In our recent blog about sleep, we discussed the popular supplement Melatonin. It’s widely available and used. We discussed dosing as well as what everyone seems to get wrong about Melatonin dosing. We explored Melatonin’s practical applications and its limited use as a sleep supplement in most cases. This is due to the fact that Melatonin benefits us by helping promote a healthy circadian rhythm. However, it does not help much with sleep onset. Highly delayed sleep onset is a common issue hindering good sleep; thus, Melatonin may not offer significant help. This holds especially true if they aren’t using an optimized Melatonin dosage.
Noo-tropics.eu offers various supplements to hasten sleep onset and enhance overall sleep quality. This allows us to get out of bed feeling refreshed on a consistent basis. We tested several ingredients to select the best supplements for promoting healthy sleep. This list narrowed down to five great choices. Before we work on promoting sleep quality via supplementation, it is important to understand the basics of sleep.
“There are multiple theories as to why we sleep such as conserving energy, avoiding dangers at night, flushing toxins out of our brains, consolidating memories and processing daily experiences. Even though there isn’t a clear answer to why we sleep, there are clear answers to why we need to sleep…”
The Basics of Sleep:
Sleep is something we all require on a daily basis. Without it, our overall health (especially our cognitive health) starts to suffer. The scientific community lacks a solid answer to “why do we sleep?” Multiple theories exist, including conserving energy and memory consolidation. While the question of why we sleep lacks a clear answer, the reasons why we need sleep are well-documented.
Without sleep, our immune system may weaken and our cognitive functions will quickly become highly limited. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to other various adverse health effects such as decreased metabolic and cardiovascular function. Consistently obtaining enough high-quality sleep is crucial for promoting optimal health and cognition.
What Are The 4 Stages of Sleep?
The other interesting thing about sleep is that it is not a static process. In fact, sleep occurs in four stages, which are as follows:
STAGE 1 SLEEP
The first stage of sleep is characterized by slow eye movements and gradual muscle relaxation as we drift off. This stage of sleep is delicate, as it’s easy to be woken up, especially if you struggle to fall asleep.
STAGE 2 SLEEP
In this stage, brain waves slow, heart rate decreases, and body temperature drops. Waking up becomes difficult as restorative processes begin during this stage of sleep.
STAGE 3 SLEEP
During this stage, our brain waves slow, body temperature drops, and heart rate decreases significantly. Stage 3 sleep is deeply restorative, characterized by slow brain waves and difficulty waking up. This contributes the most to us feeling nice and refreshed after waking up.
STAGE 4 SLEEP
During the fourth stage of sleep, brain waves accelerate and eye movements increase, resembling waking brain waves in REM sleep. Unsurprisingly, this is the stage of sleep where we have the most vivid but also most bizarre dreams.
Under normal conditions, we cycle in-and-out of these four sleep stages multiple times a night. On average, it takes us about 90 minutes to cycle through all four stages. Waking during deep sleep often leads to grogginess, while alertness upon waking suggests arousal during REM sleep.
Waking up during stage 1 sleep can leave us feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. Awakening during stage 1 sleep, being light, can occur easily, even in the middle of the night. When we wake up during stage 1 sleep, it can be quite hard to go back to sleep.
“With this is mind, we want supplements that will kick in fast, and last about 7-8 hours, which is the recommended amount of sleep we should be getting…”
Supporting Our Sleep With Supplements
Awareness of our natural sleep cycle and its stages is crucial when considering sleep supplementation. Enhancing stage 1 sleep depth offers benefits at sleep onset and later in the night. Deeper stage 1 sleep reduces the likelihood of waking up during this stage in the middle of the night. We aim for light stage 1 sleep near waking up for a more enjoyable morning experience.
Supplements should kick in fast, lasting about 7-8 hours, aligning with recommended sleep duration. A sleep timer could optimize by considering our sleep cycle lengths. For example, a few of us around the office have had great results with this very simple sleep timer.
How To Use A Sleep Timer
Set the sleep timer for your desired wake-up or bedtime, and it will suggest your morning alarm time. It factors in the 90-minute sleep cycle, aiming for a wake-up during lighter sleep stages. Using this timer has made waking up easier, providing insight into sleep duration.
With the basics out of the way, we can now really start to explore which Noo-tropics.eu supplements will help support a healthy night’s sleep. We will keep referencing back to what we talked about up until now as this will be important for determining what supplements will work best for you. Here is, in our opinion, the 5 best sleep supplement we currently carry that are not Melatonin.
Oleamide for Sleep
Oleamide is a fascinating supplement that recently crossed our path during research and development for an upcoming product on Natrium Health. In fact, we were so impressed by this compound in isolation that we decided to offer it in a bulk powder on Noo-tropics.eu. Oleamide is actually quite similar to another product we carry called Palmitoylethanolamide. Both of these compounds are categorized as fatty acid amides and both Oleamide and Palmitoylethanolamide occur naturally in the body. In our bodies, both of these fatty acid amides interact with our endogenous cannabinoid system.
It is also unclear what stages of slow wave sleep Oleamide specifically acts on, but it has been shown that Oleamide produces an overall increase in slow wave sleep. Since Oleamide benefits include an apparent decrease in the amount of time taken to fall asleep, Oleamide may be increasing the depth of stage 1 slow wave sleep. This may also help explain the decreased likelihood of wakefulness and increased sleep time that is generally seen with administration of an Oleamide supplement.
Sensoril Ashwagandha for Sleep
Sensoril is an extract of Ashwagandha and has very prominent relaxing effects that we have found can make getting to bed a whole lot easier. In addition to its relaxing effects, Sensoril Ashwagandha also has a potent stress-regulating effect which can be highly beneficial when it comes to sleep as our sleep cycles are highly impacted by increased stress. Increased stress levels tend to quite reliably reduce the amount of slow wave sleep, reduce the amount of REM sleep, increase the amount of awakenings during the night and appears to decrease overall sleep efficiency. Based on this, it appears that stress is highly detrimental on our overall sleep quality.
What’s worse, is that sleep is an important regulator of our natural stress response and we can get a negative feedback loop where stress can repeatedly decrease sleep quality. This then increases stress response which then further degrades sleep quality. Based on this, it is very important to get stress under control if we want to maintain healthy sleep quality. If you want to learn more about how Sensoril Ashwagandha benefits your stress levels, we would recommend reading our in depth blog on Ashwagandha.
“Overall, Sensoril would be a fantastic night time supplement to take an hour before bed. It will help calm us down which will make it easier to drift off to sleep and will help keep us asleep too…”
Sensoril Ashwagandha Effects on GABA-A Receptors
Sensoril not only enhances overall sleep quality via its stress management effects, it also has much more direct effects. Ashwagandha has quite potent effects at GABA-A receptors which is a very important receptor that helps calm our brain activity. One of the main classes of compounds in Ashwagandha that are responsible for the bulk of Ashwagandha GABAergic effects are the glyco withanolides.
Overall, Sensoril would be a fantastic night time supplement to take an hour before bed. It will help calm us down which will make it easier to drift off to sleep and will help keep us asleep too. Furthermore, it will help offset the negative effects of stress on sleep. Since Sensoril Ashwagandha benefits include regulating stress levels, this will also allow you to wake up stress free! This is important as one of our main stress hormones, cortisol, tends to be very high in the early mornings. To a certain degree, this is a good thing as cortisol helps get us going in the morning. However, if you are already quite stressed, mornings can be a tricky ordeal. Night time dosing of Sensoril should help dampen this early morning stress response allowing you to get on with your day feeling refreshed and relaxed!
Magnesium Glycinate for Sleep
If you read our recent blog on Magnesium, you will know that Magnesium deficiencies are very common. Generally speaking, it is very important to get in an adequate amount of Magnesium to maintain optimum health. However, Magnesium also plays a big role in sleep and a high-qualtiy Magnesium supplement may help enhance sleep quality. Magnesium can act on GABAergic receptors and it may also help stabilize glutamate receptors. GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in our brain whereas glutamate is the main excitatory neurotransmitter in our brain. This means that when glutamate activity is high, it may be quite hard to get to sleep and to stay asleep. Magnesium blocks one of the main glutamate receptors called the NMDA receptors. By doing, Magnesium Glycinate increase sleep quality.
“It appears that Magnesium may selectively enhance stage 2 and 3 slow wave sleep, which is great, as these are the most restorative stages of sleep…”
Studies on Magnesium improving sleep are unfortunately scarce. However, there was one very good study that showed that magnesium was able to enhance overall slow wave sleep, and in particular, was able to boost brain waves that are seen in stage 2 and stage 3 sleep. It appears that Magnesium may selectively enhance stage 2 and 3 slow wave sleep, which is great, as these are the most restorative stages of sleep. Magnesium may also help normalize sleeping cortisol levels, similar but to a much lower degree than Sensoril Ashwagandha. Based on this, Magnesium may also be highly beneficial in cases of degraded sleep due to stress.
Why Is Magnesium Glycinate The Best Magnesium Supplement For Sleep?
You may ask yourself at this point “why did Noo-tropics.eu choose Magnesium Glycinate instead of other Magnesium supplements they offer for sale?” This is because Magnesium Glycinate, as the name may suggest, is bound to the amino acid Glycine. Glycine is a dietary amino acid, and like GABA, is mainly an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It also happens to have its own receptor named the Glycine receptor. When Glycine activates its own receptor, it can also slow down brain activity and may even help enhance sleep by itself. Studies have shown that large doses of Glycine (usually around 3 grams) may significantly shorten sleep latency and may also decrease the amount of time it takes to get into the deeper stages of slow wave sleep.
The Effects of Glycine on Sleep
Subjective effects have shown that this large dose of Glycine leads to better cognitive function the following morning. This effect has been attributed to Glycine enhancing overall sleep quality. The amount you are getting from a dose of a Magnesium Glycinate supplement is likely not able to produce these effects. However, there is the possibility that due to its Glycine content, Magnesium Glycinate will be the best Magnesium for sleep. Anecdotally, Magnesium Glycinate feels much more relaxing and appears to enhance sleep more than other forms of Magnesium. In fact, while doing research for Magnesium, we found that a commonly searched-for phrase is “Magnesium glycinate sleep,” which indicated to us that Magnesium Glycinate is already quite a well established form of Magnesium for sleep! That being said, any Magnesium supplement we carry should help enhance sleep quality.
Lemon Balm Extract for Sleep
Lemon Balm Extract is widely known for its calming effects. So, it is no surprise that it has made its way into this sleep supplement blog. If it hasn’t become apparent yet at this point in the blog, there appears to be a common thread between all of these supplements which is the fact that all of the sleep supplements on this list help relax us before bed via a variety of mechanisms. This is why Melatonin is not the always the best sleep supplement, as it does not have relaxing effects even though using Melatonin for sleep is very popular.
Once most people fall asleep, they will usually stay asleep. However, getting to sleep appears to be one of the more challenging aspects of sleep. In theory, the more relaxed we are the easier it will be to fall asleep, and this is attributed to relaxation-causing decreased sleep latency. So, how does Lemon Balm Extract follow this thread?
Lemon Balm Extract increases GABAergic activity through a novel, and much more specific, mechanism than the other compounds on our list. It also allows Lemon Balm Extract to be used alongside the other ingredients on this list as it will fortify the GABAergic effects of supplements such as Sensoril Ashwagandha.
Gotu Kola Extract for Sleep
Gotu Kolu Extract made the list due to a lot of people around the office reporting that they had great results with taking it before sleep. Furthermore, it also appears to have some significant effects on enhancing memory and overall cognitive function. These are just a few Gotu Kola uses. In fact, there are a lot more Gotu Kola uses and Gotu Kola benefits that deserve their own blog (stay tuned!). So, how does Gotu Kola Extract support sleep quality?
“This means that Gotu Kola Extract may work great as a standalone ingredient by gently enhancing our bodies own GABAergic activity. It may also work synergistically with other GABAergic supplements..”
The research on why Gotu Kola Extract enhances sleep is still somewhat lacking. That said, there does appear to be some clear leads on it improving overall sleep quality. This evidence comes from the fact that when a Gotu Kola dosage is co-administered with supplements that induce sleep via strong GABAergic activity, Gotu Kola Extract appears to enhance the overall time spent asleep beyond what the strong GABAergic agonist is able to produce on its own. This may indicate that Gotu Kola may produce a significant potentiating effect on our natural GABAergic system. This also means that Gotu Kola Extract may work great as a standalone ingredient by gently enhancing our bodies own GABAergic activity. It may also work synergistically with other GABAergic supplements. With this in mind, we would suggest the following sleep supplement stack to optimize GABAergic activity before sleep:
The GABA Stack:
Sensoril Ashwagandha: The first component of this stack is Sensoril Ashwagandha as it appears to signal quite strongly through the GABA-A receptor which is the most important GABA receptor for sleep. The glyco withanolides contained in Sensoril appear to mimic the effects of GABA. This means that they may be able to bind to GABA receptors in a similar fashion to GABA itself.
Lemon Balm Extract: With Sensoril, we are able to directly increase activity at GABA-A receptor. However, by also introducing Lemon Balm Extract we may be able to enhance natural GABAergic activity. Again, this is due to the fact that Lemon Balm Extract helps slow down the breakdown of GABA. This should help decrease sleep latency and help enhance overall sleep time.
Gotu Kola Extract: To round out the GABA stack, we would recommend including Gotu Kola Extract. Gotu Kola Extract helps potentiate the activity of other GABAergic compounds, including GABA itself. This means that Gotu Kola extract may help bolster the effects of both Sensoril Ashwagandha and Gotu Kola Extract. This would make the GABA stack highly relaxing as well as make for a perfect pre-sleep supplement!
Also read our blog on Valerian Root
