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When you are depressed, sometimes sleep is difficult to come by.
I know when I was overweight and depressed, I had insomnia. Oftentimes, I would wake up around 3 am and not be able to go to sleep.
While there were a lot of factors that contributed to this, one was nutrient deficiency. I did not have some nutrients in my body, because I would consume high-calorie foods with little to zero nutrients.
In this post, we are going to explore 4 supplements that can potentially aid you in improving your sleep.
Let's dive in!
Before you start searching for supplement solutions for sleep, it's important to set up some foundational habits that will improve your quality of sleep.
With depression, we need to understand the following:
For starters, you can get more information about behavioral habits from our Anti-Depress eBook series here. In it, you can get 3 holistic hacks that can boost mood.
With that being said, let's get into it.
Magnesium is an essential mineral and one of the most important electrolytes for our body. It aids in reducing blood pressure and improving bone mineral density.
Most notably for us, magnesium consumption helps us with sleep quality and depression. This is because magnesium promotes GABA levels. GABA is an amino acid that helps decrease anxiety, stress, and depression.
GABA also helps with improving sleep quality.
Magnesium is extremely important in Western Diets, as 50% of the U.S. population is deficient in magnesium.
We can get magnesium by eating leafy greens, nuts, seeds, and beans.
Alternatively, you can supplement with it. We recommend either Magnesium Glycinate or Magnesium Threonate.
Melatonin is a hormone that we produce in the evenings to regulate sleep. While our body produces melatonin, supplementing with it improves the quality of sleep.
When it comes to depression, melatonin has been shown to improve sleep in those with depressive disorders. In addition, melatonin has been shown to improve mood in winter depression.
It's worth noting, however, supplementing with melatonin should be in a low dose. Taking too much melatonin can negatively impact your circadian rhythm (or sleep-wake cycle). You should not be taking over 5-10mg+ of melatonin.
We recommend limiting your consumption to 0.5-2mg of melatonin.
Glycine is an amino acid that is found in collagen. It helps with a variety of bodily processes, but it is most known for improving sleep quality. The way glycine does this is by decreasing your body's temperature.
Glycine has also been shown to improve performance in psychomotor vigilance tests the morning after supplementation.
The psychomotor vigilance test focuses on attention, focus, and reaction times. This means supplementing with glycine before bed can have a positive impact on cognition.
We recommend supplementing with 500-1000mg of L-Glycine before bed.
Commonly found in green tea, L-Theanine is an amino acid known for its anti-anxiety and anti-stress properties. In other words, l-theanine is a nootropic that helps promote relaxation and calmness.
While green tea typically has a little amount of caffeine in it, extracted l-theanine separately has been shown to help with sleep. When supplemented with, l-theanine has been shown to improve sleep quality.
We mentioned GABA before. L-Theanine has been shown to elevate GABA levels which helps promote relaxation and sleep, while helping depressive symptoms.
When it comes to l-theanine, 200-400mg is an optimal amount to experience these benefits.
There you have it: four supplements or components you can utilize to improve sleep quality and manage depressive symptoms. As always, it's important to discuss with a doctor or physician before taking supplements.
We also recommend building or improving your sleep habits.
We have more on that in this post here!
We took these four ingredients and put them together into our sleep supplement, Drift. Drift was crafted to help you through the night, and help you wake up being refreshed. In addition, we also put a low amount of melatonin in it so it doesn't disrupt your sleep-wake cycle.
I wanted to thank you all for reading!
Any questions or comments? Email us at support@reforgedperformance.com or direct message us on Instagram.
Until next time, Reforged Warrior!
Exercise can feel like a chore, and even if you know it’s good for your health, the motivation to get moving sometimes just isn’t there.
But it doesn’t have to be a burden - by making exercise meaningful to you, it can become something fun and rewarding!
Here are five ways to make exercise more meaningful!
Men, I know what it is like to be overweight and depressed.
Not having the energy to do anything but relax and sleep.
While relaxation and sleep are incredibly important, they can make us feel like we are not making progress in our lives.
And when depression hits, it’s very difficult to push through with exercise and weight loss.
But did you know that even though it takes time and some effort, you don’t need to get obsessively crazy over it?
In fact, with just a few small adjustments, you can lose weight, fight back against depression, and take your life back.
If you're serious about shedding pounds and pushing away those depression demons, here are five tips that can help get you started.
A few weeks ago, my buddy Grant and I talked about nutrition.
We talked about how he's lost over 120 pounds so far with the weight loss progress he's been making.
This is all because he has been making healthier decisions over time.
One of the newest challenges he's facing right now is he's got a new job. He's working 10 to 12 hour days with physical demanding labor.
And what's been happening for him is that he's been super exhausted, he's not motivated to meal prep, he's having trouble trying to sit down and cook foods doesn't have the energy doesn't have the time.
So what I propose is five tips that you can use to live a more on the go fast food healthy eating lifestyle.