Get urgent support if sleep-related distress is making you feel unable to cope or unable to keep yourself safe.
Self-care guide
Insomnia
Repeated difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking earlier than intended despite adequate opportunity for sleep, especially when it affects daytime functioning.
Step 1 · First-line care
What to do first
Short-term sleep difficulty can be approached with consistent sleep-wake timing, reducing late caffeine and alcohol, a dark quiet sleep environment, and relaxation strategies. For chronic insomnia, multicomponent cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the preferred first-line treatment; sleep hygiene alone is not an adequate treatment. Herbal products are optional adjuncts and should not displace CBT-I or evaluation for another sleep disorder.
Step 2 · Safety
When to get medical help
Get medical help if talk with a healthcare professional if sleep-habit changes have not helped, insomnia has lasted for months, or poor sleep is making daily life hard to manage.
Extra caution: Pregnancy, breastfeeding, children and adolescents, older adults, liver disease, thyroid or autoimmune disease, use of sedating medicines, and possible sleep apnea materially change the safety and appropriateness of sleep supplements. Do not extrapolate adult extract trials across these groups.
Step 3 · Optional ingredient support
For relief now
These options have been reviewed for evidence and key safety concerns.
No reviewed options in this category yet.
For ongoing support
These options are better suited to regular or longer-term use than to quick symptom relief.
Ashwagandha
Optional short-term adjunct for adults with insomnia symptoms using a standardized ashwagandha root extract comparable to products studied for at least several weeks; not a replacement for cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.
How it is used: If considering ashwagandha for sleep, use a clearly labeled standardized root extract rather than translating trial doses into a homemade preparation. Persistent insomnia is better addressed with CBT-I, which has substantially stronger evidence and is recommended as first-line treatment.
What does this evidence mean?
Small randomized trials and meta-analyses suggest some standardized ashwagandha extracts can modestly improve sleep, with larger effects reported in adults who already have insomnia. The evidence base is still small, preparations vary, and this does not establish that ashwagandha tea or an arbitrary powder amount has the same effect.
Evidence may apply to one specific form of an ingredient — a capsule, extract, cream, or tea — and to a particular amount. Recipes and everyday foods may not match the form or amount that was studied.