(As Transcribe From Mini-Med Minutes Podcast)

 

Welcome back everybody to another episode of Mini-Med Minutes.

 

This episode is Top Supplements for Better Sleep.

 

This is not even a topic I made myself, this topic was practically determined by all the questions about sleep I get at the pharmacy.

 

Definitely one of the most common if not the most common questions I get about over the counter stuff in general.

 

I think at this point maybe we should add one of those giant lighted arrow signs pointing directly to the aisle with a HELP-ME button for questions.

 

And I get why this is a popular question.

 

Sleep is important. Probably one of the top 3 things I think about when I talk about general health behind or equal to exercise and nutrition, which includes diet.

 

It can really set the tone of the rest of your day right?

 

If you get really good sleep, you get a lot done. Not only that, I bet you’re happier doing it. And that joy is infectious, people will want to be around you and welcome your company.

 

If you have chronically good sleep, you’ll have a chronically, good time.

 

On the other hand, if you get really shitty sleep, you could imagine it’s the exact opposite.

 

You’re moody.

 

You don’t want to do the things you’re doing.

 

You don’t want to see people.

 

You don’t want to interact with anything.

 

You just want to go home and sleep but you can’t because the world moves on! And you have rent to pay.

 

People don’t want to be around you and you’re just that person people shit talk behind your back.

 

Now, that sounds like a worse case scenario.. But is it?

 

Even if you don’t have the worst case scenario, none the less, bad sleep makes you feel like crap.

 

… and you ask yourself, what can I do about it? Because simply reserving 8 hours of alone time to myself every night just isn’t cutting it.

 

Maybe you want a quick solution, and maybe there is one.

 

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today–Supplements that you can find that could fix your sleep issue right away.

 

But I will preface that aside from supplements and medicine, the first thing you should do is fix all your sleeping habits.

 

Like doom scrolling TikTok, Facebook, whatever social media you use, right before or IN bed, engaging in physical activity when you know it negatively affects your sleep, not being able to get into a dark enough room, etc.

 

Get the easy things out of the way first.

 

But anyway, top supplements, here we go:

 

The first one is…

 

Melatonin

 

This one is an obvious one. It’s endogenous which means your body already makes it on its own.

 

I like starting with endogenous things because it’s not foreign to your body. And if it’s not foreign to your body, it’s generally regarded as safe, and it could just be a simple imbalance of a chemical or hormone that just needs a bit of adjustment.

 

But what melatonin does is it regulates your sleep-wake cycle, your circadian rhythm. Its release from your body or the trigger to release it is associated with darkness which is why I prefaced at the very beginning to fix the easy stuff first. Don’t try to sleep where there’s an abundance of light. Instinctively, most people know that already.

 

Again, realize that melatonin is endogenous, it helps your body’s natural process of nudging you to go to sleep. It is NOT a sedative and therefore it takes some time and the effects are subtle.

 

Melatonin is super well understood. Tons of studies on it. Journal of Sleep Medicine has shown that it helps people with sleep from Jet Lag to Shift Workers to DSPS which is delayed sleep phase syndrome where your body just has a circadian rhythm that’s just different than what’s socially normal.

 

Now the question I get all the time is how much should I take?

 

And it really is confusing because at most pharmacies, it starts at 1mg and goes all the way to 10mg and the 1mg is marketed as a children’s dose.

 

Now I talked about hormone and chemical balance earlier and that’s definitely something to keep in mind.

 

Intuitively that would suggest that too much is also a bad thing and that’s true. You could wake up groggy and drowsy the next day, the very symptoms you were trying to avoid

 

or… you could mess up your sleep-wake cycle in general.

 

Melatonin might be over the counter here in the US but it’s actually a prescription medication in some countries highlighting the importance of just being careful on how you use it.

 

So knowing that, you want to start low.

 

The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine showed that 0.3mg to 5mg is effective at initiating sleep.

 

So you don’t necessarily need a whole lot.

 

I would look for the 1mg dose first. Sometimes they come as droppers so look at those too.

 

Lots of chewable supplements are multidose which means it typically requires 2 or more gummies for instance so you might be able to get away with just 1 gummy.

 

So look at the labels carefully to find what you need.

 

From my own personal experience, the 3mg supplements are the most popular.

 

But that could psychologically be skewed by the fact that people typically choose middle options because middle options look like safe options to most people.

 

So again, please start low, and titrate up as you go because everyone is different.

 

Alright, so the second supplement I’ll mention is…

 

L-Theanine

 

L-Theanine is actually just an amino acid.

 

If you know anything about amino acids or you learned about them in school, you’d know them as building blocks to proteins.

 

You put together amino acids like legos to make proteins, you put together proteins to make tissue, you put together tissue to make organs, and all those organs together make… you!

 

And I’m telling you this because it has nothing to do with why you use L-Theanine for sleep.

 

It’s just a question I get from students of how an amino acid could do anything other than build tissue.

 

A lot of amino acids primarily or only build tissue like leucine or lysine.

 

But L-Theanine is structurally similar to glutamate which is a neurotransmitter.

 

And of course neurotransmitters tell your body to do certain things.

 

And in this instance, it’s telling your body to relax or focus by blocking glutamate which is probably opposite of how you thought it worked by my initial explanation.

 

But L-Theanine is going to increase GABA, dopamine and serotonin which is going to help with mood, help with relaxation and subsequently… sleep.

 

So L-Theanine will be best for people who have a lot of stress and have racing thoughts at night and just needs to calm down those cortisol levels.

 

A 2019 study in the journal Nutrients found that participants who took 200mg of L-Theanine reported better sleep efficiency and fewer nightmares, so 200mg is a good starting point here though I’ve seen studies start as low as 100mg and doses up to 400mg.

 

Just be careful with the products you find as some people use it strictly for stress relief and combine it with green tea for an “alert calm” effect but since we’re using this for sleep, we want other complimenting ingredients or just L-Theanine by itself. Caffeine from the green tea is a no-no for our intended purposes.

 

Next we’ll talk about…

 

Magnesium

 

If you’ve seen my episode on magnesium, I’m talking about magnesium that you can actually absorb as a nutrient.

 

So we’re talking about something like Magnesium Glycinate or Bisglycinate or any Magnesium that promotes bioavailability. So no Mag Oxide, No Mag Citrate, nothing like that.

 

But anyway, Magnesium is responsible for hundreds of reactions in your body so you shouldn’t be surprised that magnesium supports a lot of the mechanisms we’ve already covered.

 

It’s going to increase GABA which promotes relaxation.

 

It’s going to decrease cortisol to decrease stress.

 

It’s involved in the synthesis of melatonin.

 

Additionally, it relaxes muscles. 

 

The way your muscles work is a balance between calcium and magnesium. One causes a contraction, the other causes relaxation.

 

So it reduces the physical tension you might have when trying to fall asleep.

 

So magnesium is really good for people who have a lot of stress or those who have racing thoughts when left to their own devices.

 

And it’s good for people with restless leg syndrome obviously due to the muscle relaxing properties.

 

Just some quick dosing advice. I’d recommend a starting dose of around 200mg.

 

You’ll know when you had too much when you start having diarrhea. So definitely stick between 200-400mg of magnesium per day.

 

Again, get one that the body can absorb a sufficient amount of like magnesium glycinate.

 

The fourth supplement you might find on a lot of natural products and that ingredient is…

 

Valerian Root

 

This is a natural supplement.

 

Works the same way as the others we’ve mentioned. Affects on GABA, serotonin, etc.

 

There’s also been claims that it’s a decent anti-oxidant. To be honest, I didn’t really look into it in that regard but that would be a bonus if it’s true.

 

I did have some skepticism about it but there is a meta-analysis in the journal of Sleep Medicine as recent as 2020 that found that it did in fact show improvement in sleep quality, shortened time to fall asleep, and reduced awakenings compared to placebo.

 

So I think it would be worth a shot after the ones I’ve already mentioned.

 

As far as dosing goes, 300-600mg was the range in which I found studies for… taken 30 minutes to 2 hours before bedtime.

 

And I do want to mention that some authors emphasized that it doesn’t work right away and requires a few weeks of regular use for the positive health benefits.

 

VERY last one I’m going to mention is…

 

Glycine

 

As we talked about before, this is another amino acid. It works as both a building block of proteins and a neurotransmitter.

 

There’s glycine receptors in your spinal cord and brainstem and they’re chloride ion channels.

 

When we turn those on, all that chloride pours into the neurons and overcharging them and making them less likely to fire which produces a calming effect.

 

Much like the other amino acid L-Theanine, it also has GABAnergic effects, if that’s even a real word, telling your body to calm down and get ready for sleep.

 

Another unique thing it does is dilates blood vessels so it helps move blood from your core to your extremities like your hands and your feet.

 

And when we disperse blood like that, we reduce core body temperature.

 

And reducing core body temperature is already a known phenomenon we see when you go to sleep at night.

 

A study in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms found that 3g of glycine before bed resulted in fewer night awakenings and feeling more refreshed in the morning.

Now 3g is a big dose. I would start with 1g, maybe 2g. If it causes some GI discomfort, consider backing off.

 

Considerations

 

So that concludes the supplements that I wanted to share regarding sleep.

 

Now I want to share that supplements are rarely the cureall to your problems. Though, sometimes it is.

 

If taking a pill that’s… a natural supplement fixes a problem, that’s awesome.

 

But in this particular instance there are a ton of better things you can do before you pop a pill for it because in many ways, sleep problems stem from physical issues or external factors that are 100% in your control.

 

For instance, if you have an environment that is not conducive to sleeping, fix that first. Black out curtains, sleep masks, softer lights in the bedroom, removal of distractions like your cell phone.

 

Typically all in your control.

 

If you have something like severe sleep apnea, what’s a supplement going to fix for you really? 

 

Likely nothing. 

 

See your doctor, do a sleep study, maybe get a CPAP machine.

 

If there is a way to solve the issue by solving the underlying problem, that’s always going to be the best course of action unless there’s some barrier preventing that option.

 

For a lot of Americans, I know that could simply be cost.

 

Wrapping Up

 

So in conclusion.

 

If you have trouble sleeping and you’ve made it to wanting to try a supplement like the ones I mentioned above:

 

1. Start with melatonin. It’s endogenous, your body makes it on its own, it knows what it is, it knows how to use it well.
2. Second or in addition, I’d try magnesium. It’s involved in a ton of other processes and will benefit you beyond just sleep which includes stress control which inadvertently could help with sleep.
3. THEN… I would try L-Theanine and Glycine if I believe my diet to be spot on with the magnesium and nothing else seems to work.
4. Valerian root last. My own personal bias maybe against some of these herbal supplements and their effectiveness. I just…like the other options better because they’re chemicals your body regularly uses.

 

So I hope you found some value in today’s episode.

 

If you enjoyed it, please consider following the channel.

 

If you have any questions for me, shoot me a message at pharmacistnutrition.com.

 

And as always, thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you on the next one.

 

 

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