Clarissa, Author at The Sleep Consultant

Diphenhydramine for Sleep: What the Research Says

Diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl, Unisom SleepTabs, ZzzQuil, and most “PM” pain reliever formulations, is one of the most commonly used sleep aids in the US, despite not actually being recommended for regular sleep use by sleep medicine guidelines. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s 2017 clinical practice guideline recommends against using diphenhydramine for […]

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CBD and Sleep: What the Direct Research Actually Shows

CBD and sleep are marketed together constantly, but the direct clinical research specifically on CBD and insomnia is thinner and more mixed than the marketing suggests. The most rigorous independent trial of pure CBD, 150 mg nightly for two weeks in adults with moderate-to-severe insomnia, found no significant difference from placebo on insomnia severity, sleep

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Melatonin and Sleep: What the Guidelines Actually Say

Melatonin and sleep are connected through a real, well-understood biological mechanism, melatonin is the hormone your pineal gland releases in response to darkness, signaling to your body that it’s time to wind down. Where it gets more complicated is exogenous, supplemental melatonin’s actual effectiveness as a general insomnia treatment. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s

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Melatonin Dosage: How Much Should You Actually Take?

Melatonin dosage research points to a clear pattern: for helping you fall asleep faster, effectiveness increases with dose up to roughly 3 to 5 mg per day, then plateaus, meaning the 10 mg tablets common on store shelves generally don’t work better than a well-dosed 3-5 mg product. For circadian purposes, like jet lag or

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Inflammation and Sleep: What the Research Actually Shows

Inflammation and sleep are genuinely connected, but the real research has an interesting wrinkle that most content skips over. Large observational studies do consistently find that people with disturbed sleep have higher levels of inflammatory markers like CRP and IL-6. But when researchers directly tested this in controlled experiments, depriving healthy people of sleep for

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Testosterone and Sleep: The Bidirectional Link

Testosterone and sleep affect each other in both directions, and the research is genuinely solid on the “poor sleep lowers testosterone” side. A landmark study found that just one week of restricting sleep to 5 hours a night reduced daytime testosterone levels by 10 to 15 percent in healthy young men, an effect comparable to

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Cold Plunge and Sleep: Timing Matters More Than You Think

Cold plunge and sleep are genuinely connected, but not in the simple, purely relaxing way most biohacking content describes. Cold water immersion first triggers a significant surge in norepinephrine, a stimulating stress hormone, activating your sympathetic (“fight or flight”) nervous system, not calming it. The calming, sleep-supportive effects, including a drop in core body

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Sleep and Performance: What the Research Actually Shows

Sleep and performance are connected through mechanisms that are unusually well-documented compared to most health topics, but the picture is more specific than “sleep more, perform better.” Sleep deprivation reliably and significantly impairs reaction time and cognitive function, in some studies to a degree comparable to legal alcohol intoxication, while its effect on raw physical

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Morning Sunlight and Sleep: What the Research Shows

Morning sunlight and sleep are genuinely, measurably connected. Light hitting your retina, especially before 10 a.m., signals your suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain’s master clock, helping set the timing of your entire circadian rhythm, including when melatonin rises at night. A 2025 study found every additional 30 minutes of morning sun exposure before 10 a.m.

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Adrenal Fatigue and Sleep: What’s Actually Real

“Adrenal fatigue” is not a recognized medical diagnosis. No major endocrine society accepts it, and a comprehensive 2016 systematic review of 58 studies found no scientific basis linking cortisol levels to fatigue severity, or any evidence that the adrenal glands themselves malfunction from chronic stress in otherwise healthy people. That doesn’t mean the exhaustion, the

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Clarissa