Why Supplementation for Sleep?

< Full Episode

Transcript: Why Supplementation for Sleep?

Season 10, Episode 6  | March 11, 2025

[MUSIC]

Welcome to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

And I’m David Freeman.

And in this mini episode, we are talking about why supplementation for sleep? We know that sleep is something that a lot of people struggle with, but we need it for good health. So what are the things that we can do? What are some supplements we might take to support it? And just how do we make sure we’re getting enough of that good restorative sleep. So we have a special guest with us

Yeah, and who’s going to be helping us navigate today’s conversation? Miss Samantha McKinney, we will say like what? Our gold guest at this point, because she has had quite a few showings here. Yeah?

I would think so.

Well, let me give you that. Yeah, a handful, but all great. So Samantha McKinney, RD, CPT of our National Program Manager for Nutrition, Metabolism and Weight Loss at Life Time. She’s been with Life Time for 13 years in multiple different roles and currently on the team that leads nutrition programs and supplements for Life Time members, helping them optimize their metabolism and results from the inside out. Welcome back. Sam, how are you feeling?

I’m feeling great. It’s what I’m here for.

Yeah.

Let’s go.

Did you sleep well last night? Let’s ask that question.

Yeah, we actually were just talking about that before we started airing. I fell asleep last night, kind of accidentally, but at 8:00 and slept right through until this morning.

She’s ready then?

I am so ready.

She’s wide awake and ready to dive into this topic about why is sleep so important? So let’s just level set there. I know we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I think it’s worth just a minute or so to talk through that.

Yes, I will say that this is one of those topics where people can be completely dialed in with what they think is health by addressing their food, addressing their exercise, addressing their steps and their daily movement, their supplements, all of that. But if you’re not sleeping well, it’s all going to fall apart, either short term or long term. There is no such thing as optimal health without optimal sleep.

It’s an absolute cornerstone to your metabolism, to your overall health. There’s just so many wide-ranging effects that your body goes through that are negative if you are either missing quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, or both.

We need it all.

Yes.

I mean, when we look at people who are getting poor sleep because they’re experiencing some type of disturbance, can we talk about what the cause could potentially be that’s creating them to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep?

Yeah, sometimes sleep onset and then sleep quality once you are sleeping are slightly different things. They’re obviously related. We go through different sleep stages and sleep cycles, etc.

But what I found with clients is that sometimes they can bucket their sleep problems into I just can’t fall asleep. I feel tired, but I’m wired, or I just can’t stay asleep. Usually, trouble falling asleep typically is related to melatonin and circadian rhythm. Sometimes, it can be a little bit more anxiety ridden, like feeling anxious. Their mind is racing. They’re so tired, but they just can’t fall asleep.

Typically, staying asleep — and granted, there’s exceptions to all of this — but staying asleep sometimes can be a little bit more related to blood sugar or hormones like progesterone or deficiencies in certain things. And so that is the person that maybe falls asleep fine and then they wake up and they just toss and turn, toss and turn. They feel like they’re never really resting. So they’re not perfectly bucketed, but you can definitely separate them a little bit into one or the other.

Yep. OK, So we want to get into the supplements and all that. But we know that a lot of people initially might turn to over-the-counter medicines or have prescription drugs. And there’s absolutely a place for that when it comes to sleep. In some cases, people may need those truly because of sleep issues.
But we know that there are also other lifestyle factors and strategies that can help. So what are some of those? And then we’ll get really specific into supplementation.

For sure. I’d say the number one determinant of sleep cycles is your circadian rhythm. And the number one impact on your circadian rhythm is your light exposure. So are you getting daylight or real light during the hours that you’re supposed to? And are you avoiding things that mimic daylight, such as the light coming from screens and tablets and devices? Blue light in the evening.

Because if you see, for example, sunlight first thing in the morning that cements to your body, hey, it’s daytime. It’s morning. 12 hours from now, it’s nighttime. And same thing if you’re starting to look at some of those blue lights or kind of getting the wrong light exposure in the evening, you’re brain gets a little bit confused and your circadian rhythm starts to shift. And so that’ll impact sleep. So number one is light exposure getting the right light at the right time.

The other one that most people — and I’ve talked about this a lot on the episode, but blood sugar control. I cannot tell you how many people are shocked that their sleep gets better once they start hitting their optimal protein target of a gram of protein per pound of ideal weight, because their blood sugar starts to stabilize. And a lot of people don’t realize that bouncing around a blood sugar that can continue into the evening and that will cause you to toss and turn because it causes changes in your cortisol and your adrenaline and different hormones that make you restless.

Those are probably the main ones. And then, of course, do you have a sleep routine is probably the last big piece. Like, do you have some sort of wind down to signal to your body that it’s sleep time? Or are you rushing around taking care of the kids? Maybe coming off of an evening workout, you’re trying to get ready for the next day, the lights are on, the TV is blaring, and all of a sudden you shut everything off and jump into bed and you wonder.

Wide awake.

So you need almost some sort of ritual that you do consistently as well.

A lot of people refer to that as like, what’s your sleep hygiene? That routine for that 30 minutes to an hour before bed to really set yourself up for good sleep.

And one more thing that I will mention is going to sleep and waking up at generally the same time every day is really important. So even for me last night, even though I got a great night’s sleep, I probably actually fell asleep too early because I normally go to sleep 9:00 9:30, but I was sleeping by 8:00. This was a little bit — not that was bad, but if you can keep it relatively consistent, even weekdays to weekends, that can help a lot, too.

Yeah, we hear that.

Let’s speak to the light exposure and the certain times of the day that you said. I want to make sure we go back to that. And then at night, as far as the things that we could be exposed. I know you said TV, but I remember I think it was on another episode you were talking about, like the LED lights. The kids want to have the cool LED lights in their room and stuff. So I want to start at the beginning of the day. Probably the optimal time to probably have sunlight to the eyes and then when we should start sleep hygiene winding down, or making sure that we’re toning those lights down at night.

So I would say in the morning, the earlier — if you could see sunlight within 30 minutes of waking up, that’s awesome. Now, whenever you’re in a northern climate, it’s the middle of the winter. That might not be doable. But ideally, getting 20, 30 minutes of sun exposure before 10:00 AM.

Before 10:00.

Now, that’s not a hard and fast rule. If you don’t do that, then get however much you can. Some people schedules just don’t allow that. Can you get six minutes? Cool, then get six minutes. It’s better than zero minutes. But if you’re aiming for something, get outside if you can.

But that early morning what you’re trying to do is signal to your body, hey, 12 hours from now is probably going to be evening. That’s the goal. So kind of T minus that a little bit. And that sleep hygiene, it really kind of depends. I’d say at least 30 minutes of a routine. If somebody’s really having a ton of trouble, maybe we need to rearrange their healthy way of life routine and make it more 45 minutes to an hour.
But trying to avoid that light exposure, I would say at least an hour of the blue light avoidance before you try to fall asleep.

You were saying even with maybe even like with sleep and masks and all that, the light that’s in the room is still somewhat being absorbed.

Yes. So you have some light sensors in your skin that can work, too. Your pineal gland is involved there. And so there’s a whole cascade of different things that can happen. You ideally want your room to be pitch black. So something like blackout curtains can be super helpful.

An eye mask is better than nothing because that’s obviously our main source of how our body reacts to light. But I would say an eye mask, blackout curtains. Try to cover up if you’ve got little like charger lights in your room or anything like that, then try to get rid of those and make it pitch black.

Some people like white noise, too. Cooler temperature. Temperature is another big determinant of circadian rhythm, so making sure that you’re not hot and sweltering at night. I’d rather you drop the temperature and bundle up under the covers if you need to because your body can sense that.

I was going to ask one more. Are there any cool lights? Like when I mean by that? Because my son has LED lights and I’m like, alright, can we change it to this red or like —

Yes. Yes, there are red lights that have different light waves that are less disruptive. Oftentimes, those are marketed to breastfeeding moms that are going to be up at night no matter what so that they can fall back to sleep. But I know people that use them for their kids as well. So you can look up red light anti-blue light type of emission and find those.

But those can be really helpful, especially if maybe kids get up and they get scared. They need to be able to see, but you don’t want to disrupt their circadian rhythm. That’s a really nice hack.

I have one more light question then we’re going to get right into that —

Supplements.

Light it up.

Light it up.

I like it. You mentioned Northern climes where I said earlier before we started recording we were up and going early today. Got here into the studio before the sun was even up. So I haven’t really seen the sunlight yet today. Do light boxes help with that?

If I were to say, get exposure to those light boxes before 10:00 AM, does that count? And is it helpful to help?

Everything’s on a spectrum. What do I always say?

It depends.

I would say using a high intensity light box like that, they’re usually measured in lumen. And I don’t remember offhand. It’s either 10,000 or 20,000 lumen is the benchmark. I’m not recalling exactly which one, but those higher intensity ones for sure would be better than not having it at all.

Is it the same as sunlight? No. But I’m always like, what’s the alternative? What are we comparing it to?

It’s something.

But yes, but if you have that can be immensely beneficial. And that’s why some people have claimed that it’s helped them with things like seasonal affective disorder and things like that, too. But I would say if you can do it, that’s better than not having any light hygiene at all.

Ooh, I like that, too. Sleep hygiene light hygiene.

I just made that up.

Now it’s a thing.

You better own that thing.

It’s a thing. OK, so let’s get into supplementing for sleep, because there are some good things that can be helpful for us both to help us get to sleep and hopefully stay asleep. So let’s talk through those. What are some of those and what do we want to go through?

I’ll say that the number one thing that I see that can be impacted from a supplementation standpoint for optimal sleep is magnesium. So magnesium deficiency or suboptimal magnesium levels are so incredibly prevalent. And sometimes, that alone is the ticket to somebody sleeping better. So the very first step I always say is replete magnesium.

Now if you’re having trouble sleeping and you add in magnesium, you might have a magnesium deficiency and. So just taking the magnesium might not fix your sleep. So you might take and be like, oh, I didn’t notice a difference. I would say for a whole variety of reasons, keep taking the magnesium. It’s going to be a piece of the puzzle, whether you see an immediate difference from it or not. But some people do.

That being said, from a supplementation standpoint, there’s different forms of magnesium. And you want to take something that is chelated. That means it’s wrapped in amino acids. Your body can really absorb it. So one thing that I’m really excited about is LTH dream. It’s a magnesium —

Oh, you just like you the name —

You already know — You know I want that so badly. Dream, dream, dream. Yes.

I feel like every episode I can count on David for working on some song lyrics.

For sure.

Every time.

I got a dream, I wrote dream. I’m on it.

This is one of the most game changing supplements that I believe we’re going to carry, truly, because it combines a lot of things that we were doing kind of haphazard or I would say piecemeal into one easy solution. So it’s a drink mix that tastes amazing, but it has 300 milligrams of magnesium and there’s three different forms of magnesium. So those three different forms are specifically helpful for, crossing the blood-brain barrier, relaxation, overall health. So it’s really great to have those three in a trio together.
Plus 300 milligrams of something called phosphatidylserine, which is like a lipid found in cell membranes of mammals. It’s oftentimes studied along with omega-3s. But the reason that it is included in a supplement like this is it can act almost like as pumping the brakes on your HPA axis or adrenal system for stress. So it’s a really great anti-stress type support.

Plus, there’s a couple other things in there. There’s ashwagandha, which we’re really excited about. If anybody knows about ashwagandha, it’s in a category of supplements called adaptogens, which essentially are supposed to help your body more appropriately hormonally respond to stress. So think an anti-stress or a stress regulation type approach.

Plus, it has l-theanine, which is a really calming amino acid often derived from green tea. Although the supplement’s caffeine-free, L-theanine is a really relaxing type of supplement. I mean, we can even give that to children most of the time. So it’s this amazing combination of the stuff that you mix up into, almost like an evening mocktail if you need to and kind of sip on that.

And I swear, people that use sleep trackers whenever we were kind of in the testing phase with this before we really launched it and kind of hit the gas, they noticed tangible, objective changes in their sleep depth and recovery from using it. So super excited about that one.

I would say a dream come true.

There you go.

With that, you said mocktail just now?

Yes.

Let’s talk about cocktail. You have individuals who tend to probably say, hey, I’m about to have this nightcap. It’s going to help me sleep better. What exactly is happening to the individual who’s going to sleep with alcohol being in their system?

Yeah, well, they’re getting sedated. And so if you’re drinking alcohol, you’re kind of experiencing a sedation and an intoxication. Even if you’re not drinking to get drunk, there’s some level of that that’s happening. And it remarkably destroys your sleep architecture. So you feel like you’re falling asleep because you’re wound down. It’s kind of a depressant, but your sleep architecture and the quality is completely destroyed.

So that’s one of the worst things you can do for your sleep is alcohol. So just gosh, if somebody replaced their nightcap with this to relax, that would probably be one of the most impactful changes that they could possibly make to their health in the long run.

I love that. You said mocktail, maybe they need some examples of what that might be with the dream. What would you mix it with?

I mean, I just mix it with water, and put it in a fancy glass, honestly.

Well, there you go.

It’s that simple.

It’s simple.

Put it in a wine glass. There you go, mocktail. It’s a beautiful color, too. It’s like you can really dress it up a little bit.

You don’t have to.

I’m sure we’ll come up with recipes, though. You guys know our LTH team. We love getting in the kitchen as soon as the product lands and make it fancy.

Oh, my gosh. Give us some recipes. Share those out.

But there’s a couple other supplements, too. And if you just want to —

Yes, we want to go through those. So the melatonin is one we want to discuss.

So melatonin there seems to be controversy around melatonin. Use it. Don’t use it. This is kind of as far as where the research currently is the approach to it.

Melatonin it can function as an antioxidant. So it actually can be protective of your immune system and your gut health and all these different things. If you’re having trouble falling asleep, I’d rather you fall asleep with melatonin than continue to not fall asleep.

So now the question is, if you’re relying on it consistently to fall asleep for the long run, we’re probably missing something. But I think people should feel OK using melatonin to support sleep onset, especially in times where maybe their schedule is changing, they’re jet lagged, they’re traveling across time zones. It can be remarkably beneficial.

So LTH has a spray, which is really nice. So it’s really easily portable. It’s a small spray. It’s liposomal, so it absorbs very quickly and easily. And that can be a really great option. I wouldn’t do it just to do it. But if you’re having problems falling asleep, that alone can fix it.

And it’s actually — as people get older, you’re more and more at risk of low melatonin levels, especially kind of in the elderly. So I would say that that’s really important, too.

That’s so interesting because you often hear of people in the elderly population having trouble sleep. They try to go to bed early, but they really sleep very minimally in some cases for some people.

Their physiological melatonin levels are typically lower, so that can be a game changer for them.
Alright. Let’s go on to Relax.

Yes, so Relax. We like to lovingly refer to this one as a sleep primer. So it’s a melatonin-free blend. It contains vitamin B6 which is kind of I always call it the anti-stress vitamin, but it contains 5-HTP, which is a precursor to what your body needs to make serotonin and melatonin.

So 5-HTP can be also remarkably beneficial, not just for people who have trouble sleeping, but for people that really get a lot of cravings. Sometimes, 5-HTP can calm those down. The one caveat that I always say with 5-HTP is that for anybody that’s on an SSRI, which is often used for anxiety and depression, 5-HTP contraindicated in that population, so you just don’t want to use it.

But if you’re not on an SSRI, 5-HTP is like awesome to try with. Plus Relax also has GABA, which is a really calming neurotransmitter, plus a blend of herbs like Valerian root, chamomile, different things in there that can really help relax. And here’s what I’ll tell you. Trainers, we love our trainers so much at Life Time.

Our Dynamic Personal Trainers, oftentimes their schedules are go, go, go, go, go. And they can end up being really wired, especially in the evening. I always call this one our sleeper supplement. This is the trainer favorite supplement that whenever I talk to trainers one-on-one, when I’m like, hey, what’s your favorite thing we carry reliably? Out of every five trainers I ask, at least one or two is like Oh, Relax. They just love Relax.

Yes, so if you feel like you’re kind of wired and need to calm down, but you don’t necessarily need melatonin, then Relax is a really great option.

Awesome. OK. And then the last one we have is I think it’s glycine or collagen.

Yes, collagen peptides. That’s one of our favorite sources of protein. Collagen peptides provide a lot of amino acids that most of us are missing in our modern-day lifestyle because of how we’re eating and the sources of meat and protein that we’re consuming. Glycine, so the LTH collagen peptides, it’s called Prime has almost 3 grams of an amino acid called glycine per scoop.

And glycine is also really calming. And it’s sometimes used in — If you’re on social media, you’ve probably seen like viral sleep mocktails and cocktails kind of going around and pretty consistently they contain glycine. But you could just do one thing that I like to do because again, that LTH Prime Collagen peptides it dissolves really well in hot liquids. I’ll make an herbal tea and I’ll grab either the unflavored or the vanilla one and just use a frother.

Once I remove, the actual tea from it, what’s left is the hot liquid froth that LTH Prime in there. And that also is a really great kind of wind down. That’s what I’ve been using prior to the launch of Dream.
And I’ll tell you one thing. When you were talking about the collagen flavors now.

Yes.

Cinnamon roll.

The limited release —

Cinnamon roll.

Yes.

It is a smash hit.

Yeah, it is.

I will tell you that much.

Yeah, it is.

I had it in my coffee last week and I was like, that is delicious.

So you didn’t need anything else.

Alright, so we have a mini episode as you know, and I want to make sure that we cover all and everything in the mini episode when it comes to supplements and just helping with sleep. And the Dream piece, I want to go a little bit back to is it kid-friendly? I’m sorry. I’m dreaming still.

Yeah. So I would say there’s a couple ingredients in there that haven’t been well researched in kids yet. So like the ashwagandha, for example. Not really sure about that. I would with kids kind of lean on we have one called Calm for kids, and that is an l-theanine spray that tastes amazing.

I’m guilty of taking my kids’ Calm spray sometimes in the evening, but I would start with that for them. And, of course, some magnesium. And that usually does the trick for kids.

Perfect, OK.

There we go. Alright. Anything else, Sam? Do we miss anything?

I don’t think so. I think hopefully this gave everyone the information they need, at least for supplementation when it comes to sleep and making sure they feel confident in doing the trial and error that’s going to work for them.

Absolutely. And we have longer episodes on a lot of these topics that we’ll be able to link to plus a lot of content at experiencelife.lifetime.life. If people want to follow Sam, she is on Instagram @coachsam.rd. And you also have many episodes on this podcast, so we will link to everything.

Thanks for having me today, guys.

Thank you, Sam.

We kept everyone awake, too.

Sleep well tonight.

Sleep well tonight.

We’re all going to rest.

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