Struggling to get to sleep? There’s one thing you definitely shouldn’t do

Ahhh, nothing quite like a blissful long weekend off work to well and truly wreck your sleep pattern.

If you're heading back to work tomorrow your brain is probably going ninety as you try to settle yourself for bed. You might think that stubbornly lying there in the dark will help you to eventually nod off but that's actually a pretty bad idea. Researchers in the US have warned that just staying in bed and trying to force sleep when insomnia strikes is one of the worst things you can do. "We start to associate our bed with insomnia," said Dr Rebecca Robbins of New York University Langone Health's School of Medicine. "It does take the healthy sleeper about 15 minutes to fall asleep, but much longer than that... make sure you get out of bed, change the environment and do something that's mindless." Dr Robbins lead a recent study which sought to debunk some of the most common misconceptions we have about sleep. "Dispelling myths about sleep promotes healthier sleep habits which, in turn, promote overall better health," she said. Another myth that people tend to fall for, she said, is that watching TV in bed will help to relax the brain and prepare it for sleep. The blue light from the box (and from devices like phones) actually disrupts the production of melatonin in your body. Melatonin is a hormone that promotes sleep, which means that you could have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep if you're looking at a screen. The study, which evaluated sleep myths gathered from thousands of websites, was published this week on Sleep Health. Find out more here.