Alteril

7.8

Sleep latency

8.0/10

Sleep quality

7.5/10

Price

6.0/10

Safety

9.5/10

Positives

• Large dose of melatonin
• Plenty of tryptophan

Negatives

• Uses a proprietary blend
• Blend full of unproven, ineffective ingredients
• Melatonin is synthetic
• No magnesium
• No theanine

Alteril Review: Is it really the best sleep aid?

Alteril is one of the best-selling sleep aids in the world. Tens of thousands of people use Alteril every single night to get a better night’s sleep. It is particularly popular in the US, although it is also sold in the UK, Canada, and Australia.

So what does Alteril claim to do exactly?

According to the website, Alteril does the following:

1. Helps you fall asleep faster
2. Keeps you asleep for longer
3. Makes you wake up feeling refreshed

These are the standard benefits that all natural sleep aids claim to deliver. Alteril isn’t promising anything new here, and that’s fine. Sleep aids don’t need to reinvent the wheel – we just need them to help us get a better night’s sleep!

For most people, falling asleep faster and staying asleep longer would make a huge difference to their life. So if Alteril can deliver on these promises, it will be a great sleep aid for many of you.

The question is, does Alteril actually work? Is Alteril safe for long-term use? How good is Alteril compared to the best sleep aids on sale right now? Find out by reading our complete Alteril review below.

Alteril Ingredients

Here is the Alteril formula as it is shown on the box:

We’ll now go through these ingredients one by one, telling you what we think of them as sleep aids. We will discuss the scientific evidence backing up each ingredient, and whether we think it has a place in a premium sleep aid. Please post your questions in the comments section.

L-Tryptophan – 666mg

Tryptophan is a great natural sleep aid. It’s very encouraging to see that Alteril has gone with Tryptophan as one of its main ingredients. Tryptophan is an amino acid. It is the precursor to both 5-HTP and Serotonin. Serotonin is a ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter; it makes us feel comfortable, relaxed, calm, and happy. Many people take 5-HTP to promote serotonin. However, consuming large amounts of tryptophan is more effective.

Glycine – 50mg

We aren’t sure why Alteril contains glycine. It is the simplest amino acid, and it is highly prevalent in most foods. The average person will eat about 2g of glycine every single day from meat, fish, dairy, beans and nuts. Supplementing with an extra 50mg per day isn’t really going to do anything in our opinion.

Melatonin – 4mg

Melatonin is possibly the single best natural sleep aid in existence. Melatonin and sleep go hand in hand. It is the hormone which controls your sleeping patterns. It is produced in the pineal gland and released when it is time for you to sleep. High levels of melatonin keep you in a deep state of sleep, and then as melatonin levels drop, you become more awake. Supplementing with 2mg of melatonin per night will hasten the onset of sleep and keep you in a deep, restful state of sleep all night. The 4mg we get from Alteril is more than enough to see benefits right away.

GABA – DOSE UNKNOWN

GABA is a neurotransmitter. It is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in humans. Basically, that means it suppresses your CNS, reducing activity. To give you an idea of what that means in practice, alcohol has a big effect on your GABA receptors; activating these receptors makes you feel relaxed, drowsy, and less anxious.

Now, many people believe that supplementing with GABA produces these same effects. But we don’t buy it. GABA is not well absorbed in the gut at all. The GABA that is absorbed will mostly be taken up and used by the enteric nervous system. Any GABA that makes it to the brain will find it almost impossible to pass the blood-brain barrier. For all we know, the Alteril’s proprietary blend could be 99% GABA.

Skullcap herb extract – DOSE UNKNOWN

Skullcap herb is not a widely used. It is a member of the mint family, and it has been used in traditional medicine for centuries. It has mainly been used as a natural anxiolytic; it is said to reduce anxiety and improve mood. There is also evidence that it has long been used as a natural cure for insomnia. Indeed, a few studies have found that it is effective for reducing anxiety. But there’s not enough evidence showing improvements in sleep for us. Skullcap doesn’t belong in a premium sleep aid like Alteril.

Valerian root extract – DOSE UNKNOWN

Valerian root is a very common ingredient in pre-made sleep supplements today. In fact, we’d say the majority of sleep aids contain Valerian root. There is some reason for this; valerian root has a long history of use as a natural sleep enhancer. There are a few studies showing improved sleep quality from valerian supplementation, but the results are never very impressive, and valerian is often used alongside other substances. In any case, we don’t know if Alteril contains enough valerian to see results.

Chamomile extract – DOSE UNKNOWN

Chamomile is the classic pre-bed drink. People typically brew it into a tea and drink it to reduce anxiety, relax the mind, and help relax the body. While this definitely works for a lot of people, we think the main benefit of chamomile tea is that it is a delicious, warming, caffeine-free drink to have prior to bed. Studies have failed to find any benefits with regards to sleep from chamomile supplementation. There aren’t even any studies showing chamomile having a direct, independent effect on sleep quality. It really shouldn’t be in Alteril.

Hops strobile extract – DOSE UNKNOWN

Hops are found in an increasing number of natural sleep aids, and with good reason. There are dozens of studies showing that hops consumption reduces anxiety, soothes your body, and reduces muscle soreness. Hops are actually a mild sedative. Consuming about 100mg of hops prior to bed will reduce muscle twitching in the night and help get rid of mild aches and pains which might be keeping you awake. We don’t know how much we get from Alteril, but given that the prop blend is just 260mg, we doubt it’s 100mg.

Passionflower herb extract – DOSE UNKNOWN

Passionflower is used in hundreds of natural sleeping supplements, and we have absolutely no idea why. We have never seen a shred of evidence that passionflower supplementation improves sleep in any way whatsoever. The only studies showing benefits used other substances – known sleep aids – at the same time.

We’re pretty disappointed with the Alteril formula on the whole. Although Alteril contains some really good ingredients, and at good doses, the whole package is pretty poor by today’s standards.

If you want help falling asleep faster, staying asleep for longer, and maximizing deep sleep, there are better sleep aids on the market right now. Alteril’s price tag doesn’t reflect a product that is mostly just synthetic melatonin and Tryptophan.

Side Effects – Is Alteril safe?

Alteril looks like a safe sleep aid to us.

It doesn’t use any unusual ingredients. At least none that give us immediate cause for concern. Alteril’s ingredients are all commonly used in sleep aids today. They’re all natural, and none of them are known to cause side effects when used properly.

More importantly, all of the ingredients in Alteril have been thoroughly tested in clinical trials. None have ever been found to cause serious side effects, and none are thought to pose long-term health risks.

So Alteril is a safe sleep aid for the vast majority of people.

In Conclusion – Is Alteril a good sleep aid?

Alteril is one of the best-selling sleep aids in the world. However, we have no clue why this is the case. Alteril is not the best sleep aid on the market today; not even close. There are plenty of sleep supplements out right now which offer far better value for money and better results than Alteril.

The fact that it uses a proprietary blend is seriously disappointing. Only cheap scams use proprietary blends. The market has moved on and there’s no place for them anymore.

The big dose of melatonin is a major selling point.

So is the healthy serving of tryptophan.

But these two ingredients alone don’t make up for the flaws of this sleep aid.

The fact that the proprietary blend contains useless ingredients is the biggest turn off for us. Neither GABA nor Passionflower do anything for sleep, and the Alteril prop blend might be 99% GABA or Passionflower.

Other supplements, such as Performance Lab Sleep, use a higher quality, natural form of melatonin rather than the synthetic melatonin we get from Alteril.

If you want to enjoy the benefits of melatonin and tryptophan, we recommend checking out our current top rated sleep aid.We don’t see why anybody would use a stack with so much dead weight and so much waste.