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When it comes to reducing your stress and anxiety, it's one of the best investments you can make

Struggling to sleep? Yep, we hear you. You can do as much sleep hygiene as you want – sticking your phone in a drawer, winding down with a camomile tea, wearing those orange glasses for the last half hour of Newsnight – but sometimes the snooze just will not move upon you.

The stages that you travel through on a sleepless night are many. The frustration. The attempts to get frustration under control with some big meditative breaths. The rage at how little those meditative breaths are doing. The hours spent eyeballing the void and running through every minor embarrassment and bad decision you’ve ever made. Then the alarm goes.

But there’s another stage you can add to that: clambering under a weighted blanket. Over the last few years it’s become the go-to sleep hack for anyone having trouble nodding off.

What is a weighted blanket?

It is – and you might want to get a pen and write this down – a blanket which is weighted. Typically glass or plastic beads are sewn into the fabric of the blanket to add weight to it, though some blankets bank up layers of fabric to get the same effect. You're looking for a blanket which weighs roughly 10 percent of your bodyweight, just as a rule of thumb.

How do weighted blankets work?

You snuggle up underneath and, hopefully, feel the benefit of what's known as 'deep touch pressure'. The science on exactly how it all works isn't rock solid, but there is some evidence that they can mimic the feel of a big, cosseting hug and promote the release of serotonin and dopamine. Those happy hormones then chill you out enough to get to sleep.

A few caveats: they're not suitable for kids, for much older people, and for anyone who's got breathing or circulatory difficulties. These are some of the best weighted blankets we've found.

For an intro to the whole idea of clamping yourself under a heavy cover, you can't really go wrong with this: simple, well made. Choose from four and a half, seven, nine and – reassuringly, for the tall or broad among us – eleven and a half kilos.

In either five kilo or seven kilo weights, the Kudd.ly weighted blanket skews younger in its audience and comes covered in a MicroCool Fleece to add a little more snuggliness to the whole experience.

A tightly woven cable knit look and 100 percent cotton construction – no pellets here – keep this one looking particularly pleasingly rustic. Pick from six or seven kilos.

The kind of weighted blanket which you'd find gently folded on the bed in your woodland yurt after you skip in from a wild swim in a glittering river at dusk. Something from Taylor Swift's Folklore drifts by on the breeze. You are cosy.

A solid, unspectacular workhorse of a weighted blanket here – the James Milner of the duvet world. But much like James Milner, there's a lot of value in them legs/pockets of microbeads yet. It comes in either seven or nine kilos.

A smooth, silky bamboo outer sheet keeps things cool here, however hot the nights get. It's a sweet seven kilo job, though that's the only weight it comes in.

Mmmm, check those chunky, chunky knits. Remy's Lounger comes in six or eight kilograms and relies not on glass or plastic microbeads but its big weaves, and because of that it's a lot more breathable and summer-friendly than most other examples.

Unfortunate name, very handy weighted blankets. With weights between 5.5kg and 10kg available, there's a lot of options however many glass microbeads you wish to be pinned down by.