer some of the factors needed to make the neurotransmitter called "serotonin," which influences neurons that control such diverse activities as sleep, mood, and appetite.

Sleep Support Formula™ supplies the body with proper nutritional support to enhance the vital and normal sleep pattern of dreaming. Interestingly, "sleeping pills" using conventional drug therapy have proven to cause fewer and shorter periods of dreaming than found in normal sleep.