"It's Just Your Age," My Doctor Said. I'm 66, Not 96.

Told poor sleep is just part of getting older?

So was I.

By my doctor. By my sister. By every woman in my card group.

"Oh honey, nobody our age sleeps."

And I believed it.

For eleven years, I believed it.

I'd wake up three, four times a night. Get up at 5 because there was no point lying there. Nod off in my chair by 2 in the afternoon with a book on my chest.

That was just how it was now. Like reading glasses. Like my knees.

I had thrown in the towel so long ago I'd forgotten I was ever in the fight.

Here's the sneaky thing about eleven years. You stop adding up what it costs.

I gave up my Thursday evening card game because I couldn't keep my eyes open past 8.

I stopped driving to my sister's after dark. Not because of my eyes. Because I was afraid I'd get drowsy on the way home.

I'd sit down "just for a minute" after lunch and lose the whole afternoon.

And when my kids asked, I said what we all say. "I'm fine. I'm just getting older."

I wasn't lying to them, exactly. I was lying to myself first.

I wasn't always resigned. In the early years I threw good money at it.

A new mattress. Fourteen hundred dollars. Very comfortable to lie awake on.

Sleepy teas. A whole shelf of them.

Lavender spray. My husband said the bed smelled like a gift shop.

Drugstore sleep pills. Left me so foggy I quit after a week.

Magnesium, even. A big cheap bottle. Upset my stomach and went in the drawer.

You should see that drawer. It's a graveyard of things that were going to work.

After enough of that, you quit trying. Not because you're happy. Because you're tired of feeling like a sucker.

So I made my peace with it. That's just what happens at my age.

Last winter I was looking something up for my sister on a National Institutes of Health website. And I ran across a page about sleep and getting older.

One line stopped me cold.

It said a lot of people believe poor sleep is a normal part of aging. And then it said: it is not.

I read it again.

It said people our age need the same seven to nine hours as everybody else. That plenty of healthy older adults sleep just fine. And that waking up tired every day is not part of normal aging.

I sat there with my mouth open.

Eleven years. And the government's own aging experts were saying the thing everybody told me was simply not so.

I wasn't sad. I was mad. Do you know how many card games I've missed?

That's what I wanted to know. So I kept reading.

I'm no scientist. But one thing I found, on another NIH page, I could understand just fine.

It was about magnesium. That's the mineral your muscles and nerves use to relax. Calcium tightens a muscle. Magnesium lets it go.

And the NIH says three things happen with magnesium as the years go by. We eat less of it. Our bodies absorb less of what we eat. And our kidneys let more of it slip away.

Nearly half of American adults don't get enough from food as it is.

Now, I want to be a straight shooter here. Nobody can promise that's why you or I sleep badly. There are lots of reasons, and some of them need a doctor.

But it struck me. Everybody had told me my sleep was wearing out like an old pair of shoes. Nobody had ever said my body might simply be running short on something.

Those are two very different things. One you live with. The other you can do something about.

I know. Me too. It's in the drawer.

Turns out the big cheap bottles are usually magnesium oxide. The body doesn't take much of it in, and the rest is what upsets your stomach.

The kind to look for is magnesium glycinate. It's the gentle one.

I found it in Sleep Support, from Stay Able. The label is plain:

• 275 mg of magnesium, from 2,500 mg of magnesium glycinate
• No melatonin. Not a sleeping pill.
• Made in the USA

Three capsules, about an hour before bed.

But none of that is what got me to order it.

It was the guarantee.

You get 100 days. Not 30. A hundred. If it doesn't do anything for you, you send it back and they give you your money back.

That changed the whole question for me.

I didn't have to believe in it. I'd been all out of believing for years. I just had to be willing to run an experiment and keep the receipt.

If it worked, I'd get my evenings back. If it didn't, I'd get my $37.99 back and add nothing to the drawer.

A company that gives you over three months to make up your mind isn't counting on you to forget.

I marked the calendar and expected nothing.

The first two weeks, that's about what I got. Maybe I was a little less fidgety at bedtime. I couldn't swear to it.

Around week three, I noticed I'd only been up once in the night instead of three or four times. I figured it was a fluke.

By the second month, it wasn't a fluke. I was sleeping till 6 most mornings. And one afternoon I realized I'd read forty pages of my book in my chair without my chin hitting my chest.

Is it perfect? No. I still have the odd rough night. I'm 66, not 26.

But it is so much better than what I'd settled for that I could kick myself for the years I spent settling.

I'm back at Thursday cards. I won eleven dollars last week.

It's not a sleeping pill, and it's not a miracle.

It's not a fix for a medical problem. If you snore hard, wake up gasping, or have been dragging for weeks, tell your doctor. And don't let him wave you off this time.

If you have kidney trouble or take prescription medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist first.

• You've slept badly for so long you've stopped mentioning it
• Somebody told you it's just your age, and you believed them
• You've got your own drawer of things that didn't work
• You won't spend another dime unless you can get it back

$37.99 for one bottle, 30 nights. Or $29.99 a month on Subscribe & Save with free shipping. About a dollar a night.

And 100 days to get every cent back if you're not happy.

From the Stay Able website, word for word. I like that they're not all raves:

You can keep telling yourself what I told myself for eleven years. It's my age. Nothing to be done. Keep missing the card games and the evenings.

Or you can run one more experiment. This time with a receipt and 100 days to change your mind.

You have permission to expect better than this. I'm sorry nobody told you sooner. Nobody told me either.

P.S. Go look it up yourself. The NIH says waking up tired every day is not a normal part of aging. I wish I'd read that sentence eleven years ago.

Sources: how magnesium intake, absorption and loss change with age, and how many US adults fall short, NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Magnesium fact sheet; poor sleep is not a normal part of aging, NIH SeniorHealth, Sleep and Aging (archived) and National Institute on Aging, Sleep and Older Adults.

Dramatization. Susan Miller is a persona and her story is illustrative. Individual results vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.