HOW WE DECIDE
Four rules to get in the jar.
Two more to earn a claim.
Formulas usually get built by asking what sells. This one was built by writing the rules first and letting them cut. They cut an ingredient we’d already chosen, and a dozen we wanted to include.
The rules come in two sets, because getting into a jar and getting a sentence on this site are different bars. Nobody funds a large independent trial of an unpatentable amino acid — a rule that says “trial or nothing” would hand our formulary to whoever paid for trials, mostly suppliers. So the trial requirement sits where it belongs: on the claim. What goes in is decided by mechanism, safety, and deliverability. What we say about it is informed by relevant research, with its findings and limitations explained in public.
WHAT GETS INTO THE JAR
A dose that actually reaches you
This is the rule that kills the most ingredients, and almost nobody applies it. A compound can be active in a dish at a concentration your bloodstream will never see. We do the arithmetic: measured human blood levels against the concentration the mechanism requires. If it misses by orders of magnitude, the mechanism is a story, not a reason.
Safe enough for unsupervised nightly use
No liver-injury signal, no serotonin-syndrome burden, no regulatory bans, nothing requiring bloodwork to take safely. You're buying this online without a clinician watching. Efficacy can rest on scientific rationale; safety cannot — this rule has no override.
A dose we can print — with its reason written down
If we can't print an ingredient's exact amount on the panel, it doesn't go in the jar. No proprietary blends, ever — a blend is a way of not telling you the dose. And every dose carries a written reason: where a human trial exists, the dose copies the trial. Where we formulate on mechanism alone, the reason is named for what it is — pharmacokinetic data, scaling from animal work, a traditional-use range — and labeled our best estimate, never “the studied dose.”
Funding disclosed, including when it's inconvenient
Several of our own ingredients rest on trials funded by the companies that sell them. We say so on the ingredient page. Our glycine evidence comes from researchers affiliated with an amino-acid manufacturer — we hold our own citations to the standard we'd apply to a competitor's.
WHAT WE MAY SAY ABOUT IT
A claim needs a human trial with a sleep-related primary endpoint
An ingredient can enter the jar on mechanistic science — it cannot earn a sentence about what it will do for you. Not a secondary outcome buried in a trial about something else, and not an animal study: if sleep wasn't what the researchers set out to measure, it supports no claim. An ingredient without that trial ships with its rationale printed and no promise attached.
In people like you, not patients
Healthy adults or self-reported poor sleepers. Trials run only in diagnosed patients can't support what we're allowed to say, and shouldn't — a result in people with a medical condition doesn't transfer to an ordinary bad week of sleep.
INSIDE THE FORMULA
A clear reason. Research you can read.
An ingredient’s role and the evidence for a particular outcome are different questions. We explain both, without turning a research assessment into an ingredient-quality score.
Why it’s included
The ingredient’s place in the formula, with its amount and form. A formulation rationale is not proof that a combination delivers a benefit.
What researchers found
The outcome studied, the people involved and the results—including mixed findings. Ingredient studies are not trials of a finished Dayspan formula.
What to know
Study size, funding, material or dose differences, and meaningful limitations stay alongside the finding, with a link to the source.
WHAT STAGE A PRODUCT IS IN DECIDES WHAT WE MAY SAY
Three stages. Three different permissions.
The rules above govern single ingredients. This ladder decides what we may say about the finished jar itself, and every Dayspan product carries its stage in public.
01
Prototype candidate
Is this worth formulating and testing?
Sampling, taste and solubility work, price testing, and a controlled pilot. No product page, no launch copy.
02
Launch candidate
Is this safe and coherent enough to sell with restrained copy?
Ingredient-led copy with the evidence and its limitations disclosed. No finished-product efficacy claims — only what each ingredient's own trials support.
03
Claim-ready formula
Can we say the finished product produces a specific benefit?
Explicit product claims like “improves X” — and only after a well-designed study of the commercial formula itself, in the intended population, at the intended dose, with a pre-specified endpoint.
Where Dayspan Glycine stands today: a launch candidate. Its actives are published with their evidence and limitations, and the finished combination has not been clinically tested — so nothing on this site calls it proven. When a study of the actual formula exists, this label changes. Not before.
THE CLAIMS WE WILL NEVER MAKE
Written down so you can hold us to them.
“Clinically proven formula”
“More deep sleep”
Receptor-mechanism claims
Comparisons to prescription drugs
Fake scarcity or fabricated proof
TAKE THE STANDARD WITH YOU
Read the label with better questions.
Six questions to help you find the amounts, research and context behind a supplement—including ours. This is a reading checklist, not a product-quality or safety score.
01Does the panel print the exact amount of every active ingredient?
Look for an individual amount beside each active, rather than only a total blend weight.
02Can you find the research behind the stated benefits?
Look for named sources and the specific outcomes studied. An ingredient’s role in a formula is different from evidence of a benefit.
03Does the research describe who took part?
Age, health status and other participant characteristics matter when interpreting a result.
04Can you compare the ingredient form and amount with the study?
A familiar ingredient name alone does not establish that the material or serving matches the research.
05Is the trial's funding disclosed anywhere you can find?
Funding and author affiliations are useful context; they do not automatically invalidate a result.
06Are important limitations and safety information easy to find?
Look for mixed findings, warnings and allergens. This checklist cannot establish that a product is safe or suitable for you.
0 of 6 answered.
This checklist does not score ingredients or brands. Your answers stay on this page and are not saved or sent.
THE TEST OF A STANDARD
A standard only counts when it costs you something.
Ours removed apigenin — an ingredient in nearly every competing sleep product, with real search demand, that costs about a penny and a half per serving. Keeping it would have been free money. The primary literature said the mechanism runs backwards and the dose can’t reach the target, so it went.
WHEN THE REPORT PUBLISHES
You’ve read the evidence. Decide when the report publishes.
Founding-list members receive the final label and the first batch’s lab report before the first purchase window. Free to join — no reservation, no charge.