Are you getting enough sleep? According to the National Health Service (NHS), healthy adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night consistently. 

Lack of sleep has many causes, ranging from stress, environmental noise, dietary stimulants (such as alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine). Even hot flushes during the menopause can cause considerable disruption to sleep patterns. And, over the longer term, chronic sleep deprivation can affect both your health and your quality of life. 

It’s for that reason that many people turn to sleep supplements to help them support their sleep hygiene (sleep hygiene refers to both your sleep behaviours and sleeping environment). 

However, the world of sleep supplements has traditionally taken a pharmaceutical route. Synthetically-based sleeping tablets can leave users with residual symptoms such as drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, and impaired memory.

So, what’s the alternative? 

Natural sleep supplements. 

Led by Dr. Dean St Mart PhD, Supplement Needs is pursuing a revolution in natural sleep support with its series of carefully researched and formulated sleep support products. 

In addition to our Magnesium Bisglycinate, which is the optimum form of magnesium for sleep, we have created the Supplement Needs Sleep Stack, a high-quality, non-proprietary blend of two vitamins, two minerals, and two amino acids. Perhaps most importantly, the Sleep Stack has NO sedative ingredients. 

We have also developed a nootropic sleep supplement that is designed to support evening time relaxation. Supplement Needs PM Priming combines an efficacious blend of Phosphatidylserine, Alpha GPC, L-Theanine and Broccoli Sprout Extract (for Sulforaphane, Lutein, and Zeaxanthin).

Maintaining your sleep hygiene

In addition to considering a natural sleep supplement, there are a number of other things you can do to improve your sleep hygiene and overall quality of sleep.

However, the most important thing to be aware of is the melatonin hormone (known as 5-methoxy-N-acetyltryptamine). Melatonin is a hormone produced by your brain in response to darkness. More specifically, melatonin is secreted by your pineal gland (a secretory neuroendocrine organ that is located in the mid-line of the brain, outside the blood-brain barrier). 

Once secreted by the pineal gland, the melatonin hormone acts upon your body’s G protein-coupled receptors, termed MT₁ and MT₂. By acting upon these receptors, melatonin helps to modulate your body’s circadian rhythms. 

In other words, melatonin hormones let your body know that it’s time to sleep. In a healthy individual, melatonin production should start just after it gets dark, peaking during the early hours of the morning and subsequently reducing during daylight hours. 

With all that in mind, there are a number of things you can do to support your body’s production of melatonin: 

  • Avoid blue light from devices (such as smartphones and tablets) at least two hours before going to bed. It’s for this reason that some sleep therapists suggest banning TVs and other electronic devices from the bedroom altogether.

  • Ensure your bedroom is dark and quiet. Ideally, try and maintain a temperature of around 16-18ºC.

  • Consider doing some very gentle activities such as yoga before bed.

  • Stick to a routine. You’ll find it easier to fall and stay asleep if you maintain a routine and go to bed at a similar time each night.

  • Consider taking a natural sleep supplement that contains tryptophan. Tryptophan is a naturally occurring amino acid that is used by the body to make melatonin (and serotonin, too). As an added bonus, tryptophan is also used by the liver to produce niacin which is used for energy metabolism and DNA production. The Supplement Needs Sleep Stack contains 5-Hydroxytryptophan - which is the intermediate metabolite of L-Tryptophan. 

Buy the best sleep supplements

Your sleep is important, so it pays to invest in only high-quality natural sleep supplements. 

As you’ll almost certainly be aware, there are thousands of different sleep supplements available. How can you tell the quality ones apart from the rest? As follows: 

  • Developed by credentialed experts - there are many anonymous supplement brands out there. Those are the kind you want to avoid. Instead, look for sleep supplements that have been developed by a named expert. Here at Supplement Needs, our supplements have been formulated by leading expert Dr. Dean St Mart PhD, who holds a double-first degree in chemistry and pharmaceutical chemistry as well as a PhD in synthetic organic chemistry and fluorescence spectroscopy.

  • Transparent about ingredients - as with anything that you’re going to put in your body, you want to know what ingredients any given sleep supplement contains. You’ll find that all of Supplement Needs’ sleep support supplements are completely transparently labelled, not only with the full list of ingredients, but the dosage of those ingredients.

  • Safe and quality manufacture - do you know how a supplement has been manufactured? The very best supplements (like our supplements) are manufactured in line with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). These set out the best practices and minimum standards that manufacturers should follow when producing supplements. It’s also good to check if a supplement has been made in line with ISO 22000:2018 - an international standard that means manufacturers must identify, monitor, reduce and prevent hazards at any stage of the production process.

  • Price - as we’ve written previously, it’s really not worth buying cheap supplements. In many cases, they won’t be especially efficient. What’s more, premium supplements aren’t really as ‘expensive’ as they appear. Break the cost down by day, and you’ll find that they cost less than a coffee per day. For example, our renowned Sleep Stack supplement works out at only 74p per serving.

Support your sleep with Supplement Needs now.