Eight ingredients.
No black box.

What it is

The smallest amino acid. Your body makes some on its own and uses it to build collagen and the antioxidant glutathione. It also works as a messenger in the brain and spinal cord.

What it does in your body

Glycine is one of the nervous system’s main calming messengers, especially in the brainstem and spinal cord. Before bed, its standout job is temperature. Animal research traced glycine’s effect to the brain’s master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, where it signals blood vessels near the skin to widen. More blood flow at the skin lets heat escape, so core body temperature drops, one of the body’s own cues that it’s time to sleep.

What the research shows

Human studies at 3 grams before bed reported better sleep quality. In one, people reached sleep and deep sleep sooner and slept more efficiently. In another, after a night of restricted sleep, glycine reduced next-day sleepiness and fatigue.

What it is

An essential mineral your body uses in more than 300 enzyme reactions, from energy production to nerve signaling. Many adults get less than the recommended amount from food. Magnesium glycinate is magnesium bound to glycine, a form that’s easy on the stomach.

What it does in your body

Magnesium works as a brake on nerve cells. It sits inside NMDA receptors, the main receptors for the excitatory messenger glutamate, and keeps them from firing too easily. It also supports the normal function of GABA-A receptors, which carry the brain’s calming signal. In muscle, magnesium balances calcium, which triggers contraction, so muscles can relax afterward.

What the research shows

Supplement studies, many in older adults, have reported improvements in sleep quality measures.

What it is

An amino acid found in high amounts in the brain, heart, eyes and muscles. Unlike most amino acids, it isn’t used to build protein. It works freely inside and around cells. Your body makes some, and meat and seafood supply more.

What it does in your body

Taurine binds directly to the nervous system’s two main calming receptor types: GABA-A receptors and glycine receptors. It also helps regulate how calcium moves in and out of nerve cells, which keeps their activity steady.

What the research shows

Research describes taurine’s direct action at GABA-A and glycine receptors and its role in steadying nerve-cell activity.

What it is

An amino acid from tea leaves that gives green tea its savory, rounded taste. 200 mg is about what you’d get from eight cups of green tea, without the caffeine.

What it does in your body

Theanine passes from the bloodstream into the brain. Its shape resembles glutamate, and it binds weakly to glutamate receptors, which tempers excitatory signaling. In EEG studies it increases alpha brain waves, the pattern of a relaxed but alert mind, and lab research shows it raises GABA levels. It relaxes without sedating, which is why people also pair it with coffee during the day.

What the research shows

In a four-week trial in healthy adults, 200 mg a day improved sleep quality scores, including time to fall asleep. A 2025 review and meta-analysis found improvements in how quickly people fell asleep, how they functioned the next day, and overall sleep quality.

What it is

The seed of the sour jujube tree, known in traditional Chinese practice as suan zao ren and used at bedtime for centuries. Dream Weaver’s extract is standardized to 2% jujubosides, so each scoop provides 15 mg.

What it does in your body

The seed’s main active compounds are saponins called jujubosides and flavonoids such as spinosin. In lab research, jujuboside A calmed glutamate-driven activity in the hippocampus and influenced the makeup of GABA-A receptors. Spinosin acts at serotonin 5-HT1A receptors, which help regulate the switch between waking and sleep.

What the research shows

Randomized human studies of ziziphus seed preparations reported improvements in subjective sleep measures.

What it is

An essential amino acid, meaning your body can’t make it and has to get it from food such as turkey, eggs, milk and seeds.

What it does in your body

Tryptophan is the raw material for serotonin. Your body converts it to 5-HTP, then to serotonin. At night, in darkness, the pineal gland converts serotonin into melatonin. Dream Weaver supplies tryptophan, not melatonin itself.

Taking an SSRI, MAOI or other medication that affects serotonin? Talk with your doctor before using Dream Weaver.

Why it’s paired with B6

Tryptophan is the only source of the serotonin your body makes. Dream Weaver pairs 200 mg with vitamin B6 so the pathway has both the building block and the cofactor it needs.

What it is

An extract of chamomile flowers concentrated to 98% apigenin, the flavonoid most responsible for chamomile tea’s bedtime reputation. One scoop provides 50 mg of apigenin, far more than a cup of chamomile tea.

What it does in your body

Apigenin binds to GABA-A receptors at a modulating site separate from where GABA itself attaches. That fine-tunes how strongly the receptor responds to the brain’s calming signal.

What the research shows

Researchers identified apigenin as the chamomile compound that binds this receptor site in 1995. Small human studies of chamomile extract have reported better sleep quality, and chamomile has been a bedtime staple for centuries.

What it is

A water-soluble vitamin. Dream Weaver uses pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (P5P), the active coenzyme form, so your body can use it directly without converting it first.

What it does in your body

B6 is a cofactor in more than 100 enzyme reactions, many of them in amino acid and neurotransmitter metabolism. Three matter most at night: turning 5-HTP into serotonin, turning glutamate into calming GABA, and making glycine from serine.

What the research shows

2 mg covers 118% of the Daily Value. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements describes B6’s role in making serotonin, GABA and other neurotransmitters.