If hours of staring at your bedroom ceiling or slamming that snooze button are stacking up, it’s time to cement a healthy sleep routine. A solid night’s sleep is the framework for everything from brain function to post-workout muscle repair to hormonal balance, and not getting enough of it can sabotage your day before it starts. 

Along with habit adjustments like refraining from pre-sleep scrolling and easing off afternoon caffeine, investing in sleep-supportive tools can help break down the barriers between you and better zzz’s. The good news? Many effective options are HSA/FSA-eligible on the Stridekick Shop, so you can put your pre-tax dollars to good use! 

We consulted with a health expert to learn more about habits and tools that can help you sleep better, night after night. Read on for the details!

The Expert

• Dr. Raleigh Duncan, board-certified Doctor of Chiropractic, founder and CEO of Clearlight® Infrared Saunas and Wellness Solutions

Finding Your Failproof Sleep Routine

There’s never a bad time to prioritize sleep, but at this time of year, all of our bedtime routines deserve a little extra attention. “Sleep is on everyone’s mind these days, especially as we head into March when, starting on the 8th, daylight savings will begin and our sleep patterns will be tossed into some chaos once again,” says Dr. Duncan. “We’ve learned the hard way that if we don’t sleep well we cannot seem to live well the next day and our health will ultimately suffer.”

Before diving into the HSA/FSA-eligible goods for sleep support, let’s lay the groundwork for sleep success:

• Blue light beware: “I’ve found that those who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep benefit by creating a personal nighttime routine by banishing all electronic personal devices from the bedroom,” says Dr. Duncan. 
• So long, midnight snacking: Dr. Duncan suggests refraining from eating at least one hour before bedtime. A 2020 study from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that eating within three hours of bedtime is linked to an approximately 40% higher risk of waking up throughout the night.  
• Protecting your PM peace: “Designing your own sleep routine can create a place of refuge and sanctuary to lull you to sleep. It can become a place of peace and maybe even gratitude; a good way to end any day. Performing the same routine, every week will deepen your sleep practice in a profound way,” says Dr. Duncan. 

The Goods: Expert-Backed Sleep Tools

With help from Dr. Duncan, we gathered up a collection of sleep tools to consider—find the ones that best suit your routine and individual sleep struggles. 

Herbal Supplements and Tinctures

Dr. Duncan suggests herbal sleep gummies and tinctures to support sleep. While there are many, many, many supplement options available today, keep in mind that the FDA doesn’t approve supplements like it does drugs, so you’ll need to do some sleuthing of your own to confirm safety, purity, and effectiveness. Choose supplements that:

• Undergo third-party testing
• Have certifications to confirm quality, like NSF Certified or USP Verified
• Are free of unwanted additives
• Align with recommendations from your doctor (it’s ideal to have your doctor complete a full blood panel and review it with you before starting a new supplement)

With those basics in mind, let’s go over some of our favorite supplements and tinctures from the Stridekick Shop to help you doze off:

• I Sleep Soundly Tablets from Banyan Botanicals is a blend of Ayurvedic and traditional sleep herbs (including ashwagandha, valerian root, bhringaraj, passionflower, guduchi, chamomile, and skullcap) to promote a calmer nervous system and deeper sleep. 
• Yin Time is a sleep support tincture formulated by Chinese Medicine doctors based on the 2,000-plus-year-old Suan Zao Ren formula for grogginess-free sleep support. 
• FlexCBD’s Deep Sleep Gummies combine CBD, CBN, reishi mushroom, and a calibrated dose of melatonin to promote deep, restorative sleep. 

Wearables

It’s no secret that we’re big on wearables for step tracking and motivation. But they can make a big difference for sleep quality, too. 

“I’m seeing more sleep data wearables like Whoop and Oura that measure our sleep cycles so we can know in the morning how well we slept. All these devices measure the length of our slumber and the percentages of deep, light, and REM sleep to give us our sleep score the next morning,” says Dr. Duncan.

“Deep sleep, which normally arrives earlier in the night, is the holy grail of maintaining good health, so that’s really the one to watch for. REM shows the spaces where we dream during the night and usually falls in the latter part of the night.”

But it’s not all about sleep tracking—Dr. Duncan also appreciates wearables that support sleep with other forms of technology: “As we age (I’m a young 70-year-old who loves sleep gadgets), we tend to sleep less, so active wearables like Pulsetto, which stimulates the vagus nerve to help us fully relax before sleep, are very popular these days.”

Whoop, Oura, and Pulsetto are all available in our Shop, so you can jump on the wearable bandwagon for ongoing sleep support. 

Heat Therapy and Saunas

Heat is inherently relaxing, so if you’re looking to invest in your sleepytime routine, a sauna or sauna blanket might do the trick. 

As the founder of Clearlight, a company that designs and distributes indoor and outdoor infrared saunas, Dr. Duncan is passionate about their benefits: “They offer a holistic approach to improving sleep quality by reducing stress, increasing oxygen in the body, and producing melatonin naturally as the body cools down after a session. Infrared saunas relax sore muscles, ease pain, and promote mental well-being, leading to a deeper, more restorative sleep,” he says. 

And the research speaks for itself: In a 2019 Complementary Therapies in Medicine study, 83.5% of respondents reported sleep benefits after sauna use, and post-sauna recovery has been found to improve brain relaxation. 

If you’re ready to feel these sauna benefits for yourself, check out these picks from our Shop:

• Echelon’s Sauna Blanket uses low-EMF far-infrared technology for relaxation and detoxification, all in a compact, storable blanket. 
• HEALiX’s Sauna Blanket is a zippered sauna blanket with a zero-EMF, VOC-free construction and 10,000-strand carbon fiber heating for a soothing sauna experience from home. 
• Almost Heaven’s Hillsboro 2 Person Indoor Sauna is designed for installation in homes and apartments, so even if square footage is limited, you can get a full-blown sauna experience with a high-quality wood construction and electric heating. 

Red Light Therapy

Red light therapy is becoming a wellness mainstay, with benefits for recovery, skin health, and, of course, sleep. “It’s been shown to improve mood, enhance circadian rhythm, and help with sleep when used later in the day, within an hour or two prior to sleep,” says Dr. Duncan. “[It] can be used every night to help the body relax and sleep deeply without adverse effects, and it’s often best to use it for 15 to 20 minutes an hour or so before bedtime.”

Whether you’re looking for a mask, panel, bulb, or full-body system, you’ll find a huge collection of red light therapy devices in our Shop. Here are just a few of the standouts:

• BlockBlueLight’s Twilight Red Light Bulb is designed for bedtime—it emits pure red light (630nm) and eliminates 100% of blue and green light, effectively optimizing your space for sleep.  
• MitoADAPT’s 4.0 Red Light Therapy Panel Series offers a whopping eight wavelengths and 11 different modes to customize your red light sessions according to varying needs (including better sleep). 
• The Lumebox 2.0 is an FDA-cleared handheld device that emits 660nm red and 850nm near-infrared light to support your mood, muscles, and skin. 

Using Your HSA/FSA for Sleep Tools

With an HSA or FSA account, you may be able to use those pre-tax dollars for sleep tools, if you’ll use them for a specific diagnosis, like insomnia or sleep apnea. But since many of these tools fall into a wellness gray area, meaning they’re not automatically considered eligible by the IRS, you’ll need a Letter of Medical Necessity (LMN) from a doctor to prove the product’s validity for your condition. Thankfully, TrueMed makes it easy by offering LMNs through an online medical questionnaire, with no in-person visit required (because who has time for appointment waitlists, anyway?). 

So if sleep always seems to slip through your fingers, know that it’s never too late to invest in your bedtime routine—better zzzs are always within reach!