Where your DNA places you among other people, and the studies behind it.
Not tailored to your result, and not medical advice
Practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I): CBT-I is the recommended first-line treatment for chronic insomnia, favored over medication by major guidelines from the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. It targets the thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate insomnia through sleep restriction, stimulus control, cognitive restructuring, and relaxation. Meta-analyses report large average effects, and unlike sleeping pills its benefits tend to be sustained after treatment ends. American College of Physicians
Maintain a Strict Sleep-Wake Schedule: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends. This anchors your circadian clock and strengthens sleep drive. Avoid sleeping in after poor nights - while counterintuitive, this builds sleep pressure for the following night. Consistency is more important than total hours. Sleep Foundation
Optimize Your Sleep Environment: Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet, and clear it of screens and bright lights. Reserving the bed mainly for sleep - a core element of stimulus-control therapy - helps strengthen the association between bed and sleep, so getting up when you cannot sleep is often more useful than lying awake. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Limit Caffeine and Alcohol: Caffeine has a half-life of 5-7 hours and can disrupt sleep architecture even when consumed 6 hours before bedtime. Avoid caffeine after midday. Alcohol, while sedating initially, fragments sleep during the second half of the night and suppresses REM sleep, leading to unrestorative sleep. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine
Use Morning Light Exposure: Bright light exposure (ideally sunlight) soon after waking helps anchor your circadian rhythm and increase daytime alertness. Timed morning light is a recommended, evidence-based tool for advancing sleep timing, and is especially useful for people with a delayed sleep phase. American Academy of Sleep Medicine (practice parameters)
How much of this is genetic?
Genetics explains 40% of why people differ in this trait. The rest is environment, daily habits and chance.
Heritability estimate: Barclay et al. 2021, Genes Brain Behav
Background and further reading
Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder. Roughly 10% of adults meet the criteria for chronic insomnia disorder, while around 30% report occasional insomnia symptoms [3]. It is defined by persistent difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep, or waking too early, despite adequate opportunity for sleep, together with daytime consequences. When this pattern lasts three months or more it is considered chronic, and it is associated with daytime fatigue, impaired concentration, and mood disturbance; large genetic analyses also link it to higher risk of depression and cardiometabolic disease, though such observational and Mendelian-randomization signals describe risk rather than certainty [1]. Insomnia is reported more often by women than men.
Genetic Basis: A meta-analysis of twin studies puts the heritability of insomnia at about 40%, with estimates higher in women (around 59%) than men (around 38%) [2]. The trait is strongly polygenic: a 2019 genome-wide study of more than 1.3 million people identified 202 risk loci [1], and a 2022 meta-analysis in over 2.3 million individuals expanded this to 554 loci, many tied to synaptic signaling and neuronal differentiation [4]. One of the most prominent signals sits in the MEIS1 region, a locus also strongly associated with restless legs syndrome; researchers debate how much of its insomnia association reflects a shared biological effect versus phenotypic overlap between the two conditions [5]. The implicated genes converge on brain tissue and neuronal pathways, and there is substantial genetic correlation between insomnia and depression, anxiety, and neuroticism [4].
Environmental Factors: Because twin-based heritability is around 40%, the majority of the variation in insomnia risk reflects non-genetic and environmental influences [2]. Common contributors include psychological stress and worry - particularly worry about sleep itself, which can perpetuate the problem - along with poor sleep hygiene (irregular schedules, evening screen use, caffeine, and alcohol), uncomfortable sleep environments, and circadian disruption from shift work or jet lag [3]. Caffeine taken even six hours before bed can measurably shorten and fragment sleep, reflecting its multi-hour half-life [6]. These behavioral and environmental factors are also where most of the practical opportunity to improve sleep lies.
The published research behind your score, and the variants it draws on.
8 published scores from 4 studies
The insomnia score combines 8 polygenic scores drawn from 4 published studies.
These traits are influenced by some of the same genes and variants as this one
Anxiety: A tendency toward generalized anxiety, chronic worry, and heightened sensitivity to stress.
Content updated August 2026.
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