I have been living with nightime incontinence and Crohn's disease for 8 years now . . . have not slept more than 4-5 hours w/o waking to use the restroom. Most nights I wake at least twice, and if I am having a rough night, it can be every 90 minutes! I too had trouble falling back to sleep, especially if I had any issues to deal with . . .

Melatonin. After a certain age our bodies slow down or cease production of melatonin, which helps regulate our body clocks and helps allow sleep. I take 3mg before bedtime. I still wake up, but getting back to sleep is easier.

A natural way to help boost melatonin is to get exposure to sunlight between 7am and 9am, when the blue light of the spectrum, which stimulates melatonin production, is strongest.

I also play a familiar CD when I get in bed, and in the morning I try to recall the last song I heard. Often I am surprised how quickly I did fall asleep, because I couldn't make it past the second or third track! I have even found that using each song on the CD for a different meditation or preparation for sleep is helpful: track #1 for setting my breathing, #2 for "scanning" the body, head to toe, for tension and relaxing as I go, #3 for deep relaxation through visualization. (My favorite visualization is of me floating, face down in the ocean in snorkel gear, gently rolling with the swells, and hearing and seeing a pod of great whales rising in a circle around me. Sometimes just their singing and their air bubbles rising around me are enough to lull me to sleep.) If you do the same series of exercises to the same songs and in the same order every night you will literally train your mind&body to respond to the music, and provide you with a pathway to sleep that you have custom-designed for yourself.