Trouble with falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night affects most of us at some point in our life. We talk about insomnia if you regularly have problems sleeping. In today's podcast we talk about the importance of sleep and how problems with sleeping impact on your life. For example chronic sleep problems can lead to weight gain, memory performance decrease, depression or anxiety. Sleep problems are caused by a number of different factors such as stress, excessive worry, bad habits, environmental factors or shift work. Want to sleep better and more regularly? Find out more about what you can do to develop healthy sleep patterns and to improve your sleep if you struggle with insomnia. We talk you through sleep hygiene and developing more sleep efficiency, that is improving the percentage of time asleep in bed. Ideally you would want to spend roughly 85% of your time in bed asleep rather than awake. Following the guidance on behaviour around sleep can really make a big difference. Are you aware for example that what you eat or drink can have a big impact on the quality of your sleep? There are drinks and food that can contribute to you sleeping better, and drinks that do the opposite. We also address some of the common myths about sleep such as needing eight hours of sleep at night.