James Dixon has long been an advocate for the restorative power of sleep. But can this patch really help you get a better night’s sleep? Find out in this Zleep review below…
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James Dixon
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Zleep are a wellness brand whose topical sleep patches have been gaining some traction of late. They claim that their patches can aid sleep – falling asleep faster, staying asleep, and waking up feeling far more refreshed.
All you need to do is simply stick on a patch, get to bed on time, and the formula released by Zleep will do the rest.
Sound too good to be true? Well, it probably is.
I came into this review with a healthy degree of skepticism based on a few factors. That skepticism remains – I have to question whether Zleep can do what it claims to do, whether the formula is workable, whether, in fact, it does much of anything at all.
Quick Verdict: Zleep Sleep Patches
Zleep doesn’t work. Though the ingredients list is solid at first glance, there are three major problems with it that make the whole lot almost entirely ineffective.
Firstly, the list is a bit lean, and worse, chronically under-dosed – most at something like 10% of their effective dosing. Secondly, it’s a topical patch, most of whose ingredients cannot be absorbed topically.
So no matter how good the ingredients and dosages, they still wouldn’t make it into your system to do what they are meant to do. I find it hard to believe that Zleep are unaware of these facts.
We prefer oral supplementation that doses melatonin sensibly and effectively – for which Performance Lab Sleep is an ideal choice.
About Zleep
Zleep patches are simply topical supplements designed to help you sleep. They claim to induce sleep and allow for deeper sleep, keeping you fast asleep through the night. The ingredients included in Zleep’s formula are released slowly through the night, entering the skin, then into the blood stream, before dwindling as you near awakening.
A lot of their theory revolves around melatonin, a chemical produced naturally within the pineal gland in your brain.
Melatonin is released when it’s time to switch off and go to sleep. It gives you that drowsy, sleepy feeling you should be experiencing in the run up to bed time.
Melatonin supplementation has been shown to be incredibly effective for maintaining and assisting a good sleep-wake schedule.
There are additional ingredients in the formula, of course. These should, in theory, interact with key neurotransmitters in the brain, specifically those that relate to mood and anxiety.
They should raise the levels of these neurotransmitters, meaning a reduction in stress, a greater sense of calmness and wellbeing, and an overall improved mood.
All told, if these claims are correct, you would indeed expect to see an improvement to your sleeping patterns and quality of sleep.
For those struggling with sleep conditions like insomnia, or even those who simply struggle to wake up feeling refreshed, this can be a godsend – it can be a real temptation.
However, as we will soon see, this temptation is probably best avoided. The above is all the manufacturer’s theory. In reality, there are several large holes in their reasoning.
How Zleep Works
If it can be said that Zleep works (and I’m skeptical that it can – it certainly didn’t for me, see below) as a topical injection of various ingredients related to sleep and mood that should allow you to get to sleep and stay asleep far more ably, before waking up with a far clearer head.
The ingredients are sent straight into the bloodstream through skin pores via transdermal – again, I’m unconvinced.
Everything is time released, meaning that they ease off in time for you to wake up, which is admittedly quite clever.
As I mentioned above, a lot of this revolves around melatonin, supplementation of which has been proven to improve sleep quality.
This makes a good amount of sense. Melatonin is the main hormone that puts you to sleep, keeps you there, and regulates your sleep-wake cycle.
As we’ll see below, there are plenty of additional ingredients, like l-theanine and ashwagandha, which are known to raise levels of key neurotransmitters like GABA, which among other things help to reduce symptoms of anxiety.
Again, if the theory checks out, this is a very good idea. Stress and anxiety are amongst the leading causes of insomnia and other sleep-related issues. Combatting them is good sense if you’re looking to improve sleep quality.
If this all worked as it’s supposed to, we would have a fantastic product here, capable of both inspiring improved sleep and reducing the barriers to sleep simultaneously.
Zleep Ingredients
There is nothing too much wrong with the ingredients list. It’s a pretty stellar cast of sleep-improving compounds. If they were consumed using an appropriate delivery method, in good doses, you would indeed expect to see some improvements both to sleep quality and stress and anxiety levels when using Zleep.
Melatonin is a must-have and a great foundation for the formula. It is perhaps the best-studied ingredient for sleep supplementation. It has been shown multiple times in good-quality studies to help synchronize circadian rhythms and reduce time to sleep, whilst also increasing quality and duration of sleep.
You’ll also commonly see chamomile, our next ingredient, in plenty of sleep products. Indeed, chamomile tea is one of the oldest, most potent sleep remedies going.
It’s one of my go-to methods for improving sleep when I’m going through periods of stress. There is plenty of clinical data backing up its efficacy in aiding sleep quality and mitigating the symptoms of stress and anxiety.
The herbs ashwagandha and valerian root are also solid. Both are widely used in sleep supplements across the industry. Both have been clinically proven to improve sleep quality.
Zleep offers a surprisingly generous helping of magnesium, which has proven benefits for sleep, and which I suspect brings you most of the meagre benefits offered up by Zleep.
You also get L-Theanine, which is an amino acid that may help lower stress levels and improve the duration and quality of your sleep.
This is a bit of a lean list, but it’s well-thought out. Or, at least, what is included is well thought-out. Take a well-dosed oral supplement with these ingredients and you’ll be onto a winner.
Unfortunately, this is where things start to fall apart.
Firstly, the dosing is nowhere near sufficient. The supplement is unfit for purpose because it delivers such meagre portions of each ingredient.
For example, the effective dose for ashwagandha to improve sleep quality is upwards of 100 mg according to most research. The same is true of chamomile – you need over 100 mg of it. For valerian root, you need a whopping 300-600 mg per day to see any benefits.
These herbal ingredients are all grouped together into a blend called the ‘Dream Patch Complex’. Basically, you can’t see how much of each is included. What you can see is that the ‘Dream Patch Complex’ contains six ingredients and comes in at a total dose of just 65 mg per patch. That means an average of around 11 mg per ingredient.
This is one of the most stingily dosed supplements I think I’ve ever reviewed. Based on dosing alone, Zleep will not work. It is rendered pretty much pointless.
Then there is the delivery mechanism. Topical application just doesn’t work for several of the key ingredients. You cannot absorb them through the skin. So, even if they were dosed well, which they absolutely are not, you wouldn’t be getting any of it into your system.
Magnesium is eminently absorbable through the skin, with plenty of clinical evidence to prove it. After all, Epsom salts, which have been used medicall