Most people trying to fix their sleep start with a supplement. The research says start with your wake-up time.
9 min read
Sleeping better comes down to three things working together: a consistent sleep and wake schedule, a body and brain that have been given the right signals to wind down, and an evening routine that removes the common disruptors. Supplements can support that foundation, but they cannot replace it. This guide covers what the evidence supports, in the order that matters most.
Poor sleep is not a fringe problem in Australia. A national survey of 1,011 Australian adults conducted for the Sleep Health Foundation found that inadequate sleep duration or quality, and its daytime consequences, affects 33 to 45 per cent of adults, with significant insomnia symptoms reported by 20 per cent. If you are struggling, you are in very ordinary company.
Most adults aged 18 to 64 need seven to nine hours of sleep per night. That figure comes from sleep duration consensus guidelines and is echoed by the Sleep Health Foundation, which notes that sleep need stays relatively stable through adulthood before easing slightly after 65.
The same Australian survey found the average reported sleep time was seven hours, with 12 per cent sleeping under five and a half hours. Among that short-sleeping group, 76 per cent reported frequent daytime impairment or sleep-related symptoms.
The most reliable indicator is not a number on a tracker, it is how you function. Consider whether you:
Fix your wake-up time before anything else. Your circadian rhythm, the roughly 24-hour internal clock that governs when you feel sleepy and when you feel alert, is set primarily by when you wake and when you see light. A consistent wake time anchors the whole system, including when melatonin starts rising that evening.
Bedtime is the output, not the input. If you go to bed at wildly different hours but wake at the same time daily, sleep pressure does the work for you and bedtime settles itself within a week or two. Do it the other way around and you spend your nights lying awake trying to force sleep onto a clock that has not caught up.
Hold your wake time within about 30 to 60 minutes across the week, weekends included. It is the least glamorous change on this list and the one with the largest return.
Light is the strongest signal your body clock receives. Two habits matter:
Morning light. Get outside within an hour of waking, ideally for 10 to 20 minutes. Outdoor light on an overcast day is still many times brighter than indoor lighting. This advances your clock, sharpens morning alertness and brings forward evening melatonin release.
Evening light. In the two to three hours before bed, dim what you can. Overhead lights off, lamps on. The issue with phones is partly the light and largely the content, since a scroll that raises your heart rate is a stimulant regardless of screen settings.
More than most people realise, and in ways they do not notice.
In a controlled trial published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 400mg of caffeine taken six hours before bed reduced objectively measured total sleep time by more than an hour, roughly the equivalent of two to three cups of coffee. The striking finding was that participants did not subjectively report the disruption. Their sleep was measurably worse and they had no idea.
The reason is caffeine's half-life, the time it takes your body to clear half of a dose. For caffeine that is typically five to six hours, though it varies widely between individuals. A 3pm coffee can still have a meaningful amount circulating at 11pm.
A practical cut-off is eight hours before bed, or early afternoon for most people. If you are a heavy coffee drinker, shift the cut-off earlier by an hour each week rather than all at once.
Regular exercise consistently improves sleep quality and reduces the time it takes to fall asleep. Timing only matters at the margins.
Vigorous training finishing within about an hour of bed can delay sleep onset for some people, largely because of elevated core body temperature and heart rate. For most people an evening session is fine, and the training itself is worth more than the perfect slot. If you consistently struggle to settle after a late session, bring the finish time forward or reduce the intensity of your final block rather than dropping the session.
Alcohol shortens the time it takes to fall asleep, which is why it feels like it helps. What it does afterwards is the problem. As the body metabolises it, sleep becomes lighter and more fragmented in the second half of the night, with more awakenings and suppressed REM sleep, the stage associated with memory consolidation and emotional processing.
You are not sleeping badly despite the wine. You are sleeping badly because of it, several hours after you stopped noticing it.
Three variables do most of the work:
This is where the internet gets loudest and the evidence gets thinner. Four ingredients have enough human research to be worth understanding.
Magnesium is a mineral involved in hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the body, including nerve signalling, muscle relaxation and the regulation of the nervous system. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials in older adults with insomnia found magnesium supplementation reduced the time taken to fall asleep by approximately 17 minutes compared with placebo.
The evidence base is modest in size and concentrated in older populations, so it is worth stating plainly: magnesium is supportive, not sedative.
Glycine is a non-essential amino acid, meaning your body can make it, that also acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger that calms nerve signalling. In a randomised crossover study using polysomnography, the gold-standard laboratory measure of sleep, 3g of glycine taken before bed shortened the time to fall asleep and the time to reach slow-wave sleep, without altering overall sleep architecture. Participants also reported less daytime sleepiness the following day.
The proposed mechanism is thermoregulation. Glycine increases blood flow to the extremities, which lowers core body temperature, the same drop the body makes naturally as sleep approaches.
A related point for anyone already taking collagen: collagen peptides are naturally high in glycine. A study in physically active men with sleep complaints found collagen peptides taken an hour before bed reduced the number of awakenings recorded by polysomnography.
L-theanine is an amino acid found in tea leaves, associated with a state of calm alertness rather than sedation. A systematic review of 13 trials concluded that supplementation of 200 to 450mg per day appears to be a safe and effective way to support healthy sleep in adults, with benefits reported for sleep latency, sleep maintenance and how refreshed people felt on waking.
Notably, a separate randomised controlled trial of 200mg daily over four weeks in healthy adults found improvements in Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index subscores for sleep latency and sleep disturbance, a validated questionnaire used in clinical sleep research.
Montmorency tart cherry is one of the few dietary sources of melatonin, the hormone that signals to your body that it is night. In a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial, tart cherry juice concentrate raised urinary melatonin levels and improved measures of sleep quality recorded by actigraphy. A separate pilot study in older adults with insomnia reported an average increase in sleep time of around 84 minutes.
Trial sizes here are small, so treat tart cherry as a supportive input rather than a headline intervention.
Sleep is our first dedicated night-time formula, and it combines the four ingredients above in a single 10g serve. Each serve contains 3g of glycine, 3g of collagen hydrolysate, 1.84g of magnesium citrate, 200mg of L-theanine, 480mg of tart cherry powder and 500mg of taurine, alongside bamboo extract, vitamin C and zinc gluconate. The glycine dose matches the amount used in the polysomnography research above, and the L-theanine sits at the lower bound of the 200 to 450mg range identified in the systematic review. It comes in Tropical, Mixed Berry or Natural, mixes into water, and is designed to be taken in the evening as part of a wind-down.
Magnesium+ is a different product for a different job. At 2.813g of magnesium citrate per 5g serve, with 1g of glutamine, zinc gluconate and vitamin B6, it is a daily blend for muscle function and stress resilience, and it can be taken at any time of day. In Blood Orange.
Taking both? Space them out rather than stacking them. True Sleep already contains a meaningful magnesium dose, so Magnesium+ works best in the morning or midday, particularly after a hard morning session, with True Sleep kept to the evening.
The purpose of a wind-down is to give your nervous system a predictable sequence of cues that sleep is coming. Consistency matters more than the specific activities.
A workable 60-minute structure:
If you are awake after roughly 20 minutes in bed, get up and do something quiet in low light until you feel sleepy. Lying in bed frustrated teaches your brain to associate the bed with being awake, which is the opposite of what you want.
How long does it take to fix a bad sleep pattern?
Is it better to take magnesium or glycine for sleep?
Can I take a sleep supplement every night?
Does protein before bed affect sleep?
Why do I wake up at 3am every night?
Do sleep trackers actually help?
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IMPORTANT INFORMATION: all content provided here is of a general nature only and is not a substitute for individualised professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment and reliance should not be placed on it. For personalised medical or nutrition advice, please make an appointment with your doctor, dietitian or qualified healthcare professional.
