This year, I’ll be trying sleeping tricks to see whether they actually improve my insomnia. Check back in on this series, Rest Assured , to see how I get on. For years, I’ve struggled with an issue called sleep maintenance insomnia . This means that while I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep at night, I find it really hard to stay asleep. So, I thought this would be the year I tried everything I could to tackle it. I’m not just talking standard wisdom, like getting enough exercise in the day: I want to give science-backed ideas, like eating kiwifruit for better kip , a try. Which is why, for the past week, I’ve tried drinking passionflower tea. Why might passionflower tea help you sleep? Passionflower is a climbing vine which has traditionally been used as a sedative . But, as I’ve mentioned, my problem isn’t actually falling asleep; I doze off just fine. Instead, I dread 3am wakeups I can’t recover from. Good news, though! Per a 2011 paper , the herb has also been used to decrease sleep disturbances, too. And in that 2011 study , researchers found that of all the metrics they used to measure sleep changes, those who consumed passionflower tea saw the most improvements in sleep quality , rather than sleep onset time, specifically. This may be because passionflower increases the amount of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain. Some insomnia-fighting medicines target GABA receptors in the brain because of the amino acid’s positive effect on sleep. Passionflower tea So... how did it go? I’ve mentioned before that I have stopped sleep tracking , though I do keep a note the day after about the previous night’s sleep (ie whether or not I woke up at 3am and if I got back to sleep). On average, I usually wake up at 3am about 4.8 times a week and manage to return to the land of nod about 1.2 nights a week. This week, I woke up at 3am four times a week (better than average, and especially impressive considering I’d been dealing with hormonal sleep changes ). Of course, that’s only one metric. I will say that I also noticed a slight decrease in tiredness throughout the day. That might be because passionflower has been shown to encourage deeper, more restful sleep in rats . I did find myself tossing and turning a little less, and even experienced (or remembered) fewer of my usual slightly-nuts, high-octane dreams. In short, then, though it wasn’t a night or day difference, I’ll probably stick to drinking passionflower tea at night. It’s relaxing, seems to calm my sleep a bit, and might have helped me wake up less often; not bad for a pretty cheap box of tea. Related... Science Says Kiwis Can Improve Your Sleep, So I Tried It To Find Out If Your 3- Or 4-Year-Old's Sleep Has Suddenly Gone Haywire, It's Time To 'Zoom Out' 4 Sleep Changes A Sleep Scientist Would Never, Ever Ignore