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How to sleep better: Take one of these 5 supplements (that's not melatonin)
Ok, you’re here because you want…and need to sleep. No fluff, straight to the point. There are no rituals here for how to sleep better. Just include any ONE of these 5 supplements into your life and give it a week or two to gradually see improvement. If you’d like to read more in depth about how these supplements can find a nice read after the supplements list.
1. Bone Broth
This ready made bone broth is one of the best tasting on the market. It can be easily incorporated in your everyday cooking or you can just sip on a well seasoned cup first thing in the morning or later into the night before bed.
2. Gelatin
This is not your grandmother’s gelatin. No soaking, boiling or any gelatin smell. Add one tablespoon of this to a glass and pour in some hot water and stir. It will melt immediately into a clear amber liquid. Fill the glass with one cup of water/herbal tea add a splash of lemon juice and drink as is or put in the refrigerator to set up.
3. Magnesium Citrate
A delicious drink right before bed. This calms you down and gets you to the place where you are able to fall asleep gently. No big giant pills to swallow. Who thought that taking supplements could be so easy. Additional benefit is it’s ability to improve bowel movements too!
4. Magnesium Glycinate
If you’re stomach is a little sensitive to magnesium citrate then you can try magnesium glycinate. This is the most gentle form of magnesium and it is available in an orange juice chewable. Each tablet is 100 mg and so you can easily spread out the dosage over the course of the day.
5. Glycine
Glycine is an amino acid that has a unique sweet taste. It’s easy to measure out in order to increase and decrease the dose to find the right amount that you need within the recommended limit.
Why supplements work
Glycine is contained in the bone broth, gelatin, magnesium glycinate and the glycine supplement. The other focus element is Magnesium but first let’s talk a little about glycine.
In studies it was found that Glycine induces Rapid Eye Movement. But how does it do that? Well, a lot of it is still under investigation.
There are three ways that glycine participates in the sleep cycle but what has been proven so far is:
- That it is able to dilate the blood vessels in the arms and legs just enough to reduce the core temperature. Reducing body temperature just a degree or two can help to induce sleep.
- How about the staying asleep part? It appears that whenever glycine is taken it increases serotonin which eventually makes melatonin naturally in the body; the wake/sleep hormone.
- The third way glycine can help with sleep is by binding to a N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptor in the brain that opens its channel when it binds to glycine. This allows positive ions to flow through into the nerve cells.
Magnesium enters the sleep/wake cycle here. There are two main functions in this pathway:
- It’s required to convert 5-HTP to serotonin.
- Magnesium also increases the neurotransmitter GABA that is required to transform N-acetyl-Serotonin to Melatonin. All roads lead to melatonin. Why not just take melatonin? Well, this is more suitable for occasional sleeplessness due get lag or temporary change in sleep schedule. To Many chronic insomniacs report that melatonin does not work for a full night’s sleep.
There are three theories:
- Since melatonin is the body’s time keeper, taking it will tell you “continue your typical night time activity” and that for you is staying awake.
- Typically melatonin levels are high right before sunrise between 2 am and 4 am. So, when you take it your body will experience a surge in melatonin and it will believe that it’s around 2 or 4 am. Once the levels start to drop you body now thinks it’s time to wake up. And here you are in the middle of the night wondering why you fell asleep so easily but you’re up 4 hours later. You body thinks it’s twilight! Melatonin levels are not even throughout the night or nigh so the time release version may also give you this effect if you’re a true insomniac and you’re not just having a short period that needs adjusting.
- Finally, the pathway for creating melatonin requires vitamins, minerals and co-factors and if you’re not sleeping well, chances are you’re deficient in these and well…it just won’t work without all the parts required. It’s like having access to water but there’s a hole in your cup. You will suffer from thirst even though you have water…makes sense?
Synthesis of Melatonin in the body
Why you should take supplements
Something’s gotta give. You’ve been tired all day. Waiting for the moment you can fall into bed. You showered, jumped in clean comfortable Pjs, lavender going, mood lighting, journal entry made, watered and pee’d you are so totally ready for bed. You jump in, snuggle down, your bed is super comfortable, nothing is out of order…except…the sleep has left you immediately!
But you’re not like the other folks, once it’s gone, it’s gone. You prepare to lay there for a few hours before you will actually fall asleep. You look at the clock and start recalculating how many hours of rest you’ll actually get if you’d fall asleep now…now…now!
In the olden days when the sun went down it was time to sleep. With the introduction of electric lights we have the convenience of staying up well into the night and even all night long. This is a great invention for productivity no doubt the progression of technology has since increased magnanimously since then. But as the old saying goes, progress brings problems and with the light always on there is not much sleep to be had.
Bonus info: Types of sleep problems and causes
1. Types of sleep disturbances
Living in these times we have different things that affect us on a deeper level that are unlike anything that any of our parents and previous generations had contended with. Fifty percent 50% of women have insomnia. And other sleep difficulties. these include:
- Difficulty falling asleep: Laying tossing and turning feeling very sleepy but not enough to cross over the threshold to sleeping but sleepy enough to feel like it’s near but it doesn’t actually flip the switch to sleep.
- Staying asleep: The smallest touch, body discomfort, change in temperature, light or sound and you are wide awake. Looking around the room and then at the clock and it’s only a few hours later. Now here you are until twilight before you actually fall asleep again.
- Unable to return to sleep: Thirsty, need to pee? Yeah, say goodbye to sleep. You’re tempted to skip water before bed so you don’t wake up in the middle of the night to pee but then you wake up thirsty. In any case here you are until twilight again.
- Waking early: It’s finally the weekend. You promised yourself that you will sleep your entire face off! But here you are wide eyed and bushy tailed at 5 a.m. You got 6 hours which is more than your usual so you’ll take it. But 2 more would have been so nice.
- Feeling unrefreshed: Maybe you have no trouble falling asleep or staying asleep but when you wake up and see that 8 hours have passed and it feels like you haven’t slept a wink!
2. 5 Causes of sleep disrupted sleep pattern include
- Stress: More than anything in these times the stress level is at catatonic levels. Not just millennials but all ages of persons have been dealing with a unique level of stress especially in recent times. Sometimes you’re just worrying about your chronic illness and things that you can’t really change or even have a solution to.
- Lifestyle: Quick dinners, fast paced lifestyle, entertaining stressful circumstances going from one thing to the next and the next. Chasing weekends, holidays and the occasional sick days. Mostly you are working towards a goal and believe that if you grind day in and day out to get to your goal and barely notice that insomnia has set in because you have been doing and doing and doing some more.
- Diet: Sometimes all you can do is grab and go. There’s no time for cooking a decent meal and the ease of having a hot-greasy-salty-something looks better on a plate than nothing at all. More than that sometimes you really don’t know what is healthy and what exactly are the specific needs for your body. These days we now know that despite picking the “healthy” alternative, this may still not be as beneficial to our body since the food does not contain the same nutrients as it has the potential for due to poor soil quality.
- Environmental factors: In developed cities and urban areas there is the most obvious, air pollution. But have you looked around the areas where there are agricultural crops…it’s green. Green is good, right? Have you considered the vast amount of pesticides that are applied to the crops in the area that have leached into the ground-water and probably bioaccumulating in the organic garden you’re trying to grow in your yard?
- Chronic Illness: Chronic pain is a feature of many chronic illnesses and after a while you have not even realized that you may be in pain anymore. Your brain may have actually turned off the communication just because the pain is so intense. Other times you are definitely in pain. This is definitely what is keeping you up.
Conclusion
There are a number of things that can keep you awake, prevent you from getting a full night’s rest or feel refreshed after sleep. The purpose of the supplements is to provide the body with the tools it needs to facilitate the best function of the wake/sleep cycle.
This is better than just taking something to knock you out that may only work for a short time before you will be needing to search for something else.
Consider something that might be a bit slower to take effect but will establish healthy wake/sleep pattern. Live well!
