Every night millions of Americans find themselves tossing and turning trying to get a good night's sleep.

Audrey Niesen says her inability to get a good night's sleep is beginning to affect her everyday activity. "It gets frustrating, absolutely. Especially when you've been trying to sleep all night long, and you wakeup and go back to sleep or you don't sleep at all."

Sleep disorder specialist Holly Hannon, MD, explains that Audrey suffers from insomnia, a sleep disorder that prevents you from falling or staying asleep. "Insomnia is extremely prevalent, one of the most common things that I see in the sleep clinic. Almost 60% of people experience insomnia at one time or another and we kind of categorize insomnia into acute, or short-term insomnia versus a chronic, or long-term insomnia."

Dr. Hannon says, "A short-term insomnia is maybe caused by stress or something like that, a person going through a stressful period of time and they're having a little trouble sleeping."

But Dr. Hannon also says that people with chronic insomnia may need to seek help for their illness with sleep medications or therapy to help relieve their symptoms. "A chronic insomnia is something that can persist for years and years and usually requires some help in figuring out what are the causes? And what can we do to treat it?"

In a sleep lab they'll monitor your sleep habits for an entire evening. The technicians there monitor your breathing habits as well as your movements and based on the results, you may end up being treated for a sleep disorder.