When you can’t sleep and you are in the US, you just pop to a pharmacy and grab yourself a bottle of melatonin sleeping tablets from the relevant aisle. Then, that night, you let one magical tablet dissolve under your tongue an hour before bed and then off you sleep you drift! However, in the UK, you are unable to buy melatonin sleeping tablets over the counter. Over here (which is where I am now based), you need a prescription to buy melatonin sleeping tablets. But, if, like me, you have sleeping problems, and you’ve run out of your melatonin supply that you bought over to the UK, what’s the best alternative sleeping tablets? In this post, I will share with you what I think are the best natural sleeping tablets I have found.
This year has only added to the stresses that make getting to sleep extremely hard. I don’t know about you, but I thought this pandemic would only last a couple of months. How wrong I was! I know that everyone is having such a hard time and my thoughts go out to each and every one of you lucky enough to be reading this!
One of the most difficult aspects for me (of course I know there are many other worse things happening out there, but this post is on the best sleeping tablets!), I have been trapped here and so have not been able to go back to the US to get more supplies of my melatonin sleeping tablets that I have come to rely on. As such, I have spent the past year searching for the best sleeping tablets to buy online to help with my depleting sleep.
The important thing for me was to find natural sleeping tablets – I did not want to be knocked out by a sleeping pill and wanted to find natural ingredients that work with my body to improve what it already does to help me sleep. This is why I love melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that occurs naturally in your body and that helps control your sleep patterns (in particular, your circadian rhythm). Many of us have a deficiency in melatonin which is why we may be more restless, have a harder time getting to sleep or may wake up earlier. Many external factors can influence melatonin levels such as:
- The light on your phone before bed (light in general)
- Caffeine intake throughout the day
- Age
- Alcohol
As such, taking melatonin helps you get to sleep, but you also need to be mindful of good sleep practices (getting to bed at a regular time, turning off the light on your phone etc.).
Given that I could not get melatonin sleeping tablets in the UK, I looked for natural sleeping tablets that contained a melatonin alternative. I realised that what you want to look for is anything that contains a 5-HTP equivalent since this helps the body produce serotonin which can be converted into melatonin. This is when I came across Paso’s Sleep Capsules. Their natural sleeping tablets contain a number of different ingredients specifically to help you drift off and have a better sleep, but there were three ingredients in particular that I was most interested in as they help promote melatonin production in the body:
- Griffonia Seed Extract rich in 5-HTP
- Montmorency Cherry
- L-Tryptophan
I have now been taking them for just over a month and they are the best sleeping tablets I have come across in the UK. As with all things these days, you can buy them online! Let me know what you think or if you have come across something better in the comments below.
