Best Nighttime Muscle Recovery Supplement

When it comes to supplements to boost muscle growth, there’s no shortage of avenues you can take to help it along.

BCAAs, HMB, creatine, pre-workout blends—there are loads of things you can take pre-, post- and intra-workout.

But interestingly enough, there’s a lot of magic that happens when your head hits the pillow.

Sleep is one of the single most important things needed to boost muscle growth, and if you’re not getting a good night's sleep, your athletic performance won't be the only thing to suffer.

Despite the lack of awareness that happens during sleep, there’s actually a lot that goes on in your body concerning growth and repair.

So, if you’re looking to make improvements in pretty much any aspect of your life, but especially in terms of athletic performance and muscle growth, sleep should be on top of your list.

Key Takeaways

Not got time to read the full piece? No problem. Here are the highlights:

• Sleep is the Ultimate Recovery Tool. Quality sleep is essential for muscle growth, athletic performance, and overall well-being. It supports hormone release, immune health, and detoxification.
  • Top Nighttime Nutrients for Muscle Recovery L-Tryptophan: Promotes muscle protein synthesis and supports sleep by boosting serotonin and melatonin.
  • Magnesium + Zinc:Enhances deep sleep, regulates cortisol, and optimizes hormonal balance for recovery.
  • Montmorency Tart Cherry: Supplies natural melatonin for restorative sleep without morning grogginess, plus antioxidants for joint and muscle comfort.
• Protein Timing Matters Casein and whey proteins can aid overnight recovery, but avoid stimulant-laden blends or excessive intake close to bedtime to prevent sleep disruption.
• Why Choose Natural Over Synthetic Sleep Aids? Synthetic sleep aids are often over-dosed. This can cause grogginess, disrupt natural cycles, and lead to dependency. Performance Lab® Sleep offers a clean, natural alternative that enhances your body’s own sleep mechanisms. Promoting deep rest, muscle recovery, and morning readiness without the disadvantages.

Why Sleep Quality Is Vital For Your Performance

Sleep is non-negotiable, and if you’ve ever gone an extended period without it or had lots of poor-quality sleep, you can probably agree with that statement.

A lack of sleep is not only detrimental to your brain function but your physical performance, as well. Sleep has an impact on:

• Reaction time
• Motor function
• Motivation
• Attention and focus
• Stress management
• Muscle recovery
• Glucose metabolism
• Learning and memory
• Injury
• Weight management

A lack of sleep has also been shown to impede athletic performance in several ways, but most notably in recovery, decision making, and reaction times.

Did you know that sleep deprivation is comparable to intoxication in terms of reaction time impairment? For any athlete, that can be detrimental.

Sleep deprivation can also increase levels of cortisol—a catabolic hormone that can severely impair your ability to gain muscle, but also increases the likelihood of things like weight gain, blood sugar dysregulation, and more ⁽¹⁾.

So, aside from supplementing, sleep quality should be your #1 priority if you’re looking to maximize your athletic performance and prevent wasting your time in the gym.

What’s So Special About The Night?

As we said, there’s a lot that happens in your sleep that’s beneficial to your physical performance, athletic goals, and in general, your overall health and well-being. Getting a good night's rest helps with:

#1 - Hormone Release

This one is the biggie where muscle growth is concerned.

Growth hormone, one of the most critical contributors to muscle growth, makes a big appearance during sleep, especially in the early hours of the night.

This increase in GH is associated with the appearance of delta waves characteristic of slow-wave sleep and increased release of GH-releasing hormone (GHRH) in the hypothalamus ⁽²⁾.

Sleep is also the peak time of testosterone for men, while sleep fragmentation and obstructive sleep apnea have been shown to cause reduced testosterone levels in men ⁽³⁾.

As you probably know, testosterone is a hugely anabolic hormone.

#2 - Immune Support

Your immune system has a lot to do with how well you recover from physical activity, and as it turns out, restful sleep is critical to supporting a healthy immune system.

Cytokines like IL1, TNF, nerve growth factor (NGF), EGF, IL4, IL10, and other soluble and membrane-bound receptors all form part of the sleep biochemical regulatory network that modulates REM and NREM sleep ⁽⁴⁾.

Other pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL6 and TNF-α increase with prolonged sleep deprivation, which becomes detrimental to health and well-being.

#3 - Detoxification

An interesting point about sleep is that it helps to increase brain plasticity.

Specifically, this process allows your neurons to reorganize. During sleep, your brain’s glymphatic (waste clearance) system is working hard to rid the central nervous system of waste that has collected during the day.

It removes toxic by-products from your brain, which allows for effective functioning during the waking hours.

The Best Nighttime Supplements

If you want to take it a step further and maximize your performance, take these three supplements to boost protein production and sleep better.

Tryptophan

It may not seem like an essential nutrient for nighttime muscle growth, but tryptophan plays quite the role.

It is an amino acid required for protein production, but perhaps more importantly, tryptophan is a precursor for sleep-inducing hormones serotonin and melatonin.

And like we just mentioned, sleep quality is critical to proper muscle growth and recovery. When we can get into a deep sleep, we also maximize growth hormone release, which is essential for boosting muscle protein synthesis.

Keep in mind that tryptophan has a lot of competition for uptake in the brain when taken with other larger amino acids, like those found in whole-food proteins.

Tryptophan requires a transport protein to cross the blood-brain barrier, which other amino acids take up preferentially.

As such, taking tryptophan in something like Performance Lab® Sleep limits competition and boosts absorption rate to induce sleep and enhance protein synthesis.

Zinc + Magnesium

Want a natural relaxation and sleep aid? Takemagnesium. And when you combine it with zinc, you can boost your muscle growth at the same time.

Athletes are often deficient in both magnesium and zinc because of hard training sessions and specialized diets, which means optimal body function becomes compromised.

Taken before bed, magnesium has been shown to induce deep sleep and lower cortisol levels during the night.

It also appears to play a role in modulating GABA activity in the brain, which is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter that supports calmness and sleep.

On the other end of things, zinc plays a significant role in the production of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) ⁽⁵⁾.

The combination of magnesium and zinc is also necessary for regulating cortisol levels during sleep.

Now, cortisol isn’t inherently a negative thing when released during the night.

Still, an excessive release will not only wake you up from that deep sleep, but it has massive implications for other hormones in the body and creates imbalances that cause a host of other conditions like excessive weight gain and muscle wasting.

There is some talk that zinc and magnesium taken before bed may create a more optimal hormonal profile conducive to muscle growth in response to training, but there is limited evidence available to support this theory.

Natural Melatonin (CherryPURE)

When you think about sleep aids, your mind probably goes one of two ways: sleeping pills or melatonin.

The former is the traditional method used for things like insomnia, but the latter is the natural (and better) form.

While melatonin is great for inducing drowsiness by directly elevating levels of melatonin in your body, there are a couple of issues with the large synthetic doses you get from a 3, 5, or 10mg tablet.

1. Long-term use of synthetic melatonin can actually amplify insomnia. Melatonin receptors get overloaded by both endogenous production and exogenous supplementation of melatonin, and the brain eventually becomes desensitized. You stop responding to what you’re taking, and you end up with insomnia, but worse than before.
2. It can leave you feeling super groggy in the morning if you don’t get enough deep sleep. You know that feeling when no matter how many cups of coffee you drink or how much water you splash on your face, you can’t seem to wake up? Yeah, high dose melatonin will do that to you because it’s still circulating in your system the next day.

Don’t take this the wrong way because for acute usage, melatonin can be super helpful. That is, for things like jet lag, for example.

But where most people go wrong is dosing. A study from MIT revealed that an effective dose for someone struggling with insomnia is 0.3mg, nearly 1/10th of the dosage found in most commercially available melatonin supplements ⁽⁶⁾.

At that amount, is it any wonder why you feel groggy in the AM?

But let’s look at something a bit different: natural melatonin supplied by Montmorency tart cherry (MTC).

There’s ample evidence to suggest that melatonin from MTC may improve both sleep quality and sleep quantity ⁽⁷⁾. It helps to:

• Reduce grogginess and drowsiness throughout the day
• Promote feeling rested and restored upon waking
• Promote sound sleep without nighttime interruptions

But the benefits of tart cherry extend beyond just melatonin. Montmorency tart cherry also supplies a complex of potent-antioxidants and amino acids, including L-tryptophan, that aids sleep in other ways ^{(8, 9)}:

1. Provides joint comfort—flavonoids and anthocyanins, both antioxidants, reduce and soothe joint aches
2. Support serotonin production—L-tryptophan is the precursor to serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in feelings of calmness

Unlike synthetic melatonin, tart cherry benefits work alongside your body’s natural melatonin production to help you fall asleep and stay asleep the whole night.

Do Muscle-Building Protein Supplements Affect Sleep Quality?

Generally, muscle-building protein supplements, such as whey protein or casein protein powders, are safe and don't typically have a negative impact on sleep quality for most people.

However, it's good to keep in mind that several factors can influence how these supplements might affect your sleep quality. We'll start with the positives:

Positive Effects on Sleep Quality

Tryptophan Content (in Whey Protein): Whey protein contains tryptophan, the amino acid that helps the body produce serotonin and melatonin, which regulates sleep. Consuming whey before bed might actually support relaxation and improve sleep for some people.

Casein Protein for Overnight Recovery:Casein protein, a slow-digesting protein often taken before bed, provides a steady amino acid release throughout the night. This may also support muscle repair and recovery, without disrupting sleep.

Improved Recovery and Reduced Muscle Soreness: Muscle breakdown during exercise is a natural and essential part of building stronger muscles. However, getting enough protein helps balance this process by minimizing excessive breakdown and fueling muscle repair. This supports recovery, reduces post-workout soreness, and ensures your body is ready for future workouts—all while promoting optimal growth during rest.

Potential Negative Effects

Timing and Stimulants in Pre-Workout Proteins: Some protein supplements, particularly those marketed as pre-workout blends, may contain caffeine or other stimulants, which can disrupt sleep if taken too close to bedtime.

Digestive Discomfort: Consuming large amounts of protein right before bed can cause bloating, gas, or other digestive issues that make it harder to sleep, especially in people with lactose intolerance or sensitivity to certain protein powders.

Increased Metabolism and Energy: Protein digestion increases metabolic rate through the thermic effect of food (TEF). For some individuals, this boost in energy might make it harder to wind down at night.

Frequent Urination: High fluid intake with protein shakes might lead to nocturia (waking up to urinate), disrupting sleep.

While muscle-building protein supplements can support recovery and sleep quality for some, they may negatively affect others depending on individual factors. So relying on these alone for better sleep, may not be enough.

Best Supplement Options: The Performance Lab® Lineup

The Performance Lab® lineup offers everything you need to get the best sleep of your life and maximize muscle growth in the process.

Performance Lab® Sleep offers a combination of magnesium, L-tryptophan, lemon balm extract and natural low-dose melatonin derived from CherryPURE Montmorency Cherry.

With additional joint and muscle-soothing antioxidants, Performance Lab® Sleep promotes deep sleep better than any synthetic melatonin supplement by:

1. Helping to relax the nervous system, musculoskeletal system, and brain
2. Encouraging drowsiness by supporting natural melatonin and serotonin production
3. Helping to relax the muscles and reducing nighttime spasms
4. Naturally soothing sleep-disruptive joint aches and muscle stiffness
5. Stabilizing and resetting circadian rhythm
6. Helping you wake up in the morning rested, rejuvenated, clear-headed, and ready to perform at your body’s maximum capability

With the high-quality Performance Lab lineup, you can guarantee your muscle-building capabilities will be maximized day in and day out

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