Got the Sunday scaries? These apps and devices can help you relax and fall asleep faster

When’s the last time you got a great night of sleep? For most of us, the answer is something like, “about five years ago, that one night, on vacation….”

One in every three adults in the United States doesn’t get the recommended seven or more hours of sleep per night, according to the Centers for Disease Control. A lack of sleep is linked to a myriad of chronic diseases and conditions, too, like Type-2 diabetes, dementia, heart disease, obesity, depression, car crashes and work accidents. It’s gotten so bad that the CDC has even called sleep deprivation an ongoing “public health epidemic.”

While technology and screen time are often to blame for messing with our sleep – especially for teens – it can also help us get the zzz’s we desperately need.

So this evening, as we face the insomnia-inducing Sunday scaries, let's look at some of the best apps and tech tools to help you go nighty-night faster and wake up feeling rested. 

Tap an app, take a nap

The Calm app (iOS and Android) is one of the most popular on the market today as a meditation guide and anxiety-buster, but it's also packed with content designed to carry you to dreamland.

Once you download the app, you can select Sleep Stories and listen to Matthew McConaughey, Harry Styles, Kate Winslet or Mandy Moore read you a slow, relaxing yarn. (I’m partial to Idris Elba's "Kingdom of the Sky," for what it’s worth). They provide the relaxing distraction your brain needs to transition from a bustling day to a restful night.

Mediation’s great for easing anxiety, restoring focus and clearing your mind, but it’s equally great for helping you relax and sleep more soundly. Calm includes daily meditations with various themes and lessons on how to get the most out of your meditation time.

There are also soundscapes  –  like a crackling campfire or evening crickets  –  that can send your mind from racing to chilled-out in a matter of minutes. Calm is like a toolbox for relaxation and it's well worth the $70 annual subscription to unlock everything.

Of course, Calm isn't the only game in town regarding meditation and sleep. Headspace (iOS, Android) is another excellent option that many people swear by and it includes mindfulness lessons, music and meditations designed specifically for sleep. It asks the same $70 per year to unlock the full suite of content.

Journal yourself to dreamland

Sometimes I need to dump a bunch of thoughts out of my brain to get some rest. Research shows that journaling or even making to-do lists before bed can help you fall asleep faster and wake up feeling more refreshed.

You can journal on paper, of course, but several easy-to-use apps save a tree and help you unload your brain so you can get a good night's rest.

5 Minute Journal (iOS, Android) is an excellent choice for beginners who might not know where to start. It provides positive prompts and suggestions that make it easy to unpack your thoughts. The app is free for essential functions but runs anywhere from $40/year to $100/lifetime for its full suite of features, including mood tracking and photo or video journaling. The company also offers hardcover, old-fashioned journals ($29) with prompts as well.

Day One (iOS, Android, Mac) is another popular journaling app that syncs across mobile and desktop and even includes browser extensions so you can use it just about anywhere. Its straightforward user interface makes it super easy to get started without fanfare. After you've unloaded all your feelings into the app, it keeps those thoughts secure with end-to-end encryption and automatic backups so that you can rest easy. The app is free for its basic functions but costs $35 per year to unlock all of its features, which includes audio recording with voice-to-text transcription.

Tech tools to help you snooze

For the four out of five people who suffer from sleep problems at least once a week and wake up feeling exhausted, a tech tool engineered to solve this specific problem might be just what the doctor orders. As someone who’s spent a lifetime battling insomnia myself, here are the gadgets that have helped me the most so far, starting with a wearable small enough to fit on your finger.

The latest version of the Oura ring ($299) is an absolute marvel of modern wearable technology, capable of tracking sleep stages and monitoring how much rest you get each night.

It tallies essential data like your heart rate and activity levels and lets you know when it notices patterns, including signs that you might be getting sick. It's free of bright screens, so it won't trigger a rush of wakefulness if you glance at it in the middle of the night and its battery can keep it going for up to a week before needing to be charged.

If you'd rather stick something on your nightstand, the Hatch Restore ($99.99) is a do-it-all sleep hub with a few tricks up its sleeve. It uses "routines" that include curated soundscapes, meditative guidance to ease your mind and relaxing colors. Once you've been lulled off to dreamland, it uses sleep sounds to mask background noise and prevent interruptions, which is pretty genius. It also doubles as a bedside alarm clock with sunrise alarms that help wake you up gently using light.  (It does require a $4.99/month membership, however.)

This is a bit of an odd one: The Morphée sleep gadget ($99.99) looks like it popped up in the wrong decade, but it's a high-tech, screen-free, totally non-digital gadget with the sole intention of helping you get a better night sleep. Charge up the steampunk-looking device, read through the little booklet it comes with, and choose between hundreds of guided meditations, sleep stories, and soundscapes to help you relax before bedtime.

The way it works is kind of confusing at first, which makes the looking booklet really important to the whole process: Twist the old-timey dials to one of the eight themes – like body scan, nature sounds, or breath focus – and then pick your session, a male or female guide (for guided meditation), and duration. You can also pick nature sounds and pretend you're chilling out by the sea or next to a crackling fire. Each session lasts between eight and 20 minutes. You can set it on your nightstand, or even closer, and use the headphone jack to listen along if your partner doesn’t want to hear the relaxing advice alongside you.

Headphones are often a go-to when you're struggling to sleep due to outside distractions like road noise or even the creaks and groans of your house or apartment walls. Watotgafer's budget-minded headphones ($22) are even better since they come with a built-in mask made from memory foam. The mask blocks out light while the headphones play sounds like white noise, rain or even lullabies to help you sleep. They're comfortable to wear and can be adjusted to fit just about anyone, so they should stay in place all night long. And when you're done using them, pop them into the included storage case and tuck them away until your next sleepless night.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Got the Sunday scaries? These apps can help you fall asleep.