Melatonin is one of the most widely used sleep aids in existence. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world consume melatonin every single night to help them drift off faster, stay asleep for longer, and get deeper, better quality sleep.
However, some people are finding that melatonin alone isn’t enough. As a result, comprehensive sleep stacks are now becoming increasingly popular.
The market for pre-made, multi-ingredient sleep aids has exploded over the last couple of years.
Products like ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs are selling like wildfire.
In a society that is chronically sleep-deprived, sleep aids are big business.
But is this really the right way for things to go?
Are comprehensive sleep aids better than single sleep enhancers?
For example, is ZzzQuil better than melatonin?
Let’s take a look at the benefits of both ZzzQuil and melatonin and see whether one is better than the other for improving sleep.
Benefits of melatonin
As we’ve already covered in our in-depth article on using melatonin for sleep, this hormone is an absolutely phenomenal sleep aid.
Melatonin is the hormone which governs your natural sleep-wakeful cycle.
Your brain releases melatonin when it’s time to sleep. You start releasing it in large amounts at around 9pm. Melatonin levels spike between 11pm and 1am. After that, they slowly dissipate until they reach their bottom at around 7am.
Melatonin is what makes you feel sleepy.
It is what controls how deep your sleep is; higher levels of melatonin put you into a deeper sleep.
Now, supplementing with hormones doesn’t normally work. Our bodies aren’t designed to absorb hormones through the gut. As such, when we do take them orally, most of them are just destroyed.
Melatonin isn’t like that. Supplementing with melatonin is highly effective.
The benefits of supplementing with melatonin include:
- Reduced sleep latency
- Deeper, longer lasting sleep
Melatonin can also help you get over jet lag faster.
Benefits of ZzzQuil
If we’re asking whether melatonin supplements are better than ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs, then the first thing we need to point out is that ZzzQuil contains melatonin.
Each serving of ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs contains 2mg of melatonin.
It also contains a proprietary blend of 4 ingredients, dosed at 100mg in total. Because the proprietary blend is so small, and because the ingredients have such large active doses, it isn’t really worth considering the effects of the prop blend in our opinion.
This is why we do not recommend ZzzQuil to people looking to enhance their sleeping patterns. The ingredients are weak on the whole, and there just isn’t enough formula for the ingredients to be dosed properly anyway.
So really, the only thing in ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs that actually does anything is melatonin.
ZzzQuil is basically just a melatonin supplement with some herbal extracts thrown on top.
Which begs the question: should you use ZzzQuil or a melatonin supplement?
ZzzQuil or Melatonin? – Which is better?
We’ve just explained how ZzzQuil is essentially just a melatonin supplement with a few herbal extracts thrown on top – herbal extracts which can’t do anything because they aren’t dosed properly.
So should you use ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs or just a straight melatonin supplement?
Really, the answer is clear: just use melatonin!
There are several reasons why melatonin is better than ZzzQuil.
For starters, single ingredient melatonin supplements will almost always be cheaper than pre-made sleep aids like ZzzQuil. Since so much of the ZzzQuil formula is waste, you can save a lot of money by just buying a decent, generic melatonin supplement.
Then there’s the fact that ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs only contains 2mg of melatonin. If you want to just promote deeper sleep, then this is fine. But if you are trying to combat borderline insomnia or severe jet lag, you will probably need to use 5mg or more. So buying a melatonin supplement allows you to increase or decrease your melatonin dose freely without worrying about the other ingredients.
To sum up, we don’t see why anybody would buy ZzzQuil Pure Zzzs when they can just buy a straight melatonin supplement. It will save you a lot of money and gives you the freedom to make your own stack, decide your own dose, and more.