You only need two simple household items for a better night's sleep, a top doctor has revealed.
Speaking in last week's episode of Richard and Izzy Hammond's podcast 'Who We Are Now', Dr James Alvarez provided listeners with some of the must-do's if they're struggling to sleep well at night, and one caught the attention of the podcast hosts the most.
He said: "If you've got racing thoughts, for example, or just a lot of thoughts just before you go to bed keep a piece of paper and a pencil. A pencil not a pen. Why? Because a pencil's work closer to 100% of the time and so have it near your bed so you can write down the things you're thinking about."
With all of your late night thoughts now written down, your mind can rest as you drift off to sleep. He added: "Now, it's outside of your head, you've externalised it and sometimes that really helps make it easier to get to sleep. You recognise that you don't have to hold it in your head anymore, it's on a piece of paper, it will be there for you in the morning."
Richard replied, saying: "That sounds so homely and home spun. I can see why it works."
He added that he actually does this himself already. He added: "I do keep a pen and paper by my bed"
But he admitted that sometimes he forgets to make a note of his 'brilliant ideas', saying: "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. I'm sure we've all done this, you wake up thinking: 'Oh that is a brilliant idea' I should write it down, I can't possibly forget and then all you've got is this sense of knowing it's something so brilliant that you can't forget it, but you can't remember what it was."