4 Supplements That Improve Sleep For Depressed Individuals

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!

Setting The Foundation

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:

Depression and its causes are different for everybody.

We can however, focus on improving behavioral habits that will reduce the severity of our depression.

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.

I. Magnesium

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.

II. Melatonin

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.

III. L-Glycine

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.

IV. L-Theanine

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.

Augment Your Sleep

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!

I wanted to thank you all for reading!

Any questions or comments? Feel free to comment below!

Until next time, Reforged Warrior!

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