It isn't insomnia. It's cortisol.
Stop waking at 3am.
Cortisol spikes in the middle of the night because you went to bed dehydrated. Fix the dehydration and you remove the trigger.
Cadence Sleep Hydration · Tart cherry · 30 nights
★★★★★ 4.9 Read the reviews
A tart cherry drink mix taken an hour before bed. Electrolytes so your body holds water through the night, plus seven sleep ingredients that work on the stress response rather than sedating you.
Stops the trigger, not the symptom — electrolytes keep you hydrated overnight so your body stops reading thirst as a threat
Seven sleep ingredients at full dose — every milligram printed on the pack
Builds your own melatonin from tryptophan and B6 — no gummies, no crazy dreams, no morning fog
Works in the evening and over months — theanine tonight, ashwagandha across the weeks
Replaces the four bottles in the drawer — each of which only ever did one job
60 nights to judge it. Finish the box and still get a refund.
It isn't insomnia. It's cortisol.
Stop waking at 3am.
Cortisol spikes in the middle of the night because you went to bed dehydrated. Fix the dehydration and you remove the trigger.
Cadence Sleep Hydration · Tart cherry · 30 nights
★★★★★ 4.9 Read the reviews
A tart cherry drink mix taken an hour before bed. Electrolytes so your body holds water through the night, plus seven sleep ingredients that work on the stress response rather than sedating you.
Stops the trigger, not the symptom — electrolytes keep you hydrated overnight so your body stops reading thirst as a threat
Seven sleep ingredients at full dose — every milligram printed on the pack
Builds your own melatonin from tryptophan and B6 — no gummies, no crazy dreams, no morning fog
Works in the evening and over months — theanine tonight, ashwagandha across the weeks
Replaces the four bottles in the drawer — each of which only ever did one job
60 nights to judge it. Finish the box and still get a refund.
Formulated with Matt Jones, Sports Nutrition Advisor
Formulated with Matt Jones, Sports Nutrition Advisor
Before you spend anything.
Before you spend anything.
Four weeks of nights, logged.
Sleep-tracker exports from customers who agreed to share them.
Four weeks of nights, logged.
Sleep-tracker exports from customers who agreed to share them.
Every dose, printed.
Four jobs — hold the water, drop the temperature, quiet the stress response, build your own melatonin.
Sodium · Potassium · Magnesium
100 / 100 / 50mg
Refill the tank. Your body holds its water through the night instead of running down, so it never reads dehydration as a threat in the first place.
L-Glycine
1000mg
Drops your core temperature to your body's own sleep cue, which is what lets you fall into deep sleep rather than hovering above it.
L-Theanine
200mg
Turns the noise down in the evening. Works on the stress response the same night you take it.
L-Tryptophan
1000mg
With B6, your body builds its own melatonin naturally — instead of taking a synthetic dose from a gummy and waking up foggy.
Vitamin B6
14mg
Runs in the same lane as tryptophan. The pathway doesn't work properly without it.
Ashwagandha
100mg
The long game. Builds in your system over weeks to keep the stress response calmer across the whole day, not just at bedtime.
Valerian root 10:1
75mg
A concentrated extract, not teabag strength. Calms the wind-down alongside the ashwagandha.
Zinc bisglycinate
2mg
A well-absorbed chelated form.
That magnesium tablet in your drawer only ever did one of those jobs. This does all four, in one glass, at doses you can read off the pack.
Every dose, printed.
Four jobs — hold the water, drop the temperature, quiet the stress response, build your own melatonin.
Sodium · Potassium · Magnesium
100 / 100 / 50mg
Refill the tank. Your body holds its water through the night instead of running down, so it never reads dehydration as a threat in the first place.
L-Glycine
1000mg
Drops your core temperature to your body's own sleep cue, which is what lets you fall into deep sleep rather than hovering above it.
L-Theanine
200mg
Turns the noise down in the evening. Works on the stress response the same night you take it.
L-Tryptophan
1000mg
With B6, your body builds its own melatonin naturally — instead of taking a synthetic dose from a gummy and waking up foggy.
Vitamin B6
14mg
Runs in the same lane as tryptophan. The pathway doesn't work properly without it.
Ashwagandha
100mg
The long game. Builds in your system over weeks to keep the stress response calmer across the whole day, not just at bedtime.
Valerian root 10:1
75mg
A concentrated extract, not teabag strength. Calms the wind-down alongside the ashwagandha.
Zinc bisglycinate
2mg
A well-absorbed chelated form.
That magnesium tablet in your drawer only ever did one of those jobs. This does all four, in one glass, at doses you can read off the pack.
The mechanism
The 3am cortisol loop.
Cortisol isn't the enemy. It's an alarm. The problem is what keeps setting it off at one in the morning.
01
You go to bed behind
You lose close to a litre of water across a night — just breathing and sweating. If you started short, you finish the night shorter.
02
Your body reads it as a threat
Dehydration isn't a comfort problem to your nervous system. It's a danger signal. And a danger signal means cortisol.
03
Cortisol climbs hours too early
It's meant to bottom out around midnight and rise slowly towards morning. Under stress it starts climbing at one. By three it hits you — heart going, brain already running through tomorrow.
04
And the clean-up never happens
Your brain flushes waste during deep sleep, and that system runs on fluid. Dehydrated, it works at half speed — which is why you wake up more tired than when you went to bed, reach for coffee, spike cortisol again, and start the loop over.
10pm
12am
2am
4am
7am
High
Low
3am
you're awake
How it should run
Dehydrated and stressed
Illustrative shape of a nightly rhythm. Not measured values, and not a depiction of any individual.
Why melatonin never fixed it
Melatonin knocks you out faster. That's all it does. It has no effect on cortisol and none on the dehydration driving it — which is exactly why you still wake at three, and still feel terrible at seven.
The mechanism
The 3am cortisol loop.
Cortisol isn't the enemy. It's an alarm. The problem is what keeps setting it off at one in the morning.
01
You go to bed behind
You lose close to a litre of water across a night — just breathing and sweating. If you started short, you finish the night shorter.
02
Your body reads it as a threat
Dehydration isn't a comfort problem to your nervous system. It's a danger signal. And a danger signal means cortisol.
03
Cortisol climbs hours too early
It's meant to bottom out around midnight and rise slowly towards morning. Under stress it starts climbing at one. By three it hits you — heart going, brain already running through tomorrow.
04
And the clean-up never happens
Your brain flushes waste during deep sleep, and that system runs on fluid. Dehydrated, it works at half speed — which is why you wake up more tired than when you went to bed, reach for coffee, spike cortisol again, and start the loop over.
10pm
12am
2am
4am
7am
High
Low
3am
you're awake
How it should run
Dehydrated and stressed
Illustrative shape of a nightly rhythm. Not measured values, and not a depiction of any individual.
Why melatonin never fixed it
Melatonin knocks you out faster. That's all it does. It has no effect on cortisol and none on the dehydration driving it — which is exactly why you still wake at three, and still feel terrible at seven.
Forty seconds a night.
01
One sachet in a small glass of water
300–350ml, not a pint. Tart cherry. Cold, or warm like a tea.
02
An hour before bed
Same time each night. The timing matters more than the exact hour.
03
Put the other bottles away
This replaces three or four of them. Run them all at once and you'll never know what moved.
What happens, week by week.
Week 1
Asleep without the fight
The electrolytes go to work on the overnight dehydration straight away. Falling asleep stops being a negotiation.
Week 2
Three o'clock comes and goes
Glycine has dropped your core temperature, so you stay in deep sleep through the hour that used to wake you. The fog starts lifting.
Week 3
Awake just before the alarm
Ashwagandha has built up and holds the stress response down across the whole day — not only at bedtime.
Week 4
A month of deep sleep
No afternoon collapse. No naps. Your partner asks what changed.
Forty seconds a night.
01
One sachet in a small glass of water
300–350ml, not a pint. Tart cherry. Cold, or warm like a tea.
02
An hour before bed
Same time each night. The timing matters more than the exact hour.
03
Put the other bottles away
This replaces three or four of them. Run them all at once and you'll never know what moved.
What happens, week by week.
Week 1
Asleep without the fight
The electrolytes go to work on the overnight dehydration straight away. Falling asleep stops being a negotiation.
Week 2
Three o'clock comes and goes
Glycine has dropped your core temperature, so you stay in deep sleep through the hour that used to wake you. The fog starts lifting.
Week 3
Awake just before the alarm
Ashwagandha has built up and holds the stress response down across the whole day — not only at bedtime.
Week 4
A month of deep sleep
No afternoon collapse. No naps. Your partner asks what changed.
The evidence
Three mechanisms, three bodies of research.
Overnight fluid loss
An adult loses close to a litre across a night through respiration and insensible perspiration alone.
Weissenberg, Advances in Physiology Education (2005): “The main reason for weight loss during sleep is insensible water loss from airways and skin.”
Dehydration and the stress response
Fluid deficit is a physiological stressor, and the stress axis responds to it. This is the link the category ignores.
“Kashi et al., Journal of Applied Physiology (2025), found that adults with lower habitual fluid intake and suboptimal hydration showed greater cortisol reactivity to an acute psychosocial stress test.”
Glycine and core temperature
The most directly studied ingredient here — core body temperature drop and its effect on sleep onset and depth.
Bannai and Kawai, Journal of Pharmacological Sciences (2012), indexed in PubMed:
“The decline in the core body temperature might be a mechanism underlying glycine’s effect on sleep.”
The evidence
Three mechanisms, three bodies of research.
Overnight fluid loss
An adult loses close to a litre across a night through respiration and insensible perspiration alone.
Weissenberg, Advances in Physiology Education (2005): “The main reason for weight loss during sleep is insensible water loss from airways and skin.”
Dehydration and the stress response
Fluid deficit is a physiological stressor, and the stress axis responds to it. This is the link the category ignores.
“Kashi et al., Journal of Applied Physiology (2025), found that adults with lower habitual fluid intake and suboptimal hydration showed greater cortisol reactivity to an acute psychosocial stress test.”
Glycine and core temperature
The most directly studied ingredient here — core body temperature drop and its effect on sleep onset and depth.
Bannai and Kawai, Journal of Pharmacological Sciences (2012), indexed in PubMed:
“The decline in the core body temperature might be a mechanism underlying glycine’s effect on sleep.”
From the founder
Built because the alternative was sugar and marketing.
Ross Mackay spent years watching serious people reach for drinks designed decades ago on sugar and marketing rather than evidence — and settle, because nothing better existed.
Cadence exists to close that gap. The sleep sachet is the same idea pointed at the eight hours nobody was formulating for.
Ross Mackay
Founder, Cadence
From the founder
Built because the alternative was sugar and marketing.
Ross Mackay spent years watching serious people reach for drinks designed decades ago on sugar and marketing rather than evidence — and settle, because nothing better existed.
Cadence exists to close that gap. The sleep sachet is the same idea pointed at the eight hours nobody was formulating for.
Ross Mackay
Founder, Cadence
Reviews
4.7
★★★★★
★★★★★
"Tried everything from magnesium to other night drinks, so I wasn't holding out much hope. I still wake at 3am but I'm back to sleep instead of lying there for hours. Have it on its own with hot water or in a mug of rooibos. I wake up tired but not the zombie I was before, no more falling asleep during the day."
Clare L. Verified buyer
★★★★★
"I make these up with hot water as my bedtime drink, lovely cherry, not sickly at all. I fall asleep easier, stay asleep, and the night cramps and 3am wake-ups are gone. I'd tried magnesium tablets, but I'm far more consistent with the sachets because it feels like a proper routine I look forward to."
Aileen W. Verified buyer
★★★★☆
"Since using the sachets I hardly wake in the middle of the night anymore. I wake up feeling refreshed, fully focused and have much more energy than before. A bit too sweet a taste for me, but still worth it."
Gemma G. Verified buyer
Reviews
4.7
★★★★★
★★★★★
"Tried everything from magnesium to other night drinks, so I wasn't holding out much hope. I still wake at 3am but I'm back to sleep instead of lying there for hours. Have it on its own with hot water or in a mug of rooibos. I wake up tired but not the zombie I was before, no more falling asleep during the day."
Clare L. Verified buyer
★★★★★
"I make these up with hot water as my bedtime drink, lovely cherry, not sickly at all. I fall asleep easier, stay asleep, and the night cramps and 3am wake-ups are gone. I'd tried magnesium tablets, but I'm far more consistent with the sachets because it feels like a proper routine I look forward to."
Aileen W. Verified buyer
★★★★☆
"Since using the sachets I hardly wake in the middle of the night anymore. I wake up feeling refreshed, fully focused and have much more energy than before. A bit too sweet a taste for me, but still worth it."
Gemma G. Verified buyer
Frequently asked
Frequently asked
Sixty nights. Empty box still counts.
The full effect builds across about a month, so we made the window twice that. There's no version of a fair trial that runs out of time.
Use all thirty sachets. If you're still awake at three, email us and we'll refund it — no return shipping, no form, nobody asking you to justify it.
Sixty nights. Empty box still counts.
The full effect builds across about a month, so we made the window twice that. There's no version of a fair trial that runs out of time.
Use all thirty sachets. If you're still awake at three, email us and we'll refund it — no return shipping, no form, nobody asking you to justify it.
Food supplement. Not a substitute for a varied, balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Individual results vary. If you snore heavily or have been told you stop breathing in your sleep, speak to your GP — that can indicate sleep apnea and is worth ruling out properly.
Food supplement. Not a substitute for a varied, balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Individual results vary. If you snore heavily or have been told you stop breathing in your sleep, speak to your GP — that can indicate sleep apnea and is worth ruling out properly.