Sleepmaxxing: Explained by a Sleep Doctor
“Sleepmaxxing” promises deeper sleep, better recovery, and sharper performance through elaborate protocols to “optimize” sleep. But does sleep really need to be maxxed? And what really works?
From a sleep medicine perspective, the answers are nuanced. Some elements of sleepmaxxing align with sleep medicine practice and circadian science. Others are unnecessary, unsupported, and may even backfire.
I’ll break down what sleepmaxxing is, which parts are grounded in science, which parts deserve skepticism, and what I recommend as a sleep doctor if your goal is better sleep for long-term brain health.
What Is Sleepmaxxing?
Sleepmaxxing is a catch-all term for optimizing sleep using behavioral strategies, technology, and products.
Popularized through social media and “sleepfluencers,” sleepmaxxing practices include:
Strict bed and wake times
Morning sunlight or light box exposure
Evening blue-light avoidance or blocking with special glasses
Wearable sleep trackers and apps to view (and share) data
Smart mattresses, lamps, alarms, and other bedroom tech
Supplements like magnesium, glycine, melatonin, L-theanine
Mouth taping or nasal strips
Cold, dark, highly-controlled sleep environments
Highly structured pre-sleep routines
Food or drink aids: kiwi, tart cherry juice, processed "nootropic” drinks
Devices to “maxx” slow wave sleep
For some, unusual sleep schedules, like sleeping 1 out of every 3 hours.
At its best, sleepmaxxing reflects a growing recognition that sleep is foundational to health. At its worst, it turns sleep into a performance metric: something to control, perfect, or “win.”
What Sleep Science Does Support for Sleepmaxxing
Several principles commonly bundled into sleepmaxxing are well supported by research.
Consistent Sleep Timing
Regular bed and wake times (especially wake times) help reinforce strong circadian rhythms, which in turn sets the window for good sleep. So the best sleep quality is obtained if you keep a regular wake time and bedtime, with bonus downstream benefits on metabolic and cognitive health.
Need help figuring out a good bedtime and wake time? Read “How much sleep do I need?”
Light Exposure
Morning light is one of the strongest zeitgebers to reinforce for your circadian rhythm. Light from being outside or by a big bright window is best, so open the shades first thing in the morning! If it’s dark or dim, for whatever reason, you use a light box. Get at least a 5000 lux light, and use at arm’s length for about 30 minutes. Your eyes need to be open for light to send a message to your internal clock, but you shouldn’t look directly into the light (or sun).
Evening light, particularly bright and blue-ish short-wavelength light, has the opposite effect in the evening. Evening light delay melatonins release and delays sleep onset when you do go to bed. You don’t need to spend money on special glasses, screen blockers, etc. Just set an alarm to remind yourself to turn down the lights and stop looking at screens a couple hours before bedtime. Make sure you have your phones and other screens set to switch to night mode in the evening.
Sleep Environment Basics
Your bedroom should be cool (mid-60’s F), quiet, dark, and calming. You should use the bedroom for sleeping and romance only — that’s it! If you find that there are certain things that wake you up (light from outside for example), take measures to take care of them (eye mask or blackout shades).
Wind-Down Routines
A bedtime routine helps you transition from all your waking activities to a relaxed, sleepy state. It doesn’t have to be elaborate… consistency is the most important! If you haven’t yet, get a free Bedtime Blueprint to devise a routine that works for you.
Where Sleepmaxxing Goes Off Track
Some popular sleepmaxxing practices drift beyond the evidence and can be expensive, unnecessary, or sometimes worsen sleep.
Over-Tracking Sleep
Wearables can be useful for identifying patterns, or for accountability to get enough time to sleep, but they aren’t perfect. The sleep scores are estimates that may not reflect your true sleep physiology, and may change based on external factors (like a change in the algorithm) that has nothing to do with you.
More importantly, obsessively monitoring sleep scores can increase anxiety and paradoxically worsen sleep—a phenomenon known as orthosomnia. If sleep data makes you more stressed about sleep, it’s doing harm, not good.
Read: Should I use a sleep tracker?
Other downsides of wearables besides orthosomnia:
cost, especially if there is a subscription for an associated app;
privacy concerns: who can see your personal data?
losing the ability to feel and trust your own body as to how good your sleep was
Supplement Stacking & Sleepy Potions
Despite widespread promotion, evidence for most sleep supplements is limited or inconsistent. Melatonin in particular is often used at doses far exceeding what is physiologically necessary. Combining multiple supplements increases risks of drug interaction effects (yes, even for supplements!).
Additionally, in the US, supplements are not regulated like medications, so they may be contaminated and/or not contain the dose listed. A study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (Erland & Saxena 2017, fulltext) tested 31 different melatonin supplements and found that 26% were contaminated with serotonin, and 71% contained wrong doses (more than 10% different from what was on the label).
As for various juices and nootropic drinks or potions… if they are part of your wind-down bedtime routine and they don’t have known bad side effects, you can do an experiment. Keeping everything else the same, do 1 week each with or without the drink, and write down in the morning how your sleep was. (Or alternate nights.) If it really helps you, great! Just watch out for extra calories (especially juice) from sugars.
Extreme Optimization
Rigid rules, like never eating or drinking in the evening, eliminating all evening light, or panicking over minor schedule disruptions, can ramp up anxiety about sleep. Sleep does not need to be a perfect performance every night to get benefits to support brain and body health.
Life happens: not every day is going to be identical, and not every night’s sleep will be perfect. Aiming for a 100% score on a complex sleepmaxxing routine will inevitably lead to disappointment and ramp up anxiety. Some people “fall off the wagon” in extreme sleepmaxxing, and rebound by breaking all the rules.
Instead, consistently try for the basics of healthy sleep. This is much more powerful than extreme measures that can’t be sustained.
Ignoring Daytime Factors
Sleepmaxxing often overemphasizes nighttime routines, supplements, and gadgets while underestimating the effects of daytime factors:
Physical activity, or lack thereof. Exercise is really good for sleep! Read Part1, Part2, and Part3 of the series on Sleep and exercise.
Alcohol, yes, even a little bit
Stress levels
Caffeine timing. If you think caffeine doesn’t affect you because you can fall asleep even if you drink it at night… that actually means you aren’t getting enough high quality sleep. Stop by 3pm, or if you’re sensitive, even earlier.
Circadian regularity: meals, exercise, activities (like work) and other daily things act as zeitgebers for our circadian rhythms too, not just light. For a strong circadian rhythm for the best sleep, keep your daily schedule fairly consistent.
You can’t “hack” sleep at night if the rest of the day is misaligned.
Gadgets
Special sleep-enhancing headphones, goggles, smart alarm clocks, lamps that promise to optimize your circadian rhythm, smart beds (or not-so-smart beds, as in this case), smarter mattresses, white noise makers, pink noise makers, brown noise makers, vibrating pads, etc etc etc…
As you can imagine, I get a boatload of ads for these sorts of things… and I have yet to get any of them.
Again, you should do what you need to do for a cool, dark, quiet, and calm sleeping environment. This does not require fancy gadgets.
To my knowledge, there are no gadgets that have been tested in controlled trials in healthy populations and have been shown to improve objective sleep measures.
Similar to supplements or drinks, if there are no potential side effects and you are willing to shell out $$$ to be your own guinea pig, go ahead!
Sleep Doctor-approved sleepmaxxing tips
If you want the benefits of sleepmaxxing, focus on these sleep-doctor-approved sleep fundamentals:
1. Keep a consistent wake time
A consistent wake time, especially on weekends, is the most powerful way to reinforce your circadian rhythm, which in turn sets the stage for high quality sleep. At most, sleep in one hour later on non-work days.
Even if, or especially if, you didn’t go to bed until later, or you had trouble sleeping during the night, get out of bed on time.
2. Use light strategically
Get bright light in the morning and protect the evening hours from light including from screens. This matters more than any supplement.
3. Remove sleep wreckers before adding supplements: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, drugs, stress, nighttime dopamine hits
4. Keep a bedtime routine
5. Set a dark, quiet, cool, and calming sleep environment: Usually this means
blackout shades or an eye mask;
ear plugs or fan/filter if your bedroom is noisy;
setting the thermostat to mid-60’s at night
keeping the bedroom and bed clean and comfortable.
use the bedroom for sleeping and romance only
6. Exercise! Seriously, just do it: Part1, Part2, and Part3
7. See a sleep doctor if you think you might need to
Don’t use nasal strips or mouth tape to mask snoring without being checked for sleep apnea. Don’t mask insomnia with sedatives and alcohol. If you’re getting sufficient, regularly-timed sleep and still feel sleepy and tired during the day, this warrants a visit to the sleep doctor.
Sleep fundamentals are enough for the majority of people to get good sleep, so if they aren’t for you, ask a professional for help!
By professional, I mean an actual sleep physician… Not an influencer with no medical background, or a social media personality (even if they have a doctorate) peddling supplements or gadgets. Your sleep health is too valuable!
The Bottom Line
Sleepmaxxing gets one thing right: good sleep is valuable for brain health, healthspan, and quality of life. But when optimization turns into obsession, it undermines the very process it’s trying to improve. The best sleepmaxxing strategy is the long-game: consistent, sustainable habits will win across a lifetime.
