It depends! That is one of the most common answers in the health, wellness and fitness industries. Why? Every single person is unique and reacts differently to various stimuli. That is why there is not a universal training program that works for everyone. That is why there is not a certain diet that works for everyone. In this situation, it really depends first and foremost on whether you’re having trouble sleeping or not. There are countless sleep-based research studies that have been conducted. Private companies trying to promote their revolutionary, or not so revolutionary, products often conduct their own studies. Universities and wellness institutes do the same since sleep is often considered the most crucial way to recover, and recovery is seen as one of the three core competencies when it comes to your general health. (The other two are physical activity and what you consume.)
In college, I operated at an extremely high level while sleeping four hours or so a night. At the time, I did take a mid-day nap for about an hour. I was training nearly six hours a day and consuming well over 12,000 calories a day. While I was completely drug free, I would take a multi-vitamin everyday and also took some supplements, including fish oils, glucosamine and even melatonin. Melatonin is the most common sleep aid on the market. It is made by many companies and its single ingredient nature makes it less intimidating to most consumers. First, will melatonin make a difference in your sleep and second, how much do you personally need to take?
Even after you find the right amount, any supplement to your health routine might not necessarily maintain its effectiveness over time. You can often build tolerances and find that you need a higher dosage to feel the same outcome. Even if you find it to make a positive difference, the cost over time might outweigh how much better you’re sleeping. It becomes a question of whether you’re willing to make a small investment at first, in order to see if you can sleep better. Those investments can come in many forms, other than pills or tablets. I’ve tried buying expensive pillows, fancy sheets, using a fan at night to stay cool, sleeping with ice packs under my lower back and shoulders, playing sleep music throughout the room, using blackout curtains and more. I’ve tried Neuro’s sleep drink and also Ronnie Coleman’s Resurrection supplement. Why? Because I understand the importance of optimizing recovery.
Most people aim for 6-8 hours of sleep a night. Those are the recommended numbers, according to most sleep research studies. I don’t care as much about the number of hours that I lay in bed at night. My focus is getting in bed, immediately falling asleep, not waking up in the middle of the night and waking up fresh enough that I can instantly roll out of bed at 5:30 in the morning and get right to work. My goal, with my current life schedule, is to be in bed from 10:30 pm-5:30 am and do nothing other than get quality recovery time. Right now, in an effort to do so, with the blistering temperatures and lack of air conditioning in our LA apartment, as well as my insanely, unimaginably impossible schedule, I’ve started using a new product called Sleep Complex by ORB. They reached out to us to see if we would like to try out their product. For honesty purposes, we were paid for this post, but that won’t stop us from giving our honest opinion.
We were casually walking through Costco, since we try to shop there once a month for our bulk items, and saw it front and center in the supplement area. It was $30 for 120 capsules. Their recommendation is taking two capsules a night, so a quick calculation told me that this would last for 60 days, and at $15 for 30 days, I’d be spending approximately two quarters a day in a completely unknown effort to improve my sleep. If you think about it, would you be willing to put two quarters into a machine at night, if it improved your sleep a certain amount? Probably, considering most of us spend $4 every morning, on a coffee to wake us up properly. The issue is, will this work? There are other possible issues, such as, will this have negative side effects?
Being the guinea pig that I am, I figured that I would go ahead and make myself test subject number one. You need to give most products in this industry a few weeks to start working, so there will be follow ups, but here are my findings after approximately one week of using ORB Sleep Complex.
- The pills are attractive, which means nothing, but they also go down very easily. Also, they have this herbal after-taste, which is quite nice.
- Despite the heat in our bedroom, I’ve been falling asleep almost instantly. It doesn’t usually take me long to fall asleep, but this is still an important observation.
- I’ve only woken up in the middle of the night once to use the restroom. I usually do this every single night at around 2:30 am.
- I have not been waking up fresh. I’ve actually had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.
Their three claims are that you will fall asleep fast, stay asleep and wake up fresh. So far, they’re 2/3, which is pretty damn good in the first week. In all fairness, they don’t give any instructions other than take 2 capsules an hour before bed. I have been taking them right before getting into bed, so I wonder if their time-released approach that helps you wake up is being impacted by my inability to follow their directions. I’m going to try to take it closer to that hour window and see if it makes a difference. So far, I haven’t minded the results for this small investment, and am actually quite shocked at how good of a deal it was at Costco, considering how expensive anything in the biohacking realm can cost nowadays.
Will this work for you? There is only one way to find out, but I can assure you that you’re probably not doing enough to recover, and recovery is key to staying hungry and fit!
