Best Magnesium for Sleep

Sleep is the foundation of good health.1 Our high school health class textbooks had entire chapters devoted to it, and for good reason. But according to the National Council on Aging, more than a third of Americans report sleeping under seven hours each night.2 That directly violates recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society to get a minimum of 7-9 hours nightly.3

You could turn to prescription sleeping pills or powerful OTC remedies like melatonin or valerian root, but these pose problems of their own, not the least concerning of which is the potential to cause significant next-day grogginess.4 That’s not something you want from a sleep aid.

Magnesium may be a viable alternative for people looking to avoid prescription intervention but still get something that’s both safe and effective. But there are numerous kinds of magnesium, and some may be better for sleep than others. Our team breaks down the science behind magnesium’s role in sleep and provides product recommendations for you to get started.

If you’re pressed for time (did you sleep in!), here’s a quick look at our findings:

At Innerbody Research, we extensively review each product we write about, trying it out for ourselves and comparing it to all available scientific research. For this guide to magnesium supplements used to enhance sleep, we spent more than 40 hours researching both prescription and supplemental approaches to sleep management, including more than a dozen papers specific to magnesium’s role in sleep support.

We then used that earned scientific knowledge to compare the top magnesium products on the market and determine which had the best chance of making a real difference for readers struggling with sleep issues. We even ordered those select products for ourselves so we could report our experiences back to you.

Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide was thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy and will continue to be monitored for updates by our editorial team.

Over the past two decades, Innerbody Research has helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

In setting out to evaluate magnesium supplements for sleep, we compared the top products across four criteria we felt would be most important to the average consumer: effectiveness, safety, cost, and convenience. Our top overall pick won in two out of the four criteria, but the fact that other companies beat it out in other areas speaks to how balancing the importance of such criteria can guide you toward picking a magnesium for yourself.

Let’s look more closely at each criterion:

Effectiveness

Winner: Micro Ingredients Magnesium Glycinate

In the published, peer-reviewed scientific research we examined, magnesium appears to have a consistent relationship with sleep quality.5 That means that magnesium supplementation typically results in better sleep when taken within safe dose ranges. But with so many supplements containing just magnesium, many at similar doses, you could argue that any two magnesium-only supplements are identical; all that matters is how much of them you take.

And that argument holds some water. Most of the top picks in our guide even use the same magnesium salt — magnesium glycinate, the best pick for sleep. But Micro Ingredients wins our preference here because it packs the most elemental magnesium into each of its capsules compared to the other products in our guide, even while using the same salt and capsule size. This typically comes down to a manufacturing quirk in the use of excipients, non-pharmacologically active substances added to capsules to maintain the integrity and shelf life of the main ingredients.

Micro Ingredients’ manufacturing process allows it to offer just over 166mg of elemental magnesium per capsule, whereas the next most potent option from Organifi only has 150mg per capsule.

Safety

Winner: Organifi Essential Magnesium

Safety concerns with magnesium supplements can quickly get confusing, as different magnesium salts can have specific side effects. For example, magnesium oxide is the magnesium salt most closely associated with diarrhea as a side effect.16 Other forms, like magnesium threonate or magnesium glycinate, don't usually have that problem unless you take a very large dose. In fact, within nominal doses, most magnesium supplements should be perfectly safe.6

So, how do we go about evaluating the safety of two or more supplements that contain nothing but the same relatively safe magnesium salt, like magnesium glycinate? Well, we look deeper into manufacturing practices.

We want to see that companies are doing things like manufacturing their supplements in facilities that comply with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) as set by the FDA. We also look for companies to pay the cost of having their supplements tested by third parties for things like purity, potency, and heavy metal or microbial contamination.

Organifi, Transparent Labs, and Micro Ingredients check all of these boxes, but Transparent Labs’ formula is far more complex than the simple magnesium glycinate supplements the other two offer. That introduces added risk compared to a single-ingredient supplement. And between those other two, Organifi offers the only organic, vegan choice, with testing parameters extending to include gluten, glyphosate contamination, and the presence of chemical herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. Micro Ingredients is undeniably a close second in this category, however.

Cost

Winner: Horbäach Magnesium Bisglycinate

This category was a tight race between Horbäach and Micro Ingredients when it came to the cost per gram of magnesium in either supplement. As you can see in the chart below, Micro Ingredients actually had the edge until shipping costs were taken into account. After that, the cost per gram from Horbäach was undeniably lower, and neither company offers bulk or subscription savings that could offset those costs.

You may be able to acquire these supplements through third parties to try for better shipping rates or base prices, but we’ve seen some counterfeit Horbäach products out there — even on places like Amazon — so we recommend confining your magnesium purchases to verified companies.

Among complex sleep formulas, it makes more sense to measure by the cost per dose, rather than the pure cost of the magnesium involved, since there are so many more ingredients to consider:

As you can see, Swolverine’s ZMT has far more magnesium and more supportive ingredients than the other two companies offer, but it’s also the most expensive product in our guide. Per dose, Transparent Labs and Recess Mood are decidedly close, so you might want to spend the extra $0.12 per dose to potentially get a higher amount of magnesium. However, Transparent Labs offers a deeper subscription discount that also eliminates the shipping cost, which solidifies its status as the best economic option among the complex formulas we review here.

Convenience

Winner: Organifi Essential Magnesium

While most of the products in this guide could be commended for offering convenient shopping experiences and straightforward dosing regimens, there are a few aspects of Organifi’s approach that set it apart. The dose itself is one of them, as each capsule contains an even 150mg of elemental magnesium from magnesium glycinate. That makes it easy to calculate higher doses if you want to take more than one capsule at a time. By contrast, with something like Micro Ingredients, you have to calculate in intervals of 166.67mg.

Organifi also has the most flexible buying options to introduce savings to your purchase, with a subscription program and three bulk purchasing levels. And the company’s 60-day money-back guarantee is the longest return window of the companies in this guide.

Magnesium is the second most abundant cation in the cells of the human body, and it’s involved in hundreds of enzymatic and signaling activities.7 But a lot of people may be marginally deficient, or lacking in magnesium without showing signs of it. Marginal deficiency can affect up to 20% of the population in developed countries, with even higher rates occurring among those with diabetes.8

The really nefarious thing about marginal deficiency is that it may not present with severe enough symptoms that the average person would be concerned enough to have their levels checked out by a doctor. So you could have some mild symptoms of marginal magnesium deficiency (e.g., poor sleep) and not make the connection.

Among magnesium’s various functions in the body, there are several that are directly associated with sleep homeostasis. Here’s a quick look at each:6

So, there are clearly numerous mechanisms of action at play when you take a magnesium supplement for sleep. But with different doses and forms of magnesium being used in different studies, it can be hard to know just how much of which kind to take.

The short answer is that magnesium glycinate beats out other forms of magnesium for sleep support. The long answer involves elemental magnesium, or the amount of actual pure magnesium found in a magnesium compound (e.g., magnesium glycinate or magnesium oxide).

Like many nutrients, magnesium needs to be stabilized in order for it to be safe for production, shipment, storage, and consumption. Magnesium is especially reactive in its pure form, creating white flames in the presence of oxygen and being used in such applications as rocket propellants and fuel cells.14 So you might not want to just put pure magnesium in your body.

Instead, you’d want a stabilized version of magnesium that your body could safely and effectively absorb. To that end, magnesium manufacturers have combined the element with numerous partners, including organic acids, amino acids, and inorganic salts. Different partners in this binding process result in different concentrations of elemental magnesium.

Here’s a quick reference for general concentrations in various magnesium compounds:15

• Magnesium oxide: 61%
• Magnesium chloride: 12%
• Magnesium citrate: 16%
• Magnesium glycinate: 14%
• Magnesium hydroxide: 42%
• Magnesium sulfate: 10%
• Magnesium gluconate: 5%
• Magnesium lactate: 12%
• Magnesium threonate: 8%
• Magnesium aspartate: 10%

At first glance, you might think that magnesium oxide would be the clear winner; it has the highest concentration of elemental magnesium, so you could take less of it and get the same elemental amount. Unfortunately, the quality of these compounds varies specifically depending on the elements appearing alongside magnesium, with significant differences in both primary and adverse effects.

Magnesium oxide, for example, is an extremely effective treatment for constipation.16 But if you aren’t constipated, it can send you running helplessly for the nearest bathroom. And that’s not exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep.

What’s more, the question of absorption creates important differences between magnesium forms, with glycinate, citrate, and threonate being among the best-absorbed options out there.17

Apart from concentration and absorption, it also helps to consider the nature of the non-magnesium parts of these compounds. Among them, the glycine in magnesium glycinate actually has impressive research supporting its role in sleep improvement — even without magnesium in the picture.18

That makes magnesium glycinate the best option for sleep, as it provides a reasonably high concentration of elemental magnesium in a compound that absorbs well with few side effects and that contains an amino acid shown to support sleep on its own.

How to read a magnesium label to know what you’re getting

Even once you realize that magnesium glycinate is the best form of magnesium for sleep, you still have to contend with some issues in how magnesium supplements are labeled. These issues can make one supplement seem a lot better than another until you look more closely and parse some of the industry jargon companies use to save money.

Here’s a cheat sheet to help you understand what you’re seeing on a magnesium glycinate label:

Magnesium doses range widely in research examining its role in supporting healthy sleep. And a tall man with obesity, diabetes, and a clinical magnesium deficit would likely need a higher supplemental dose than a short, thin woman in otherwise good health.

When we looked at the available magnesium glycinate supplements on the market, we were pleased to see that many offered reasonable doses of magnesium per capsule, making it pretty straightforward for anyone to dial in a dose that should work for them. But you should still find a good starting point from which you can titrate up if you want more dramatic results.

Research into magnesium for sleep has used just about every form of magnesium under the sun, so we need to start by considering elemental magnesium intake as it relates to sleep quality. A significant review of such studies found successful results in a pretty wide range of doses, starting at just over 50mg of elemental magnesium and topping out a little above 300mg.20 And some of the studies we discussed above used elemental doses as high as 500mg.

Clearly, if 50mg is enough for some users, reaching as high as 500mg is probably not the best place to start. And doses above 350mg/day would exceed the tolerable upper limit set by the National Institutes of Health. Instead, we recommend most people look toward the average of these doses, which lands at around 125mg. Some of the supplements in our guide offer just above or below that in each capsule, allowing you to start with one capsule and take more as you see fit.

If you’re having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or you find yourself struggling to get out of bed in the morning or quickly losing mental and physical energy throughout the day, you might want to consider supplementing with magnesium. It could very likely help with your sleep and resulting daytime wakefulness, but it also has a host of other benefits, given its extensive role in human health.5

As long as there aren’t contraindications with related medications, those with diabetes might want to consider a magnesium supplement, as well, since diabetics are more likely to be deficient in magnesium. The same could be said of older people, as magnesium homeostasis suffers with age, leading to a gradual magnesium depletion and a greater prevalence of magnesium deficiency among older populations.8

Who might want to avoid it?

Of course, if you know that you get an enormous amount of magnesium from your diet or you simply don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with your sleep quality or fatigue levels, you might not need to supplement.

There are also certain medications that don’t mix well with magnesium, including:19

• Bisphosphonates
• Antibiotics
• Diuretics
• Proton pump inhibitors

In some cases, this is a matter of the medications inducing magnesium deficits that supplementation doesn’t seem to counter. In others, as with certain antibiotics, insoluble compounds can form that can introduce various complications.21

For most people, it should be perfectly safe to take a magnesium supplement, so long as you don’t go overboard with the dose. Doses above the tolerable upper limit have been known to cause GI upset and diarrhea, especially when using specific magnesium salts like magnesium oxide.16 The worse a magnesium supplement absorbs, the more it can induce an osmosis effect in the intestines, drawing in excess water that, well, has to go somewhere.

More severe risks than GI disturbance aren’t really an issue unless you take multiple grams per day, with 5g/day doses associated with toxicity in at least one case study.22

Of course, the best thing you can do before introducing a new magnesium supplement into your regimen is to talk to your doctor first.

Best for most people

We believe that most people in the market for a magnesium supplement to help them sleep would do well to start with a capsule containing only magnesium. A more complex blend could be too powerful, especially if it contained certain ingredients like melatonin or valerian. Among the magnesium-only options out there, we landed on Micro Ingredients as the best option for most people because it provides a potentially effective dose in a single capsule, with enough capsules in a single bag to more than triple your dose within a single month’s supply if you find you need more.

Where Micro Ingredients really shines is in the amount of elemental magnesium it can pack into each capsule. This comes down to manufacturing processes that allow Micro Ingredients to offer just under 167mg of elemental magnesium in each capsule, with a 500mg suggested serving size from three capsules. That compares favorably with the 150mg and 100mg per-capsule doses in Organifi and Horbäach’s glycinate supplements, respectively.

Now, 500mg of elemental magnesium is likely pretty high for most people new to magnesium supplementation, especially considering magnesium glycinate’s high absorption rate. But 167mg is much more reasonable, and it might make this a very well-priced product if you find that a single capsule is enough to improve your sleep.

One last knock on Micro Ingredients, however, is that its capsules contain gelatin, making the supplement unsuitable for vegans and vegetarians. But if you’re not in either camp, it’s worthy for being a potent product that’s ultimately less expensive than Organifi’s offering.

Micro Ingredients Magnesium Glycinate pricing

Micro Ingredients Magnesium Glycinate only comes in a one-size bag (not a bottle) containing 240 capsules for $28.95. You can get the same bag through Amazon for around $25, though you may end up forfeiting the 30-day money-back guarantee.

Micro Ingredients has the highest shipping costs of the products in our guide, charging $8.95 for standard shipping. Fortunately, it also has the lowest free shipping threshold, so if you bring the cost of your order up to $59 or more, you can get free shipping. That’s still not as generous as the blanket free shipping you can get from Recess or Horbäach, but it’s better than others.

Best budget pick

Anyone on a tight budget who wanted access to a reliable, well-dosed magnesium supplement would do well to consider Horbäach’s magnesium bisglycinate. However, Horbäach sells more than a dozen magnesium supplements, and you have to be careful which one you get, as certain options are better for sleep than others, and some might send you running to the bathroom if you’re not vigilant.

The product you want from Horbäach is specifically its Magnesium Bisglycinate 750mg, which comes in a 120-capsule bottle for $9.99. To reiterate a point we discussed earlier, magnesium glycinate and magnesium bisglycinate are identical compounds with two names that are used interchangeably.

Other options from Horbäach may also include magnesium glycinate or imply a high degree of absorption, but we don’t recommend them, specifically:

Horbäach does a good job making sure its products are free from common allergens, and its Magnesium Bisglycinate is free from

• Gluten
• Wheat
• Yeast
• Milk
• Lactose
• Soy
• Artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners
• Preservatives

However, it uses gelatin capsules that make it unsuitable for vegans and vegetarians. Micro Ingredients does the same, but Organifi’s Essential Magnesium is vegan-friendly.

Horbäach Magnesium Bisglycinate pricing

Horbäach doesn’t offer bulk or subscription discounts on its Magnesium Bisglycinate, but the price per bottle is still exceptionally low. For $9.99, you get 120 capsules, each containing 100mg of elemental magnesium in it. That’s a hair below what we would recommend for improving sleep, but it’s still entirely possible that one capsule will work for you. If not, upping your dose to two capsules still gives you the best deal in our guide.

That deal is made all the stronger by Horbäach’s free-shipping policy on all orders, saving you up to $9 per bottle compared to some of the competition. A 30-day return policy rounds things out, which should be long enough for you to know whether the product works for you. It’s not the longest in our guide, but it’s plenty for the product category.

Best organic and vegan capsule

By small but meaningful margins, Organifi’s commitment to safety and quality testing, with extensive third-party testing, outperforms the competition. In addition to typical third-party tests to confirm things like purity, potency, and a lack of microbial contamination, Organifi also has its products tested for residual pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, and glyphosates. It’s also the only option in our guide to be certified organic.

Another nice aspect of Organifi’s system is that the dose of elemental magnesium in each capsule is easy to calculate if you decide to take more than one capsule per serving. At 150mg per capsule, you can take 150mg, 300mg, 450mg, and so on, without having to break out the calculator. It’s a small advantage, but competitors like Micro Ingredients and Horbäach make excellent magnesium supplements of their own, and it’s these small differences that set Organifi apart.

The one knock we could find on the product itself is that the bottles we received didn’t contain any kind of desiccant pack. They didn’t even have a little cotton in them, which we often see in supplements. This could make them more susceptible to humid conditions than we’d like to see. It won’t necessarily harm the magnesium itself, but it could cause the capsules to stick together and potentially rupture if you need to pull them apart.

Organifi pricing

One bottle of Organifi’s Essential Magnesium contains 60 capsules, allowing you to take 1-2 capsules per day within a month’s supply. You can save money on your purchase by subscribing or purchasing more than one bottle at a time. Here’s how the pricing breaks down:

As you can see, the higher the quantity you purchase, the less your cost will be per bottle and per dose, especially if you subscribe. If you want to save a few dollars on a one-time purchase, you can get a single bottle for the subscription price of $27 by going through the company’s Amazon store, but there are no bulk or subscription savings available there, and you lose out on the 60-day money-back guarantee.

Shipping costs $7.95, with the ability to access free shipping if you spend more than $150.

Unfortunately, no version of Essential Magnesium’s purchasing plans exceeds that $150 threshold, meaning you’d either have to add multiple orders to your cart or purchase additional products from the company to get free shipping. This is a pretty stark contrast to other companies on this guide that offer free shipping, like Recess and Horbäach, or even to competitors with more reasonable free-shipping thresholds, like Swolverine and Transparent Labs’ $99 thresholds or Micro Ingredients’ $59 threshold.

Organifi has the longest money-back guarantee among magnesium supplements in this guide, allowing you 60 days to try its product. In both the available scientific research and our internal testing, magnesium supplements could improve sleep after a single dose, while a month of supplementation proved plenty to know whether a certain product or dose was working. So 60 days is more than enough coverage.

Best multi-magnesium for sleep and best powdered magnesium beverage

Among the various sleep complexes we investigated and tried for this piece, Recess offers the most effective without big, heavy sleep agents like melatonin and valerian root.23 24 It was also a hit among our testers, both for its flavor profile and its efficacy even after a single dose. That’s likely attributable to ingredients like L-theanine, which can be almost immediately soothing.

Here’s a look at the ingredient list in Recess Mood Powder:

• Vitamin C: 20mg
• Vitamin B6: 1mg
• Calcium: 30mg
• Magnesium: 210mg (from the complex listed below)
• Zinc: 0.3mg
• Sodium: 30mg
• Potassium: 100mg
• Recess Proprietary Magnesium Blend: 1,561mg
• L-Theanine: 200mg
• Passionflower 4:1 extract: 180mg

For clarity’s sake, the 210mg of magnesium is the elemental amount that comes from the 1,560mg of magnesium threonate, glycinate, and citrate included in the proprietary magnesium blend. The other 1mg in that blend is vitamin B6. We don’t know exactly how much of each magnesium is in this blend, but we know that threonate and citrate are among the better magnesiums for absorption. We also know that 210mg of elemental magnesium should be sufficient for many people to improve sleep, even before accounting for the complex’s other ingredients.

Among those other ingredients, the 200mg of L-theanine and 180mg of 4:1 passionflower extract are especially interesting. L-theanine has been shown to offer relaxing and anti-stress effects.25 And passionflower should do the same.26 It’s also worth noting that the 180mg passionflower dose in Mood is more than you’ll see in most competitors’ blends.

You can either mix Mood yourself by purchasing a tub of powder or individual stick packs, or order cases of the company’s pre-mixed versions. The benefit of the pre-mixed versions is that they’re ready to go and come in more flavors than the powder. But they’re noticeably less potent than the powder, containing less magnesium and fewer active ingredients overall. As a result, we recommend the powders over the company’s pre-mixed drinks.

The tubs and stick packs are available unflavored or in either Gradient Berry or Lemon Citrus flavors.

Recess Mood pricing

You can get Recess Mood in 28-serving tubs or in stick packs, which come ten to a box. You can also get stick-pack samplers (six or 15 to a box) if you want to try the flavors out before committing to a tub. The tubs are much more economical and contain a scoop for measurement, making them just about as easy to use as the stick packs; they just aren’t as portable.

Interestingly, unflavored powders cost less than their flavored alternatives, likely because Recess doesn’t need to add natural flavors, monk fruit, or its coloring agents (e.g., beet root and grape skin) when making an unflavored powder.

Here’s how the prices compare for flavored powders:

You can also get a variety box of six stick packs, which only comes with two of each flavor plus two unflavored, for $14.99, but it’s not available as a subscription.

And here’s a breakdown of the unflavored options:

The best price you’ll find here is the unflavored tub subscription at $29.32, though we recommend the flavored option for an extra $0.13 per dose. The flavor was genuinely enjoyable, and our testers found it light enough to mix into less water than Recess recommends. The tub advises 8-12 ounces of water, but we were happy with six ounces. That not only made for a stronger beverage, but it reduced the chances that any of our testers would have their deepened sleep interrupted by a need to urinate.

Shipping from Recess is free, which is only matched by Horbäach among the companies in this guide, but the return policy only allows you 14 days to try the products. Our testers felt something on night one, so 14 days should be plenty to know that it works, but some extra time to be sure you want to keep taking it (like the 30 days from Swolverine and Transparent Labs) would be preferable.

Best sleep complex with melatonin

Swolverine, a woman-owned fitness company, created ZMT to serve two vital purposes in exercise performance and recovery: improving sleep and boosting testosterone (in men). Fortunately, the ingredients that boost testosterone in men aren’t likely to affect the hormonal balance of women interested in the supplement, so it can serve as a sleep aid to anyone.

Some of those testosterone-boosting ingredients have been shown to improve sleep and fight anxiety in various studies. Ashwagandha, for example, boasts ample evidence as a testosterone booster as well as a sleep aid and anxiolytic.27 28 And many of those studies use the same branded form of standardized ashwagandha extract found in ZMT, albeit often at a slightly higher dose. Still, the 300mg of ashwagandha in ZMT has been successful in some research.

ZMT also includes the highest dose of elemental magnesium among the complex formulas in our guide, with 422mg from magnesium glycinate. But that elemental amount requires more than 3g of magnesium glycinate, which results in a six-capsule dose that might be a turnoff for some people.

Here’s a look at ZMT’s full ingredient list:

• Vitamin B6: 25mg
• Magnesium: 422mg
• Zinc citrate: 50mg
• L-Taurine: 1,000mg
• L-Theanine: 500mg
• L-Tryptophan: 500mg
• Ashwagandha root extract: 300mg
• GABA: 100mg
• Valerian root extract: 100mg
• Tongkat ali root extract: 50mg
• Rhodiola rosea root extract: 50mg
• DIM (3,3’-Diindolylmethane): 50mg
• BioPerine: 5mg
• Melatonin: 3mg

Ingredients like ashwagandha and magnesium don’t typically induce sleep with a single dose, however. That’s why Swolverine included 3mg of melatonin and 100mg of valerian root extract. With those ingredients in place, a single dose should have noticeable effects on your ability to fall asleep. Some people might not want that kind of intense, immediate effect, though; they might prefer a sleep supplement that contains ingredients with scientific evidence supporting healthy sleep, but nothing that’s designed to knock them out. That’s where products like Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover and Recess Mood could be considered.

Swolverine ZMT pricing

Swolverine ZMT is the most expensive product in our guide, costing $65 for a one-time purchase or just over $45 if you subscribe. That’s a steep 30% savings for subscribers, but it still results in one of the most expensive costs per dose (topped only by Recess’s stick packs). Here’s how the pricing works out:

Shipping from Swolverine costs $7.99 unless you reach a $99 free shipping threshold. That’s certainly on the high side among supplement companies, but it’s better than Organifi’s $159 threshold.

Swolverine claims that it processes returns on a case-by-case basis, but it also says that you have 30 days and that products must be unopened. There’s also a $10 restocking fee plus a 2.5% processing fee, and you’ll be on the hook for return shipping. Compared to other companies in this guide with actual money-back guarantees that let you try products and return them without a bunch of fees, Swolverine’s policy almost seems predatory and is undeniably the thing we like least about an otherwise good company.

Best sleep complex without melatonin

The core of Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover are reliable ingredients like magnesium, L-theanine, and vitamin B6, all dosed at levels that should prove effective in many users. That’s enough to earn it the title of best sleep complex without melatonin. It also helps Transparent Labs’ cause that so many sleep complexes rely on melatonin to get the job done, so the field wasn’t too extensive.

Other ingredients in the formula have genuine potential to help you get to sleep, but they aren’t always dosed at levels we’d like to see, and one promising ingredient needs more research before we can get behind it. For example, 500mg of tart cherry is quite a lot, but it’s there because it contains melatonin in fractional amounts of about 0.013mg per gram.29 So, 500mg offers 0.0065mg of melatonin. That’s too little to be effective, though it’s also so slight that it didn’t cost Transparent Labs its title as our preferred melatonin-free product.

Rutaecarpine is another promising ingredient, with research pointing to its potential to act as a kind of anti-caffeine, allowing you to enjoy a little java later in the day and not have it wreak havoc on your sleep. Unfortunately, the majority of its research is done in animals, and translating those doses to humans would imply a dose of about 1g/day for a 160lb individual — far more than the 100mg present here.30 That lower dose may be a good thing in the end, though, as rutaecarpine also appears to stay active in the system for up to 12 hours, potentially blunting the effects of your morning coffee — and nobody wants that!31

Here’s the full ingredient list:

• Vitamin B6: 10mg
• Magnesium bisglycinate: 200mg
• Zinc: 15mg
• L-Glycine: 1,000mg
• VitaCherry (tart cherry fruit): 500mg
• L-Theanine: 200mg
• Rutaecarpine: 100mg

Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover pricing

Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover comes in a 30-serving bottle for $29.99, a much more reasonable price for a complex formula than you’d get from Swolverine, though its effects won’t be as noticeable (certainly not on night one). You can save $3 and get free shipping if you subscribe, knocking off an additional $7.99. The only other way to save on shipping is to spend more than $99. That’s the same as the threshold Swolvering has in place, but Swolverine doesn't knock off the shipping charge when you subscribe.

Transparent Labs also has a better money-back guarantee than either of the other complex formulas in this guide. Its 30-day window is larger than Recess’ 14, and it also allows you to actually try the product for those 30 days before deciding whether it works for you.

Everyone’s sleep needs are a little different, so you might find that an alternative would work better than magnesium, or maybe in conjunction with it. There are plenty of alternatives, too — everything from a warm glass of milk or a shot of whiskey to a sound machine and a sleep mask — but some of them are safer or more effective than others.

Let’s take a very brief look at some of your options: