If you’re among those who regularly reach for melatonin as a holistic option to end an unhealthy sleep cycle, it’s smart to understand exactly how melatonin works.
Getting a good night’s sleep requires timing and precision of what to release, where in the brain to release it, and when to release it. In a nutshell: sleep isn’t simple. The good news is that the brain can effectively regulate all of these different factors with the right support. But in order to support the sleep process, we must first understand the neuroscience of sleep.
What we do in the beginning parts of our evening can affect the rest of our night … our sleep … and how we perform the next day. It’s a period where, like the early morning, there can be a big ripple effect from what we do. The importance of the early evening is why we created Qualia Night.
L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid. This means the body cannot synthesize it: it must be obtained from the diet. It’s been known for decades that L-tryptophan has niacin equivalent activity in the body (i.e., we can make NAD+ molecules from it). L-tryptophan is unique because it’s the only way to build NAD+ that doesn’t start from vitamin B3. It does this by a de novo synthesis pathway, which creates a niacin molecule through a series of biological reactions. So, L-tryptophan’s inclusion would seem to be a natural fit in a formulation that wants to support boosting NAD+.
