After two weeks of testing melatonin gummies – and discovering they mostly delivered minty false hope and weird dreams – I became mildly obsessed with one question: if sleep gummies don’t work, what actually does?

So I spoke to women about the bizarre, deeply personal, occasionally unhinged things that genuinely help them fall asleep. From magnesium rituals and sleepy songs, bedtime tensing, and one woman who swears by listening to Dad’s Army episodes, the answers were far more interesting than any wellness product claiming to “optimise rest”.

Because somewhere between burnout, anxiety, doomscrolling and modern life generally kicking the shit out of everyone’s nervous systems, women have quietly become amateur sleep scientists.