It's 10.40pm. You came to bed at ten with every intention of sleeping, and now you're three reels deep into a stranger's kitchen renovation. Your eyes feel gritty, your thumb is still going, and the tiredness you had an hour ago has quietly disappeared.

Then there's the 3am wake-up. Hot, or just wired, with the phone right there on the bedside table, glowing helpfully.

If that's most nights, your phone isn't the only thing working against your sleep. Menopause has already loosened its grip. But the screen is the part you can change tonight, and the effect is bigger than most women expect.

Why sleep gets harder to hold onto in menopause

Around 40 to 60% of women experience disturbed sleep through perimenopause and beyond, according to the Sleep Health Foundation. In Jean Hailes' Australian data, roughly one in four women at this stage say they wake too many times a night.

Part of that is hormonal. As oestrogen and progesterone fluctuate and fall, the systems that regulate body temperature and settle the nervous system can become less predictable. Progesterone is thought to have a mildly calming effect, so less of it may mean a lighter sleep that breaks more easily.

Then there are night sweats, which can jolt you awake before you've even felt the heat. Add a busy mind, aching joints or a bladder with opinions, and the gap between asleep and awake gets very thin. We've written more on how menopause affects sleep if you want the fuller picture.

That's the backdrop. Now put a bright screen in front of it.

What your phone does to your body clock

Your body runs on light. As the evening darkens, your brain releases melatonin, the hormone that tells every system it's time to wind down. Screens give off a lot of short-wavelength blue light, and a phone held 30cm from your face delivers it straight to the part of your brain that decides whether it's day or night.

The Sleep Health Foundation reports that about an hour of bright screen use in the evening doesn't seem to shift melatonin much, but 1.5 hours does. Past that point, people report feeling less sleepy, do better on alertness tests, and show more wakeful brainwave patterns. Useful at 4pm. Unhelpful at 10pm.

It compounds, too. Five bright-screen evenings in a row can push your body clock back by around 1.5 hours, so you naturally want to fall asleep later and wake later, even though your alarm hasn't moved.

One of the most cited studies on this, from researchers at Harvard Medical School and published in PNAS, compared reading on a light-emitting tablet with reading a printed book before bed. With the same scheduled sleep window, the tablet readers took longer to fall asleep, produced less melatonin, had less REM sleep and felt groggier the next morning.

For a body that's already running a less reliable thermostat and a lighter sleep, that's a lot of extra friction.

Why scrolling is worse than watching

Not all screen time is equal. Sleep researchers draw a line between passive use, like watching a show or listening to music, and interactive use, where what's on the screen responds to you. Scrolling, messaging, gaming and reading the news all sit on the interactive side, and the evidence suggests they're more alerting.

It makes sense when you think about what a feed is built to do. Every swipe is a small decision with a small reward at the end of it, and the content is engineered to keep you making the next one. Your brain stays in response mode at the exact moment it should be powering down.

Then there's what you're actually looking at. A late-night news spiral, a work email you weren't going to answer until morning, a group chat that's suddenly lively. None of it helps a mind that's already prone to 3am rumination.

The 3am check

Waking in the night is common in menopause. Reaching for the phone to see the time, or to fill the gap, is where the real damage happens. The light tells your brain it's morning, the content gives it something to chew on, and the sleep you might have drifted back into is gone.

Dr Moira Junge, Chief Health Officer of the Sleep Health Foundation, puts it simply in her sleep advice for midlife women: don't look at the clock.

A little extra support at bedtime

Changing what happens in the hour before bed is the foundation, and it costs nothing. Some women also like a gentle herbal nudge alongside it, particularly on the nights when the body is tired but the mind won't follow.

Our Sleep formula combines passionflower, hops, Californian poppy and magnesium glycinate, three herbs traditionally used in Western herbal medicine to calm the mind and ease sleeplessness, plus a modest dose of magnesium. It may help you fall asleep faster and may reduce waking during the night. One capsule before bed is the full dose.

To be clear about what it is and isn't: Sleep supports sleep. It doesn't ease hot flushes or night sweats and it isn't a menopause treatment. If night sweats are what's waking you, our Foundation blend is designed for that, and the two are often taken together.

Sleep may cause drowsiness. Don't drive or operate machinery after taking it, and take care combining it with alcohol or other sedatives. Talk to your health professional if you take other medication, and if sleeplessness persists.

Whatever you take, pair it with a cool, dark room and the wind-down below. A capsule works with your evening, not instead of it.

A digital wind-down you'll actually keep

Start with the easiest change and add the next one once it sticks. These run from least effort to most.

1. Switch on night mode and dim the screen. Warmer, dimmer light tends to be less alerting, and most phones will schedule it from sunset. A dimmer screen is also kinder if you've noticed screens drying your eyes.
2. Move the interactive stuff earlier. If you want to scroll, do it at 8pm rather than 10pm. In the last hour, switch to passive: a podcast, a show, a paper book, or an e-reader with the backlight low.
3. Set a screen curfew you can hold. The research points to 1.5 hours of bright screen as the tipping point, but a cutoff you'll keep beats an ambitious one you won't. Aim for the last 30 to 60 minutes before bed and be consistent. Jean Hailes' own advice is that some screen time before bed is fine, as long as it isn't distressing, stimulating, prolonged or too bright.
4. Get the phone out of arm's reach. Charge it in the kitchen or across the room. If the alarm is your reason for keeping it close, a $20 analogue clock solves that. Of everything on this list, this is the one that pays back most.
5. Decide your 3am plan before 3am. A boring audiobook on a speaker, a slow breathing pattern, a dim warm lamp. Anything that isn't the phone. And keep caffeine to before midday so the afternoon coffee isn't part of the problem.
6. Anchor the morning. Bright light within an hour of waking, ideally outside, can help pull the clock you've been nudging later back to where you want it.

Give it a week. Body clocks move slowly, so the first couple of nights may not feel any different, but by night five or six the earlier drowsiness tends to turn up on schedule.

You don't have to give up your phone. You just have to stop letting it decide when you sleep.

This article is for general information only and isn't a substitute for personalised medical advice. If your sleep problems persist, talk to your GP or a qualified health professional. Always read the label and follow the directions for use.