Protocol 04 · Sleep
The protocol we give away, because it works.
Light timing, temperature, a consistent wake time, and two supplements with real evidence behind them. No proprietary blend, no checkout, nothing to buy from us. Run it for four weeks before you spend money on anything stronger.
Free · self-directed · included with every tier, the $0 one included. Important safety information · Care standards
The signs
Seven hours in bed. Six hours of sleep. Maybe.
Awake at 3am for no reason you can name. Mornings that need two coffees to reach neutral. A lift log that stalled the same month the late scrolling started. Sleep is the lever under every other number on this site, and it is the one nobody gets prescribed.
The Readout
University of Chicago sleep-restriction study (JAMA, 2011): one week at five hours a night dropped daytime testosterone 10 to 15% in healthy young men. Small study, ten subjects, but the direction matches the rest of the literature.
Run the math the other way: fixing sleep is the one intervention on this site that raises the ceiling on every other protocol, costs nothing, and needs nobody's prescription. Which is why it comes first.
The stack
Five items. Two of them cost money.
The handful of things with real evidence for moving sleep, in priority order. Everything else sold under this category is margin.
Morning sunlight within 30 minutes of waking anchors the circadian clock and improves nighttime melatonin release. Free, and the biggest lever on this page. Dim the screens in the last two hours; blue blockers help if the phone is non-negotiable.
Core temperature has to drop for deep sleep to arrive. A bedroom at 65 to 68°F does most of it. A cooling mattress pad does the rest if your bedroom or your partner will not cooperate.
A consistent wake time, weekends included, beats any supplement on this page. Unglamorous. Still true.
300 to 400mg before bed. Improves subjective sleep quality in some studies, especially in men who run low on magnesium. The glycinate form, not oxide, which is cheaper and mostly passes through.
200 to 400mg in the evening. An anxiolytic that helps some men wind down without grogginess the next morning. If it does nothing for you at four weeks, drop it.
The supplements are commodity products, about $25 a month combined, available anywhere. We sell neither and take no cut. Tracking and temperature gear lives on the stack page, where the affiliate links are disclosed.
How it works
Four steps. You run this one yourself.
- 01 Baseline Two weeks of honest tracking before you change anything. A ring, a watch, or a notebook all work.
- 02 Light + temperature Morning sunlight inside 30 minutes of waking. Screens dimmed after dark. Bedroom at 65 to 68°F.
- 03 The two compounds Magnesium glycinate, 300 to 400mg before bed. L-theanine, 200 to 400mg in the evening. That is the entire stack.
- 04 Reassess Compare against your baseline at four weeks. Keep what moved the numbers, drop what did not.
Pricing
Free. Here's the fine print: there isn't any.
The whole protocol, on this page, no account required.
- Light, temperature, and timing protocol
- Both compounds, named, with doses
- The full sleep wiki, no paywall
- Nothing to buy from us
When sleep wasn't the whole story.
- Licensed provider in your state
- Full panel to start, about $280 at cost
- One provider-run protocol, start to finish
The Sleep Stack is informational, not medical advice, and supplements are not risk-free: check with a provider or pharmacist if you take medication, and the sleep wiki covers the interactions worth knowing about. Persistent poor sleep is worth a real workup, not a bigger supplement order.
Questions
The ones you'd actually ask.
Informational, not medical advice. If sleep doesn't move after the cheap fixes, a licensed provider and a full panel are the next step.
Why is this free?
Because most of it is behavior, and charging for behavior is the supplement-industry move this site exists to push against. The compounds are commodity supplements you can buy anywhere for about $25 a month combined. We'd rather you run this first, free, and find out whether your sleep was the lever all along.
Doesn't the wiki say to avoid anything called a 'sleep stack'?
It does, and the warning stands: the products sold under that name are proprietary blends, heavy on melatonin and filler, with the doses hidden. This one is two named compounds at stated doses, no blend, no markup, nothing to buy from us. We kept the name because it annoys the right people.
Do I need the gear?
No. The protocol works with a $0 budget: sunlight, a thermostat, a consistent alarm, and two commodity supplements. The tracking rings and cooling pads on the stack page make it easier to measure and easier to comply with, and those links are affiliate links, disclosed. The protocol does not depend on any of it.
What about melatonin?
Not in the stack. Most over-the-counter doses are 5 to 10 times what the research used, and timing matters more than dose. It has legitimate uses (shift work, jet lag), but as a nightly default it is the most over-sold compound in the aisle. The wiki covers when it earns a place.
What if four weeks of this changes nothing?
Then you've ruled out the cheap fixes, which is worth knowing, and the next move is data: a full panel and a licensed provider. Poor sleep can be a symptom of something worth testing for, not just a habit problem. That's what the assessment and the paid protocols are for.
Start
Four weeks. Then decide with data.
Run the stack against a two-week baseline and let the numbers vote. If they don't move, the assessment points you at what to test next. Deeper reading lives in the sleep wiki, mechanism and all.
Take the assessment