Do Sleep Gummies Work?

We’ve all had those nights where we just can’t get to sleep or the nights where we seem to wake up every few hours. We wake up feeling groggy and tired, and we end up in a foul mood for the rest of the day. Although occasionally having nights like this won’t have a detrimental effect on our health, if this happens more often than not, it might become a cause for concern. As many as 16 million adults in the UK suffer from regular sleepless nights and one-third of adults say that they have insomnia. And sleeping troubles don’t just affect adults, with 73% of school students failing to get healthy amounts of sleep. So, could sleep gummies be the answer?

Effects of poor sleep on health

Struggling to sleep can significantly impact your quality of life. It can cause you to lack energy, lose focus, and become irritable in your everyday life. It can start to affect your relationships and your work life. But worse than this, poor sleep can make other health issues worse. Getting a good night’s sleep really does support and maintain long term health. And for many who struggle with sleep, they turn to sleep aids to try and resolve their sleep troubles.

These can be natural sleep aids like meditation, herbal extracts, or gummies that help you sleep. Both adults and kids use vitamins to try and improve their sleep quality and quantity, too. But do these aids really work? Does taking gummies to relax actually help you to sleep at night?

Let’s take a look into the causes of poor sleep, whether sleep gummies are effective, and what the most popular sleep supplements are. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have made a decision as to what methods you’re going to try out to enhance your sleep!

What Causes You to Feel Sleepy?

Before delving into the ins and outs of sleep gummies, we should first talk about what causes us to feel sleepy late at night. The main hormone that is responsible for your sleepiness is melatonin. This hormone is produced naturally by your pineal gland, which is a small, round gland that is located at the base of your brain.

The gland regulates a range of functions in your body, including your body’s circadian rhythm (your sleep-wake cycle), helping you to feel awake in the mornings and sleepier in the evenings. The fluctuation of melatonin production helps regulate sleep patterns.

The light and dark influence melatonin production. When you first wake up in the mornings, it’s light outside and your melatonin levels are low. Because of this, you feel awake and alert.

During the day, your melatonin slowly rises, particularly around 9 pm when it’s dark outside. This leaves you feeling tired and ready for a good night’s sleep. The body’s melatonin levels peak between 11 pm and 3 am, before slowly falling again by the next morning.

What Causes Sleeping Troubles?

Some people naturally have less melatonin than others and this can be a cause of sleeping troubles. However, there is a range of other factors that play a significant role in your ability to get a good nights’ sleep.

The advent of technology has been a large player in the increased prevalence of insomnia. Your phone, laptop, television, and tablets screens, and even some of your lightbulbs emit blue light. This blue light can disrupt your natural melatonin production. It tricks the body into thinking it’s still light outside and it is still daytime. Because of this, you feel less sleepy even late at night.

There is also a range of medical conditions that can contribute to insomnia. If you suspect that the cause of your sleeping troubles is an underlying medical condition, you must go to your doctor before commencing any sleeping supplements.

What Are Sleep Gummies?

Sleep gummies are supplements that come in the form of chewable domes that resemble sweets. They’re often naturally sweetened and flavoured with fruits to make them more enjoyable to consume. It’s good to try vegan gummies which are increasingly available, and animal free.

These gummy supplements have been around for years, but they’ve only recently started to gain traction. Beauty sleep vitamins contain a range of essential nutrients and extracts shown to enhance sleep. They provide a welcomed alternative to traditional sleeping tablets.

More people are suffering from poor sleep due to increased exposure to blue light and the increasing stresses of the modern-day life. This has led to more people searching for melatonin gummies to combat their sleeping problems.

How Do Sleep Gummies Work?

After learning about the important role of melatonin in your sleep-wake cycle, it seems obvious that melatonin gummies are worth trying. Unfortunately these are not legal in the UK, but don’t fret! There are other natural options available which are just as good. But before you head to the store and grab yourself some sleep gummies, you should spend some time researching what these other sleep supplements do and how they work.

Some sleep supplements, such as the Wicked Gummy’s Peaceful ZZZZ sleep gummies help the body to produce serotonin, a natural hormone that is also linked to sleep quality. It contains all natural ingredients such as 5-HTP, lemon balm, and chamomile that act as natural serotonin boosters. CBD is also a popular ingredient.

Why Sleep Gummies Might Not Work For You

Although sleep supplements are the perfect solution to solving sleeping troubles for some people, they don’t work for everybody. Healthcare professionals recommend taking sleep vitamins for 2-3 weeks. Ideally, these supplements will boost your sleep quality and quantity, so you don’t wake up feeling fatigued and irritable. If, after a few weeks of supplementing with sleep gummies and you are not seeing results, it might be worth trying something different.

But why might sleep gummies not be ideal for you?

Potential Side Effects

The published journal, Clinical Drug Investigation, suggested that there were only mild side effects to taking long-term melatonin. However, sleep gummies may cause excessive drowsiness, dizziness, and headaches in some people.

In children, it can cause increased bed-wetting. Pharmacists generally recommend trying other options before giving children melatonin gummies.

Interaction With Other Medications

It’s important to be aware that melatonin has the potential to interact with other medications.

Melatonin may interact with antiplatelet drugs and anticoagulants (e.g.- clopidogrel and warfarin), diabetes medications (e.g.- metformin), or immunosuppressants. This is because melatonin can cause changes to your blood pressure and blood glucose levels. You should always speak to your doctor before taking any sleep gummies if you are already on other medications.

Sleep gummies are not recommended for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Sleep Gummies Are Not Highly Regulated

They are not always stringently tested to measure their safety and effectiveness before hitting the shelves. That’s why you should always buy from a trustworthy brand or retail store.

But it can also mean that each brand’s sleep vitamins can contain completely different ingredients and different dosages. It also means that brands could exaggerate the effectiveness of their products quite easily. These inaccuracies can make it difficult for you as a consumer to know who to trust.

If you’re purchasing gummies to relax, always find products with testing by third-party organizations.

Other Factors Are Involved in Your Poor Sleep

There is a lot of evidence to support the positive benefits of using sleep gummies as a short-term solution to your insomnia. For example, if you’re going through a particularly stressful period in your life or you’re jetlagged, supplementation might be beneficial for you.

However, long-term use of sleep gummies might just be masking a deeper problem. For example, your sleeping troubles could be secondary to chronic anxiety, depression, sleep apnoea, or other disorders. If left untreated, these conditions can get worse and may lead to further complications.

In these cases, taking gummies to relax is not targeting the true cause of your insomnia, and other treatments and therapies should be used.

Final Thoughts

For those of you who have been struggling with your sleep for a while and are looking for a natural way to increase your sleep quality and quantity, using sleep gummies might be helpful. They can boost your melatonin and serotonin, which can help in reducing your insomnia.

But before you purchase any sleep supplements, you should first identify the root cause of your sleep troubles.

Always speak to a doctor before starting any beauty sleep vitamins. They will be able to recommend additional lifestyle changes that will help your sleep, such as avoiding blue light and reducing your stress. They will also be aware of your previous medical history and can determine whether or not melatonin gummies are appropriate for you.