Recovery: I needed sleep, but I needed help!

We all know it, but how often to do treat it the same as a training session?

Sleep is the best recovery tool we have, and in most cases, it should be easy to do; climb into bed and go to sleep at the end of the day, or have a cheeky little nap mid way though. Whilst we sleep, our body then does magical things to help us repair and rebuild.

Trying to give my body the best possible chance to recover and get me back to running, I have really been trying to prioritise my sleep, and ensure I get a good nights sleep, every night.

Currently living through this challenging time, with a lot of unknown, mental health for many of us, is a bigger struggle than before; job stress, anxiety, it all impacts our sleep. And recently, mine has really suffered. So I set about trying to find ways to fix it!

Yes, there is a lot of talk about sleep hygiene; disconnecting from tech, avoiding ‘blue light’ just before bed, maintaining a constant routine. But let’s face it, it’s not always that easy, and sometimes, we just need a little extra help.

There is a wealth of tips, techniques and products that claim to help improve your sleep. But what to choose?
I decided to test a few products out and see how they really helped me.

Disclaimer: Every product I mention here I purchased. Nothing was gifted or sponsored.
My views are entirely my own and based solely on my own personal experience with them.

Generally, most of these fall into a few categories, for instance:

  • Digital App or Devices
  • Environmental Sprays
  • Medications (both natural and pharmaceutical)
  • Nutritional Supplements

After asking my Facebook hive for recommendations, I chose 3 products to try:

  • Kalms Night Tablets
  • thisworks Deep Sleep Pillow Spray
  • PureSport CBD Oil

So let’s dive in!

Kalms Night One-A-Night Tablets

A herbal based product, and I thought, a nice natural way to get me to sleep.

Generally, I found that this did help me fall asleep, success! However, it would not entirely keep me asleep. I do struggle to stay asleep some nights, and if I wake, getting back to sleep was tough.

Whilst it did help me fall asleep, when I did sleep through through night, the next morning this did seem to make me feel a little groggy, and more often than not, I felt like I had a mild ‘hangover’ when I woke. This really made me struggle to get going the next day. Like a car on a cold morning, just couldn’t get moving.

I was certainly thankful for the sleep though!

thisworks Deep Sleep Pillow Spray

A spray, which they say, “…is an expert blend of Lavender, Vetivert and wild camomile oils. Spraying a mist onto your pillow or duvet aims to provide a relaxing sensual environment which helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. You will wake up looking and feeling refreshed.”

So I’ll be straight up on this one. It did absolutely nothing for me. Yes my bed and linen smelt lovely. But, I also can’t recall ever walking through a lavender field and wanting to lay down for a nap.

It feels more like a placebo effect to create a calm and nice environment to help you sleep. If it works for you, great, but this on it’s own didn’t help me fall asleep, let alone stay asleep.

For me, I was not a fan of this one, and now generally use it on clean linen to give it that extra fresh clean scent.

PureSport CBD Oil

I picked the 1000mg, Ashwagandha, Vitamin D & CBD Tincture product. Containing 10,000mg of Ashwagandha, 3000ug of Vitamin D and 1000mg of high-quality CBD. It’s not the cheapest of products in this review, but with a average dose of between 0.4 – 0.6ml, it works out that you get roughly around 50 doses out of it. (you’ll easily find a discount code from brand ambassadors)

This I have found to be the most helpful with my sleep. I was able to relax and fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and longer during the night. It did take a few nights trialling different dosages to find out what was best for my body.

Generally I woke up the next morning easily and was ready to face the day without any groggyness or struggle to get moving. In fact, I was out of bed and on my exercise mat far quicker!

I would also say that my recovery has improved since taking this, whether that is co-incidence or not, I’m unsure, but they do say that it helps the body recover too – though this could be due to the improved sleep.

That said, this is now my go-to product, and will have approx. 0.7 – 0.8ml before I go to bed which works well for me.

The Verdict?

It’ll be no surprise from reading to this point how I will rank these. But the clear winner for me, and my game changer, has been the PureSport CBD Oil.

So, Ranking from top to bottom:

  1. PureSport CBD Oil
  2. Kalms Night One-A-Night Tablets
  3. thisworks Deep Sleep Pillow Spray

So what am I doing now?

PureSport CBD oil has found its place in my nightly routine. If I’ve had a particularly stressful day, or my anxiety is up and I’m worried about falling asleep, then I will take the CBD oil plus a Kalms tablet. The tablet will help me fall asleep, and the CBD oil helps keep me relaxed once asleep.

This combination has worked, and on those occasions, the CBD oil allows me to wake up feeling less groggy as the tablets did on their own.

But generally, 0.8ml, under the tongue just before I climb into bed, seems to do the trick more often than not.

My next purchase from PureSport CBD will likely be one of the slightly stronger oils so I can take a small dose for a similar effect, and should last me longer too!

Meditation is something I have not tried this time round (in the past, I have really struggled to get in that zone without my mind wandering off) however, I do recommend a very gentle yoga flow before climbing into bed too. I’ve done this a few times, (when I had time) and it was a great wind down, and body felt great for it.

Sleep Well!

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