After seeing a clip from the Joe Rogan experience talking about how CBD can improve your sleep, I decided I wanted to experiment with my own sleep to find out if the CBD claim was true but also to determine if it was possible to improve my overall sleep.

After all, sleep is very important, just as important as eating healthy and getting regular exercise. Getting a great night's sleep can boost your immune system, prevent stress related weight gain and can help prevent illnesses like heart disease and diabetes

By the end of this experiment, I combined everything I learned and wound up getting the best week of sleep I have had in nearly a decade. I’m talking about falling asleep faster, maximizing the time that I sleep and waking up feeling refreshed and clear minded.

So without further ado, let’s get to my experiment.

First I needed to establish a baseline for what my sleep currently looked like. I used my fitbit to track my sleep which gave me a ton of detailed information about what was happening during the night. So for the first week I didn’t change anything regarding my sleeping habits. Here is what I determined:

I slept an average of 7 hours and 43 minutes a night. During this time I was awake or tossing and turning an average of 40 minutes each night.

I was in REM sleep for an average of 1 hour and 44 minutes. The average person gets about 90 minutes of REM sleep a night and makes up about 20 to 25% of your sleep. For me it comprised 22.5% of my sleep.

During this week I averaged 3 hours and 42 minutes of light sleep. Light sleep makes up about 50 to 60% of your sleep. For me it was about 48% of my total sleep.

When it came to deep sleep I got an average of 1 hour and 36 minutes a night. Deep sleep made up nearly 21% of my total overall sleep.

Some other things to note my heart rate averaged 60.43 beats per minute and my average FitBit sleep score was 81.85.

Just for reference FitBit sleep scores are calculated by taking into account the duration of your sleep, how much deep and REM sleep you got, and your heart rate and restlessness.

Most people get a score between 72 and 83.

For the next week I decided I would just apply some lavender oil in my beard and on my chest. Lavender has been shown to increase your slow wave sleep. Of everything I tried in the experiment, I can confidently say that wearing lavender helped me to fall asleep much faster than I normally would.

With Lavender, I noticed improvements in nearly every category.

I was awake less during the night from tossing and turning by an average of 2 and a half minutes. I got 3 more minutes of REM sleep, and 8 more minutes of deep sleep. My average heart rate lowered to 59.4 beats per minute.

Week 3 was the week I decided to test just CBD only. Each night I would take 100 mg of CBD.

With CBD, I was awake over 5 minutes less per night from tossing and turning compared to my baseline. I averaged over 6 more minutes of REM sleep each night. . My average fitbit sleep score for the week increased to 83.14 despite again sleeping 10 minutes less each night compared to my baseline.

Week 4 I tested Melatonin only. Melatonin is something that is created naturally in the human body to help you fall asleep. It can also be taken as a supplement. For this experiment I took 5 mg each night.

Melatonin again provided me with some noticeable benefits. I was awake during the night tossing and turning 3 minutes less per night. My REM sleep rose dramatically to an average of 2 hours each night which accounted for 26.5% of my total sleep. My deep sleep was down slightly, my heart rate averaged 60 beats per minute and my Average FitBit sleep score was 82.6 for the week.

All three on their own were solid, but what if I combined all three? This is precisely what I did on week 5, which gave me the best week of sleep I have probably had in over a decade.

So here are the results of using the lavender oil, CBD and melatonin combined.

I was awake 13 minutes less per night when compared to my normal sleep

I got 26 more minutes per night of REM Sleep

My light sleep was down by an average of 36 minutes per night, which is great because this is the sleep where you are awoken easily, so these minutes went to other more important areas of sleep like REM and Deep sleep.

I got 17 more minutes of deep sleep per night on average, this is a valuable time that impacts many aspects of your overall health.
My heart rate lowered 2 beats per minute, which means I was more relaxed.
And my fitbit score which indicated my quality of sleep rose dramatically from 81.5 to 85.7.
So it turns out that the CBD claim was indeed true, but you can also increase its impact in combination with lavender oil and melatonin supplements. By the last week of the experiment I could noticeably tell I was falling asleep faster, having a better quality of sleep and was waking up feeling refreshed.