Good sleep is an essential part of high performance. After a good night’s sleep, your brain works faster, you can focus for hours, and your memory is strong. Your body also recovers faster and you lose weight and put on muscle more easily.

When you’re sleeping poorly, however, your biology starts to misfire [1]. You think slower, your memory and decision-making fall apart, you struggle to pay attention, and ––if you sleep poorly long-term –– your brain ages faster, increasing your risk of neurodegenerative diseases [2,3,4,5].

But here’s the thing: good sleep is not just a matter of how much time you sleep. It’s more important to get good sleep –– sleep quality is more important than sleep duration.

Even if you only get a few hours of sleep a night, you can optimize that time so you get plenty of deep, restorative sleep and wake up ready to go.

If you want to improve your sleep quality, I suggest nighttime nootropics. They provide nutrients and cognitive enhancers that strengthen your brain while you sleep, help you sleep deeper, and ensure that you wake up mentally sharp.

Here’s how nighttime nootropics upgrade your sleep and how you can use them to become a more effective human.

What are Nootropics for Sleep?

Nootropics –– sometimes called smart drugs –– are compounds that optimize your brain function. Nootropics make you think faster and clearer and help you focus longer.

Most nootropics are for daytime use. But what if you could optimize your brain while you sleep, too?

That’s where sleep nootropics come in. They contain ingredients that support your next-day cognitive performance by improving your sleep quality and optimizing your nighttime brain function.

Your brain does a lot of important things while you sleep, and with sleep nootropics, you can enhance those nighttime processes so you perform better in your daily life.

Your Brain Takes Out the Trash While You Sleep

There’s still a lot we don’t know about what goes on in the brain while you sleep. But one thing we do know is that you need to sleep is because it gives your brain some downtime to recover from the costs of being awake.

Brain activity drains a lot of energy. Around 20% of your body’s daily energy expenditure goes to the brain, even though the brain is no more that 2% of your body weight [6].

To produce such high amounts of energy, your brain cells need to have a very high metabolic rate. The problem is that making energy puts stress on your cells and creates waste byproducts. One class of waste byproducts is a collection of molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS).

When they exist at low levels, ROS are signaling molecules that keep your cells communicating properly. But when ROS accumulate, they put undue stress on your brain cells and cause widespread damage [7]. The cost of the brain’s very high metabolic activity is a very high production of ROS. You have to clear out these molecules and repair your brain pathways while you sleep, otherwise your brain cells will accumulate damage and slow down over the years.

Sleep gives your brain the downtime it needs to clean up ROS and to repair any damage they have done to proteins and cell structures [8]. This is very important because, in the brain, ROS accumulation translates into cognitive aging [9].

There are many other metabolic waste products that accumulate in your brain during the day and get cleaned up at night. Brain cleanup falls to your glymphatic system, a network of vessels that clears waste from your brain during deep sleep [14].

So, one of the key functions of sleep is to maintain your cognitive health by taking out the trash your brain produces during the day.

Hacking Your Sleep With Nighttime Nootropics

Nighttime nootropics support your next-day cognitive performance by way of sleep quality and nighttime brain physiology optimization.

Nootropics for sleep are not about pushing your brain into sleep, the way supplements like melatonin and magnesium do.

Instead, nighttime nootropics are about supporting your sleep quality and sleep physiology. The idea is to support the brain’s natural processes: you’re priming your brain for good quality sleep by supporting important physiological pathways that are active while we sleep and that are essential for cognitive health. My favorite nootropic for sleep is Qualia Night.

I’ve been talking about Qualia for years –– it’s one of the best nootropics companies on the market, and its new sleep formulation sets the gold standard for nighttime nootropics.

Here’s how Qualia Night works and why I like it so much.

Qualia Night Review: Feed Your Brain for a Good Night’s Sleep

When your body’s regulatory pathways are in disharmony, your entire sleep cycle suffers. But specialized sleep nutrition can significantly enhance the quality of your sleep.

Qualia Night contains 25 different nutrients, cognitive enhancers, neuro-precursors, and other compounds that give you everything you need to sleep better.

Getting To Sleep

When your sleep-wake cycle is working the way it should, your body releases the neurotransmitter GABA in the evening to relax you, and the sleep hormone melatonin to ease you into slumber.

Qualia Night contains gotu kola, an herb that supports your brain’s GABA pathways, and magnesium that supports your melatonin signaling process.

Instead of overriding dysregulation by supplementing GABA or melatonin directly, Qualia Night supports your body’s own production of them. It teaches your brain to regulate itself, helping you develop the pathways you need to sustainably improve your sleep long-term.

Staying Asleep

Stress is one of the biggest reasons that people wake up at night. When you’re stressed and pumping out cortisol (your stress hormone), your brain becomes hypervigilant and won’t relax into deep sleep. You end up with shallow, poor sleep and you’re more likely to wake up in response to minor stimuli.

Qualia Night contains holy basil leaf extract, an adaptogen that supports a balanced stress response. It also contains reishi mushroom, used in traditional Chinese medicine to support mood regulation and help you quiet your mind before bed.

Sleep Quality

Qualia Night also supports your body’s sleep-wake cycle, helping you naturally cycle through the four stages of sleep and wake up refreshed.

Your brain contains a molecule called adenosine that regulates your sleep-wake cycle, helping you get into the deeper stages of sleep. Qualia Night contains white peony root extract and standardized grapefruit extract, both of which support your adenosine metabolic pathway.

The Verdict: Qualia Night

I’ve tracked my sleep every night for over a decade. I know exactly what improves my sleep quality and what hurts it, and over time, I’ve developed a nighttime routine for optimal sleep.

Qualia Night is now a part of that routine. It has led to an undeniable improvement in my sleep quality and a difference I can feel the next day.

That’s why I’ve partnered with Qualia yet again, to offer my readers an exclusive discount on Qualia Night.

Try Qualia Night with coupon code DAVE for 15% off first purchase, and discover how nighttime nootropics can improve your sleep and strengthen your brain.

References

[1] Institute of Medicine, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research, Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem, National Academies Press, 2006.

[2] P. Alhola, P. Polo-Kantola, Neuropsychiatr. Dis. Treat. 3 (2007) 553–567.

[3] K.A. Honn, J.M. Hinson, P. Whitney, H.P.A. Van Dongen, Accid. Anal. Prev. 126 (2019) 191–197.

[4] W. Xu, C.-C. Tan, J.-J. Zou, X.-P. Cao, L. Tan, J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 91 (2020) 236–244.

[5] Y. Ma, L. Liang, F. Zheng, L. Shi, B. Zhong, W. Xie, JAMA Netw Open 3 (2020) e2013573.

[6] M.E. Raichle, D.A. Gusnard, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 99 (2002) 10237–10239.

[7] M. Schieber, N.S. Chandel, Curr. Biol. 24 (2014) R453–62.

[8] G. Villafuerte, A. Miguel-Puga, E.M. Rodríguez, S. Machado, E. Manjarrez, O. Arias-Carrión, Oxid. Med. Cell. Longev. 2015 (2015) 234952.

[9] I. Hajjar, S.S. Hayek, F.C. Goldstein, G. Martin, D.P. Jones, A. Quyyumi, J. Neuroinflammation 15 (2018) 17.

[10] N.A. Jessen, A.S.F. Munk, I. Lundgaard, M. Nedergaard, Neurochem. Res. 40 (2015) 2583–2599