PrimeSelf Natural Sleep - Product Review

When we sleep well, we remember things more clearly, our workouts are better, creativity peaks and our heart rate is healthier. We often hear people say that they can function well on four or so hours of sleep, but the research is clear: even if you feel “fine” on less than 7 – 9 hours of sleep, your memory will be suffering, inflammation will rear it’s devastating head and the necessary regeneration of your muscles and brain cells is simply not happening.

In fact, sleep deprivation directly impacts your cortisol (stress hormone) levels, which directly impacts a process called neurogenesis (the process by which new neurons are formed in the brain) to the extent that you are effectively suffering from brain damage if you don’t sleep enough.

What Makes Sleep so Magical?

Throughout the day, we are consciously and subconsciously being exposed to external stimuli. We see, touch, taste and hear old and new things, memorise facts, learn to perform new tasks and experience mundane to exciting events. At the end of the day, all those various new experiences and information needs to be integrated into the supercomputer that is your brain with the collective of previous experiences and data already stored over a lifetime.

The filing and storing happens while you sleep. If you don’t sleep, that data is basically cluttering up space in your brain, which means, just like your computer or phone, you run out of space for new memories.

This then affects your central nervous system, which is responsible for regulating your immune response, your cortisol levels and also your appetite and blood sugar levels. There is no lack of studies showing how much worse people eat the day after a bad night’s sleep!

Without sleep, you have the perfect storm of inflammation, out-of-whack hormones and dysregulated blood sugar levels. So, while you think you feel OK and you’re carrying on as per normal, you are simply not at your best, and no amount of caffeine or other stimulant can reverse even one bad night of sleep.

Read More: How to Biohack Your Sleep For Optimal Performance

But What if Sleep is a Luxury?

I get it. Kids, stressful jobs, night shift jobs, physical or emotional pain. Not enough hours in the day when you simply HAVE to get things done. I don’t think anyone reading this is a stranger to the fact that sleep sometimes feels more like a luxury than a necessity.

I could write for days, as so many people do, on the best ways to improve your sleep. There are many factors to consider, like how to regulate your circadian rhythm, acknowledging that we have different chronotypes (some people are genetically early birds and others night owls and you have to work within this context) and the realities of your life (work, family, stress) etc.

Ayurvedic medicine prescribes three key lifestyle changes that can drastically improve sleep quality and works for many people:

• Go to bed at the same time each night as far as possible
• Do light exercise (walking, yoga) before breakfast
• Don’t eat a large meal before going to bed (aim for lunch to be your largest meal)

However, in a world where sleep is viewed as a luxury and where people brag about how little sleep they can get by on (or think they can), we have three key triggers to pull for improved sleep: diet, exercise and supplementation. This product review obviously focuses on the latter, namely supplementation!

Read More: To Supplement or Not to Supplement

Why Supplements Can Be a Game Changer for Sleep

There are plenty of sleep supplements on the market. Research convincingly shows that there are compounds that are very effective at improving the time that it takes to fall asleep (latency), stay asleep and increase deep or REM sleep (both being very important to reap the full benefits of sleep).

Perhaps a good point of departure is to discuss melatonin, which is known as the sleep hormone. This hormone is secreted by the pineal gland and produces a sedative effect and is crucial to falling and staying asleep. While you can supplement with melatonin, there are natural ways of increasing melatonin levels. One such way is to increase tryptophan levels.

Tryptophan is an amino acid found in high concentrations in protein (think eggs, meat, almonds, pumpkin seeds). It is a necessary ingredient for your body to make serotonin, a chemical messenger which is responsible for producing healthy sleeping patterns and boosting your mood. It is also a necessary ingredient for making melatonin.

Tryptophan can enter your brain directly through the brain’s protective shield called the blood brain barrier (BBB). Once inside the brain, it is converted into 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), which in turn is required to produce serotonin and is also a precursor (necessary ingredient) of melatonin.

Finally, a good sleep supplement should be able to increase what are known as Gamma Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) levels. GABA is a naturally occurring amino acid that works as a neurotransmitter (chemical messenger) in your brain. It blocks or inhibits certain brain signals and decreases activity in your nervous system, which is important for sleep because it produces a calming effect and promotes relaxation.

Enter…PrimeSelf’s Natural Sleep – Deep Sleep and Restoration Support.

PrimeSelf Natural Sleep

The above insights into melatonin, tryptophan and serotonin and the role they play in quality sleep is relevant because it underpins the formulation of this product.

The ingredients in this product are:

• Vitamin B6
• Valerian Root Extract
• Passionflower
• Magnesium Glycinate
• L-Theanine

Let's dig a little deeper into each ingredient and how it supports sleep health:

Vitamin B6

Vitamin B6, or pyridoxine, helps to convert tryptophan into serotonin, which we now know is so important for good sleep. It is a water-soluble vitamin and because our bodies can’t produce vitamin B6, we must get it from food or supplementation. In an interesting 2018 study, it was shown that supplementation with vitamin B6 even increased the ability of participants to remember their dreams.

There is good evidence showing that vitamin B6 aids sleep and affects our dreams. A lack of vitamin B6 has been linked to insomnia and depression. Because vitamin B6 aids the production of serotonin and melatonin, it really is an important vitamin for ensuing restful sleep and relaxation.

Valerian Root

Valerian root became popular in WW2 for sleep and relaxation, but has been used for centuries as an anti-anxiety and sleeping herb because it is able to increase GABA levels naturally (which for sleep is more effective than directly supplementing with GABA). It works even better when you combine it with passionflower.

Valerian root kind of sounds like Valium – it also has sedative and anti-anxiolytic properties, but it doesn’t knock you out in the groggy, "where-am-I-kind-of-way". This is a wonderful, natural extract which has helped many people with restless leg syndrome and insomnia.

Passionflower

Another natural product which is able to boost levels of GABA in your brain, passionflower is especially useful for when you wake up at like 3am with a racing mind and want to go back to sleep. There’s good evidence that passionflower can assist with situational anxiety (like having to make a speech or walking into a job interview) as well as a number of social phobias or panic disorders.

Passionflower is again a natural way for achieve the same effects as something like Valium or diazepam without feeling knocked out, and without any of the negative side effects to your liver or addiction that are typically associated with pharmaceutical sleeping pills. Passionflower is very effective at settling you down, so best not to take it during the day unless it is pre-nap!

Magnesium Glycinate

This sounds a bit complex, but magnesium helps to convert 5-HT into N-acetyl-5-hydroxytryptamine, which is a precursor to melatonin. The most absorbable forms of magnesium are magnesium citrate, glycinate, taurate and aspartate(the bioavailability of magnesium is a big deal because so many supplements contain cheap types that your body can do absolutely nothing with).

My personal favourite, especially before bedtime, happens to be magnesium glycinate, which is what is included (300mg) in this product. Magnesium has ample research to support its popularity as a supplement for sleep.

L-Theanine

L-Theanine is another amino acid which is commonly found in green tea leaves. It has a powerful ability to reduce stress and increase relaxation, without actually causing drowsiness (especially when combined with caffeine, which is why green tea is a really cool compound).

It only takes about 30 minutes for L-Theanine to cross the blood-brain-barrier and act directly on the central nervous system in order to stimulate mental relaxation without compromising alertness. It reduces sympathetic nervous system activity (fight-or-flight response), improves relaxation after stress, lowers blood pressure and importantly, reduces cortisol levels and anxiety.

My Review of PRIMESELF Natural Sleep – Deep Sleep and Restoration Support

Summary

As you can see from the ingredients in this product, it works to support melatonin production as well as increasing GABA levels, which promotes both relaxation and sleep, and the ingredients are, based on research, as powerful as the pharmaceutical alternatives.

So, in theory, this is a very cleverly compounded supplement to aid QUALITY sleep. In practice, I use an Oura Ring to meticulously quantify my sleep. Some self-experimentation was in order! I used this supplement for three weeks and compared my sleep data to that of three weeks without supplementation. Other variables like diet, exercise, sleep times, alcohol consumption, monthly cycle and sleeping conditions were kept as consistent as possible. The results were really impressive!

Results

• I had a 15% average increase in deep sleep times and an
• 8% average increase in REM sleep times
• My sleep latency (i.e. time it takes to fall asleep) also dropped.
• I definitely wasn’t groggy in the morning when waking either.
• The part that I liked the most was that I scored much higher on my “restlessness” scores.
  

I typically toss and turn a fair amount, and this seemed to be much reduced with supplementation, which I think results in deeper, more restorative sleep.

Data aside, I feel like I sleep better and wake up feeling more energised after taking this supplement. I’m so impressed that it is completely natural, and I feel so relaxed in the 30 minutes before going to bed (without losing alertness), which is awesome!

Definitely a product that I will continue to use over the long term!!

PrimeSelf Natural Sleep

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• Thea is the founder of Neolaia – Biohacking SA and passionate about all things biohacking, functional medicine, holistic and ancestral wellness. She enjoys the occasional triathlon, is fanatic about yoga and the gym and loves n=1 biohacking experiments more than anything else! Learning about the latest in scientific research for health and wellness and applying this knowledge is what makes her happiest!

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