Sleepmaxxing, a term that's amassed millions of views across TikTok, promises to transform everything from your productivity and mood to your lifespan and skin health. As the name suggests, it involves optimising what we all spend around a third of our lives doing: sleeping.
When I first heard about sleepmaxxing, I dismissed it as another wellness trend overcomplicating something we do without thinking, and then perimenopause reared its head and, well, desperation had me rethinking all things sleep. As someone who never really had an issue sleeping (I just liked a lot of it), I found the unpredictable night sweats that woke me up at all hours of the night, the inability to fall back asleep as easily as I once did, and the nighttime anxiety that saw me lying in bed for hours unable to sleep – all left me feeling exhausted come morning. But I didn’t only feel rough; I looked rough too.
