Americans Are Exhausted. There’s a $3,000 Mattress Cover for That
The sleep support industry is a $300 million business, with growth coming from functional beverages and sleep powders, but some experts warn that these products may not be effective and can even be harmful.
Experts recommend making lifestyle changes, such as getting sunlight, eating a healthy diet, and limiting screen time, to improve sleep, rather than relying on expensive products and supplements.
There are seemingly no limits to what we will do to get a good night’s sleep.
Buy a pricey Oura Ring or Apple Watch for sleep tracking? Of course. Fill our medicine cabinets with sleeping pills, potions, gummies and elixirs? Obviously. An $89 celeb-approved eyelash-protecting silk sleep mask? Sure. Sound machine? That’s plebe stuff. Real sleepmaxxers prefer Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds, practically a steal at around $100. Soon you can get your hands on a Kimba, an “AI-powered scent therapy” machine, currently available for preorder; $299 will get you a bedside setup and six months of personalized scents. For big spenders, there’s a $3,000 body-temperature-regulating, manosphere-endorsed mattress cover. Some couples are willing to go even further, outfitting totally separate bedrooms. “There’s more awareness about sleep, which is great, but the pendulum has swung too far,” says Christine Spadola, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Social Work who focuses on sleep health.
People want to fall asleep more easily, sleep more hours and have higher-quality slumber. We’re increasingly realizing that sleeping well isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a need-to-have, making us less sick and longer-living (not to mention smarter, thinner and, as we all know, better-looking). Social media posts on sleep outnumber those on exercise by 3 to 1 and those on diet by 5 to 1, according to consumer researcher Rila Global Consulting. The wellness industry is notorious for shilling products that cost a lot of money and produce no benefit or even make health issues worse. And marketing to the sleep-deprived makes for particularly easy prey.
At the supermarket, sleep support is now a $300 million business, retail research company Spins says. While nearly all of that is sales of vitamins and supplements, growth is coming from so-called functional beverages, with popular ingredients like ashwagandha and L-theanine. While some evidence suggests these can help with sleep, efficacy in actual products where dosage isn’t always clear, and other additives could change how we react to them, is usually unproven. Nonetheless, sales have almost quadrupled in the past year. Online, there’s the THC-infused Sip Elixirs Dreamberry drink, endorsed by UFC fighter Kyle Daukaus; the More Labs Dream Well guava-flavored shot; and Atlaua’s recovery beverage, designed for athletes and also available in a $99 handcrafted ceramic bottle made for “luxury on-premise hospitality.” Spins breaks out sleep powders intended to be mixed with water into a category separate from beverages — sales of those have increased 54% in the past year. Many of these drinkable sleep aids contain magnesium, a common sleep supplement that has seen such explosive popularity it reached an estimated $1.9 billion in sales in 2025 in the US alone. Trade publication Nutrition Business Journal calls it a “hero ingredient.”
Those ubiquitous sleep trackers have gotten people so fixated on getting just the right amount of shuteye that a medical term has been coined for this type of condition: orthosomnia. Meghan Swidler, a Los Angeles-based angel investor in consumer health tech companies and a holistic health and detox coach, says she was an early adopter of the Oura Ring — and then, after a couple of years of obsessively scrutinizing all her metrics, became an early proponent of throwing it away. “I started to rely on the wearable to tell me how good I should feel,” she says. “I would wake up in the morning, and I would just immediately open my phone, load Oura and check how well I slept.” On days when she felt good but her Oura numbers looked subpar, she would “feel bad and guilty,” she says. “It became this paranoia.” Eventually, she just stopped wearing it, and now, she says, she doesn’t take any supplements or use any gadgets. This summer, she’s living in a camper van in Canada and the US with her boyfriend, turning her phone on airplane mode about an hour before bed, winding down and sleeping eight to nine hours uninterrupted
Despite all the sleep-promoting pills and technologies out there, 6 out of 10 American adults still don’t get the seven to nine hours of sleep the credible science says we need. Maybe we’re just not buying enough stuff. Or maybe the stuff is part of the problem. All those sleep drinks may have us waking up to run to the bathroom, and the caffeine in the sleep chocolate barsand cocoa powders is probably perking us up rather than making us drowsy.
The experts I spoke to largely warned against relying on the essentially unregulated supplement market. Even if certain ingredients, like melatonin, have some evidence behind them, they might actually not be present in the elixir you bought, or they may be in too small doses or too big ones. Even without experiencing results, people with means will buy something that promises a better night’s sleep. “When people are desperate, you do desperate things,” says branding consultant Fred Hart. This is true even though supplements come with some risk. Long-term use of melatonin, for example, is associated with a higher likelihood of heart failure, the American Heart Associationsaid last year. Prescription options like Ambien will almost certainly knock you out, but some research has found that users miss out on much of the “slow-wave activity” of deep sleep, the part of the night that leaves us waking up feeling refreshed and ready to go.
The experts I interviewed also didn’t say we need an Eight Sleep system, the aforementioned $3,000 mattress cover touted by Andrew Huberman and used by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Muskand Halle Berry. (The company also sells a $1,000 pillow cover and other accessories.) Unlike many of the sleep aids on the market, this one, which constantly changes its own temperature to adjust to the sleeper’s, does have some research behind it, and there are customers who absolutely swear by it.
Studies funded by the company show that people will sleep better with the exorbitantly priced cooling mattress cover (reminder: You still need a mattress to put it on, but luckily they’ll sell you one of those too, for around $2,000), but Eight Sleep hasn’t run any studies comparing its product with the more obvious, inexpensive solutions for lowering your body temperature, like turning up the air conditioning or peeling off some PJs.
At the end of sleep scientist Matthew Walker’s 2017 book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, he lists 12 changes we can make for better sleep. Walker is now a scientific adviser at Eight Sleep. Company co-founder Alexandra Zatarain says that if the book were written today, using the Eight Sleep system would be the 13th. People can choose to do as many as they’d like; few will do all. In other words, sleep-oriented shoppers can make a choice: Would I rather try changing my exercise schedule or spend thousands of dollars? For many, the latter might be the easier choice, but whether it’s the better one is unknown — it hasn’t been evaluated. “These things are not exclusive. They don’t replace each other,” Zatarain tells Bloomberg Businessweek. “I say all the time, you don’t have to buy our product.”
The basic requirements of good sleep are undisputed. During the day, get some sunlight, eat a healthy diet, limit caffeine and alcohol, and engage in at least some physical activity. At night, make sure you have a dark, quiet, cool place for your slumber. Then crank your efforts up a notch. Qanta Ahmed, an attending sleep specialist and associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Long Island School of Medicine, says she often refers patients for “behavioral sleep education,” which advises doing the things many of us already know to do but don’t: engaging in a regular sleep routine, “protecting your total sleep time” (usually, going to bed earlier) and, of course, eliminating — or at least significantly reducing — screen time in the hours before you call it a night. She notes that the trackers can be helpful for some people but warns against any that emit light.
These conditions — dark, quiet, cool — are relatively easy to achieve for many of us, and a range of low-cost ways can get you there if your bedroom isn’t naturally suited. Sleep masks, for instance, can cost just a few bucks. Sound machines can block out noise for a lot less money than fancy earbuds. But for those who struggle even after checking these boxes, changing behaviors becomes even more important — if harder to achieve. While it may be easier to order a $499 “vagus nerve stimulator” or sign up for a $70-per-month Silent Nights body patch subscription than to put your phone down, try the free options first. If you’re still having trouble, consult your doctor, not Amazon.
Read next: Unilever Bets Big on Gummies as Next Frontier in Wellness
