I had terrible insomnia for a couple of years, and HRT fixed it for a while, and then made it much worse! I tried supplements, and they only worked for a little while.

It seems that the sleep thing is so complicated, and changes so much in the course of our sleep, just taking supplements is bound to not do it right... and runs the risk of throwing things further off.

I've done a lot of things to fix my own health crisis, but sleep hygiene turned out to be very important. Just as we have to change a lot of things to fix our diets, so we might have to change a lot of habits to fix our sleep.

Be aware of blue light. Get f.lux for your computer, and/or amber lenses for wearing after sundown. Pick an early bedtime (mine is 10:00 pm) and stick to it. Going to sleep after midnight is just asking for trouble, because routine sleeping in is part of how we screw up our circadian cycle. Exhaustion only works for so long.

Wear a sleep mask. Or, eliminate all sources of light in the bedroom. Honestly, it's easier to find a sleep mask that works for you. DreamEssentials.com has many different styles. The brain can't make melatonin unless you are sleeping in complete darkness, and nobody does.

Address inflammation. Take a walk after dinner, have your CRP checked to see if it's elevated, eliminate all sugar and grains, and start fussing over your gut biome. I put a couple of spoonfuls of grassfed organic yogurt in my morning smoothie, and take a chewable probiotic after lunch. And often skip dinner, because IF helps, too.

Stress kills. If cortisol is messed up, this classically messes up our sleep by letting us get to sleep, but then waking us up at 2 AM and not letting us get back to sleep again. (This is how I was getting 2-4 hours of sleep a night.) I'm using high dose niacin and Zero balancing, others might use meditating or just refusing to let certain things get to them. But stress is what overdoes the cortisol and then our sleep.

Now? I get 8-10 hours a sleep a night and I wake up feeling INCREDIBLE. Because I was willing to do almost anything. And I did