Innerbody Labs Sleep Support Review

There’s no overstating the importance of sleep for general health, but sleep also plays critical roles in mental health, weight management, and even testosterone levels.1 It’s not just sleep duration at issue, either; sleep quality is of critical importance, as well. And high-quality sleep is something too few people get on a regular basis.2

Plenty of people turn to prescription interventions or OTC solutions like melatonin, but those can either be habit-forming or leave you feeling groggy the next day.3 4 That’s where more carefully designed sleep supplements come in, and Innerbody Labs Sleep Support boasts one of the best ingredient bills in that category.

In this review, we’ll go over each of those ingredients and discuss how they can come together to improve your sleep in the short and long term.

Every ingredient in Sleep Support is supported by clinical research either to improve sleep or, in the case of two ingredients, support the safety and efficacy of other ingredients on the bill. And each of those ingredients is present at a dose that equals or exceeds what was successful in human studies. Competitors either contain fewer ingredients overall or pack their products with more ingredients at doses too low to be reliably effective, landing Sleep Support in a class of its own. There are a few instances in which certain of those competitors may be a superior choice for some people, and we’ll highlight those as well in this review.

At Innerbody Research, we carefully scrutinize every product and service we review, including a wide variety of over-the-counter sleep aids like Innerbody Labs Sleep Support. In the process of researching for and writing various reviews and guides in the area, we identified a lack of options that could address sleep health while equally prioritizing efficacy and long-term safety.

That led Innerbody Labs to develop Sleep Support, which is both a highly effective sleep supplement and an apparent conflict of interest for Innerbody Research to write about. That said, we pride ourselves on our objectivity, and we consistently point out when other sleep supplements would be a better option than Sleep Support.

Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this review 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.

To evaluate Innerbody Labs Sleep Support, we compared it to the top over-the-counter sleep aids on the market, applying four criteria to see how it stacks up. Specifically, we looked at effectiveness, safety, cost, and convenience.

Effectiveness

While Sleep Support scores highly in all four criteria, its effectiveness is its strongest point. That’s because the supplement contains 14 ingredients that are all present at doses aligned with or exceeding successful research in human studies. Far too many other sleep supplements rely on either too few ingredients at proper doses (e.g., Ritual Stress Relief) or a great deal of promising ingredients present at sometimes startlingly low doses (e.g., Qualia Night).

The clearest way to illustrate this is to put some of these top competitors side-by-side with Innerbody Labs Sleep Support:

As you can see, Sleep Support boasts an especially potent formula; not one of its ingredients is outdosed by competitors except for vitamin B6, the daily recommended amount for which is only around 1-2mg.5 By comparison, the 70mg of magnesium from Transparent Labs and the 200mg tart cherry dose from Momentous are prime examples of potentially valuable but underdosed ingredients, even in otherwise well-designed supplements.

Could Innerbody Labs Sleep Support be even more effective if it contained valerian root like Momentous, or melatonin like Momentous and Transparent Labs? In the short term, yes, but increasing safety risks for long-term health or even next-day grogginess isn’t in line with the company's ethos.4

Safety

While it’s true that the specific combination of ingredients and doses in any of the products in the chart above hasn’t been subjected to clinical testing, each individual ingredient present in Innerbody Labs Sleep Support does have significant research support behind it. What’s more, a large share of that research for each ingredient was conducted in humans. Several OTC sleep aid companies are content to include some ingredients that boast only animal studies, but the best companies rely on human studies when building their formulas.

Innerbody Labs also includes some ingredients to safeguard against the side effects of its core formula. For example, zinc supplementation has been shown to cause copper depletion, so Sleep Support contains a modest dose of copper to offset any potential insufficiency.6 Similarly, vitamin D supplementation has been shown to cause calcium deposits in some individuals, but K2 supplementation can offset this and improve D metabolism overall,7 and that’s why Sleep Support also includes vitamin K2 as a complement to its vitamin D content. The only other product in this guide to contain zinc or vitamin D is Transparent Labs Sleep & Recover, which contains 15mg of zinc, but it has no copper.

Finally, Innerbody Labs subjects all batches of every product to rigorous third-party testing, including testing for potency, purity, and contaminants. You can also find the latest lab test results at the top of every product page, so you know the safety status of the product you’re purchasing. Transparent Labs is the only other company in the chart above to offer such detail on its testing.

Cost

For what it contains, Sleep Support offers incredible value, but we try to confine our appreciation of the cost criterion to the actual cost involved in starting and continuing to take a given supplement. To that end, there are numerous less expensive options than Sleep Support, though it’s still far from the costliest option out there.

It’s important to remember that competitors around Sleep Support’s price point typically have inferior formulas. For example, of Qualia Night’s 25 ingredients, only a small handful are dosed in line with successful human sleep research, while others (like the 50mg of magnesium or the 50mg of L-theanine) appear at doses too low to be effective or simply unproven in human trials. And that product is more expensive than Sleep Support.

If saving money is critical for your sleep journey, and you want something that offers a melatonin-free formula like Sleep Support, the next best thing out there is likely Recess Mood Powder. That drink mix delivers a good dose of magnesium alongside L-theanine and a botanical blend that our testers found positively influenced sleep after a first dose. It’s less expensive than Innerbody Labs Sleep Support by about $0.50 per serving, but it has far fewer ingredients overall. It might be a good place for the budget-conscious to start, and if or when it proves too light in its effects, users could potentially graduate up to Sleep Support.

Convenience

To measure convenience among sleep aids and other supplements, we look to things like capsule counts and regimens, as well as practical aspects of the customer experience like website design, shipping logistics, and support. Innerbody Labs Sleep Support scores relatively highly for convenience because it delivers its ingredients in a modest three-capsule dose that you take shortly before bed. By comparison, Qualia and Transparent Labs both need four capsules to deliver what are, arguably, inferior formulas. Ritual does better with its Stress Relief supplement, requiring just one capsule, but that’s because it only contains three ingredients.

Innerbody Labs also has a streamlined interface for purchasing, free shipping throughout the U.S., and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Other companies offer slightly longer guarantees (like Swanson and Qualia, both of which have 100-day promises), but Innerbody Labs’ 30 days is right in line with the bulk of the field.

One last aspect of Sleep Support’s convenience also comes from its dosage, specifically that you don’t have to think about it. It contains no ingredients that could necessitate cycling, so there’s no math to do to figure out when you should or shouldn’t take it, and each bottle comes with a simple 30-day supply. By comparison, Qualia’s 28-day supply actually only contains 20 doses, as you’re meant to cycle it on and off. Happy Mammoth is similar, with a 24-dose bottle delivered for subscribers in 24-day intervals; that’s not a cycling thing, but it’s both inconvenient and more expensive over the course of a year to have your billing period constantly in flux.

Innerbody Labs Sleep Support is an over-the-counter sleep aid made up of botanicals, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other substances that have been shown to improve sleep outcomes in scientific research. There are 14 total active ingredients in Sleep Support. Of those, 12 boast significant scientific support for sleep health, while the other two are present as safety measures to offset potential side effects of the formula’s zinc and vitamin D content.

Here’s a look at the ingredient bill:

• Magnesium (from bisglycinate): 127mg
• Relissa lemon balm extract: 400mg
• Lactium casein hydrolysate: 300mg
• L-Theanine: 200mg
• Shoden ashwagandha extract: 100mg
• Venetron rafuma leaf extract: 50mg
• Saffron extract (2% safranals): 30mg
• Astaxanthin 10%: 12mg
• Lycopene: 5mg
• Vitamin D3: 38mcg
• Vitamin B6: 1mg
• Vitamin K2: 110mcg
• Zinc: 17mg
• Copper: 0.21mg

The most important thing to know about the ingredients in Sleep Support is that each of the 12 ingredients included to directly improve sleep and stress is present at doses that match or safely exceed the doses used in successful human research. Each of them provides some benefit on its own, and together their multifaceted and occasionally synergistic effects are powerful.32

To gain a better understanding of how Sleep Support’s ingredients can improve sleep and reduce stress, it helps to take a quick look at some of the research Innerbody Labs relied on when creating its formula.

As you can see, Sleep Support consistently provides clinically relevant doses of its active ingredients, making it extremely likely that it will provide benefits to the majority of users. What’s more, some ingredients may actually have synergistic effects, as is the case with Lactium and L-theanine.32

Sleep Support should be able to help anyone looking to improve their sleep quality. Whether that means falling asleep easier, staying asleep longer, or accessing deeper sleep more regularly throughout the night, there are ingredients in the formula that can deliver on just about any sleep need.

That means it can help people who are struggling with sleep issues as readily as it can help biohackers trying to maximize the quality and restorative power of their sleep. It should even be able to help people looking to sleep better as part of a recovery regimen when training to build muscle, improve endurance, or otherwise get fit.

Sleep Support is also a great supplement for mitigating stress and lowering cortisol levels, even if you don't need help in the sleep department. And its lack of sedative and hypnotic ingredients means that you can take it for long-term stress support without worrying about it knocking you out.

Who might want to look elsewhere?

While there’s some evidence that the ingredients in Sleep Support can help alleviate insomnia, there may be more pressing underlying issues with a clinical insomnia case. If you’re dealing with significant insomnia, it’d be wiser to talk to your doctor about other interventions, such as prescription medications and talk therapy.

Sleep Support also relies heavily on your natural circadian rhythms, augmenting and improving the cycles in which your body naturally produces melatonin. Therefore, we can’t say whether it’d be helpful for night-shift workers looking for a daytime sleep aid. It may very well be effective for that, but there isn’t enough research into the daytime effects of these ingredients for us to conclude that it would improve daytime sleep.

Finally, if you’re suffering from sleep problems that you feel require immediate correction for your mental and physical health, and your doctor concurs, a more fast-acting solution like melatonin or a melatonin-containing complex might be in order. However, these are inferior long-term solutions, and you may want to consider transitioning to Sleep Support as time goes by.

Based on our research into each of the ingredients within Innerbody Labs Sleep Support, it should be safe for most people to take. But a few ingredients pose some risk beyond the typical GI side effects that many supplements can cause in new users. Below, we’ll look at a few of those known risks. We’ll leave out any ingredients whose research points toward a generally positive risk profile, like L-theanine (with research showing safety in excess of 50g/day) or Venetron (a safety review of which observed a threshold at which adverse effects might begin at 3.2g/day — more than 60 times the dose in Sleep Support).28 34

Beyond limiting the use of potentially dangerous ingredients, Innerbody Labs takes additional steps to ensure the safety of its products. Those include manufacturing in GMP-certified facilities and subjecting every batch of its products to third-party testing. The company even publishes the results of its testing on its product pages, so you can see how each batch performed in terms of purity, potency, and any potential microbial or heavy metal contamination.

Given these advantages, you can understand why we rank Sleep Support so highly in terms of safety. Still, we recommend talking to your doctor before adding this or any other supplement to your regimen.

Innerbody Labs offers its supplements as one-time purchases or on a subscription basis, with the option to subscribe at longer intervals than a month to save more money per bottle. Here’s what that looks like:

This pricing places Sleep Support among the more expensive OTC sleep aids on the market, but this supplement offers far more in the number of ingredients and the clinically relevant doses of those ingredients than anything else in its class.

Shipping is free on all orders from Innerbody Labs, which helps reduce the cost even further. However, the company doesn’t ship outside the U.S. at this time. Readers outside the U.S. might want to consider Ritual’s BioSeries Stress Relief instead, which ships to the U.K. and Canada, though not elsewhere in the world.

You’ll have 30 days under Innerbody Labs’ money-back guarantee to try Sleep Support. If you’re not satisfied at that time, you can get a full refund. This is a pretty common guarantee for the OTC sleep aid market, though it’s longer than the 14 days that Recess offers on its Mood Powder.

While Innerbody Labs offers what is likely the most comprehensive melatonin-free sleep supplement on the market, there’s no denying that there are circumstances in which another product might be better for you. In this section, we’ll explore those circumstances and make recommendations we think could help you instead of Sleep Support.