#Taurine dosage for sleep reddit tv#

I gave those nights an average quality rating of 7.3, and the 7.18 average hours of sleep I got was also noticeably higher than the no-meds nights.

How about sleep quality? Looking at all the single-product supplements, chamomile gave me the soundest night's sleep-so deep one night that my wife reported she was unable to rouse me during a snoring jag. That's all pretty good, but the whole jellied muscles business put me off a bit, so ultimately I'm not sure it's a great option for sustained use. The downside was the quality of that sleep, which I rated at only a 6.5, for an average sleep score of 49 points. On nights I took L-tryptophan, I got 7.53 hours of sleep, significantly above any other alternative. When looking at the overall amount of sleep I got while using a single supplement, L-tryptophan came out on top.

Not bad, and the Aura reported 1.46 hours of REM sleep each night, which was also surprisingly good. With no supplement, I was getting a baseline of 6.85 hours of sleep at an average 6.6 quality rating for a total sleep score of 46 points. The biggest surprise was that, based on my sleep log and the Aura data, I found I'd been sleeping better than I thought, even when I didn't take anything. 'Make sleep a priority, get exercise during the day, and avoid things like alcohol and caffeine.'Īfter weeks of testing, my personal results were far from what I expected. 'Look at your overall sleep habits and your environment before you engage with a sleep aid,' Makekau says. Still, consider those elements before thinking about a supplement. Supplements are only one piece of the puzzle, but the question is whether they can genuinely help to overcome those other elements.

#Taurine dosage for sleep reddit tv#

What you eat, what you drink, evening exercise, late-night brain stimulation (like watching TV or playing games), pets in the room, temperature, ambient noise and light, and who knows what else can each have a severe impact on how well you sleep. Rather, my intent is to investigate how widely variable sleep aids like these can be outside of the lab while offering my own anecdotal evidence about what worked as a baseline for further investigation.Īs well, remember that many things can impact how you sleep. It can't be noted strenuously enough that this is a thoroughly unscientific test and my experiences should not be seen as representative of how anyone else may respond to these supplements, or as a benchmark for their effectiveness. As a sort of master measurement of the night, I multiplied this rating by the total amount of sleep I achieved in hours, so a total 'sleep score' of 80 points-8 hours of level 10 sleep-would be perfect. In my sleep log, each night I gave the prior night's sleep a 'quality rating' from 1 (nonstop insomnia) to 10 (perfect sleep). I then used this information in combination with a daily sleep log (which I highly recommend even if you aren't experimenting with sleep aids) that I kept throughout the experiment, never taking the same sleep aid for two consecutive nights, and taking nothing at all for many nights to ensure my system was 'clean' for the next go-round. The quality and depth of sleep can be measured with sleep monitoring equipment I used a Withings Aura to measure the amount of REM sleep I was getting each night.

But people need to know that even things over the counter can be harmful.' She points to kava (related to severe liver damage) and l-tryptophan (associated with a rare and fatal muscle-jellifying disease called Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome) as drugs to treat with special caution. 'There are effective prescription medications,' she notes, 'but they are associated with negative side effects. Given some patients' concern with prescription drugs, Makekau understands the desire for alternatives, but stresses caution. That being said, I generally tell my patients that if they find a sleep aid anecdotally to be helpful and not harmful, I don't see anything wrong with it.' 'The studies that are out there, particularly on valerian and chamomile, are limited and small in number, and the results are inconclusive. 'The bottom line is that the available alternatives are not really rooted in science,' she says. Shanon Makekau, medical director of the sleep laboratory at the Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, about supplements like valerian root, melatonin, and tryptophan, and whether they have any legitimate medical value.