Most melatonin sold in stores is dosed ten times above what the studies actually used. Here is what 487 papers support, what to skip, and what fixes sleep at the root.
Sleep-onset, sleep-maintenance, or early-waking? Two minutes, no email.
Take the sleep quizWhat to take tonight if you want better odds than placebo. Ranked by how well the science holds up, not how well it sells.
300 to 400 mg, one hour before bed. Glycinate form for absorption.
0.3 to 0.5 mg, not 5 mg. The studies that worked used a tenth of the standard retail dose.
200 mg, often paired with magnesium. Calms without sedation.
3 g, thirty minutes before bed. Drops core body temperature.
Where you actually fix sleep. Supplements help. None of them beat these habits.
Ten minutes within thirty minutes of waking. Anchors your circadian rhythm more than anything else.
Bedroom between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius. Core temperature must drop for sleep onset.
Blackout curtains, no LED indicators. Even small amounts of light suppress melatonin.
Last caffeine eight to ten hours before bed. The half-life is longer than people think.
Last meal at least three hours before bed. Digestion competes with sleep onset.
Ten minutes before bed. Lowers cortisol, builds sleep pressure.
What good sleepers do and bad sleepers do not. Unsexy. Boring. Effective.
The single most underrated sleep intervention. Same wake time daily resets your circadian rhythm faster than any supplement.
600 mg KSM-66 daily for at least eight weeks. Best for stress-driven insomnia.
Glasses or screen tint after sunset. Modest effect, low cost.
Gold standard for chronic insomnia. Outperforms sleep medication in head-to-head trials. Search Sleepio, Somryst, or ask your GP.
Sleep advice the evidence quietly disagrees with. Some of it is harmless. Some of it actively makes sleep worse.
Saturates receptors. Can leave you groggy the next day. The studies that worked used 0.3 to 0.5 mg. Manufacturers settled on 5 mg because it was cheap to make, not because it works better.
Pleasant ritual. Mostly placebo at tea-bag doses. The active compound only kicks in at amounts you cannot reasonably drink.
Twelve ingredients means twelve guesses. None of them tested together. More ingredients is not more sleep.
Sedation is not sleep. Alcohol fragments REM, fragments deep sleep, and increases overnight awakenings. The first hour feels good. The next six pay for it.
The full step list with timing, dosage, and mechanism, saved to your account. Schedule the habits to your calendar and get an alert when new evidence shifts a grade.
Open the Sleep Optimization protocolThe two-minute quiz routes you to a protocol built for your specific pattern: trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, or waking too early. Same evidence engine, your specific problem.
Every grade above links to the underlying studies. Every protocol step is dose, time, and form specific. Stop researching. Start the protocol.