I wanted to do a whole rigorous review of all of the individual ingredients, but my new role at work is sucking up all my time and every time I mention “I found a supplement that cured my sleep problem” people demand to know what it is, so screw it, here’s the unscientific version.
Cortisol is the long term stress hormone. High cortisol at night can prevent you from falling asleep, or cause you to wake up in the middle of the night. I had this problem a lot, usually at 3 AM. I started taking Cortisol Manager and started sleeping through the night, which, wow, is everything I dreamed it would be. It is not the only reason I went from working 60 hours/week to working 90, but it was a contributor.
[Note: “work” means “consciously chose to do a thing, of any kind, as opposed to looking up and realizing I’d just spent 40 minutes on Reddit.”, although my actual job-work hours did go up too]
Cortisol Manager has a number of ingredients, two of which I know anything about:
- Ashwaganda, which is an “adaptogen”, raising or lowering cortisol as you need it. This is good, because cortisol is extremely important for getting out of bed in the morning. Taking ashwaganda alone does not seem to help me.
- Theanine, an amino acid that lowers anxiety. Theanine alone leads to higher quality sleep for me, and helps my anxiety enough to be used for dental visits before I got a prescription for something stronger.
I’ve been on and off CM in the past. At points it depressed on cortisol too much (although right now I need two tabs/night), other times it just didn’t feel necessary. But it is extremely necessary for me right now, and at least one friend has benefited tremendously from me sharing the recommendation.
Aceso Under Glass 
Thanks for this post and the tip. I have had similar problems of not being able to maintain a high quality of sleep when I am working intensively. I tend to wake up after 4-6 hours of sleep and not be able to get back to sleep again.
If you haven’t heard about the book Why we sleep yet I strongly recommend you check it out. I am in the process of listening it. It’s an absolutely awesome popular science book about the sleep.
And yes, one question: when do you take CM to sleep better? Even though I am stressed or activated, I may not have problems falling asleep. The problem is that I may awake after 4 hours and not be able to get back to sleep again. Thanks
I take it shortly before bed and it’s postponing waking up from 3AM to 6AM.
I tried Cortisol Manager twice on this recommendation. It made my sleep fitful and not restful; it might have helped with anxiety in the morning after. I’ll try it one more time during the day and see if it does that for me again.