As their effectiveness wanes over time, you’ll need to take more to get the same benefit. In addition to their potential side effects (including strange dreams, sleepwalking and next-day grogginess), it’s easy to build up a tolerance to these medications. “While the medication may work temporarily, our research has found that long-term use doesn’t have a clear benefit.” “I often see women who start with a week’s supply of sleep medication, but a year later, they’re still taking them nightly,” he reveals. The biggest hitch: they don’t provide much benefit for middle-aged women when used long-term, says Daniel Hal Solomon, MD, of Harvard Medical School. Over-the-counter and prescription sleep aids may seem like an easy fix, but they come with drawbacks. And while it’s easy to diagnose, insomnia is far less easy to treat. According to a study in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, roughly 33% of adults suffer from some degree of insomnia, though the researchers note that other studies have put that number as high as 60%. “Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep that affects millions of people worldwide,” says Shelby Harris, PsyD, Director of Sleep Health at Sleepopolis. Here, discover how this works and how it helped one woman overcome her insomnia for good.

Now, researchers are pointing to a new form of sound therapy that might help: Using binaural beats for sleep. And chances are, most of them have tried dozens of strategies to catch more Zzz’s over the years. Indeed, millions of women spend their nights staring at the ceiling unable to doze off, restlessly tossing and turning, or awaking well before their alarm. And yet sound, restful sleep evades so many of us. Sleeping is as crucial to our health as eating and breathing.

Binaural beats sleep fast