Every other protocol works better when you sleep. This one fixes that.
Sleep affects your glucose, your hormones, your recovery, and your cardiovascular risk. We screen for disorders your doctor never checks, build a behavioral protocol in the right order, and validate the results with data. Not a list of tips you already know.
How this protocol works
This isn't just testing. It's a coached cycle designed to get you where you want to be.
What we measure
Insomnia Severity Index (ISI)
How bad is it, really?
A validated screening tool that separates 'I sleep poorly sometimes' from clinical insomnia. Your score determines whether you need behavioral coaching, a CBT-I referral, or immediate clinical evaluation.
Sleep apnea screening
Sleep apnea, caught early
A validated sleep apnea screening questionnaire that flags obstructive sleep apnea risk. If screening suggests elevated risk, we order a home sleep test promptly. Millions of people have undiagnosed sleep apnea and have no idea why they're tired.
Wearable sleep tracking
Your data, interpreted
Your wearable already tracks when you sleep. We pull the metrics that matter: midpoint consistency (are you sleeping at the same time each night?), sleep efficiency (time asleep vs. time in bed), and onset latency (how long it takes to fall asleep). Your team reads the trends over weeks and connects them to the plan.
Depression and anxiety screeners
Mood and sleep are connected
Validated depression and anxiety screens, because sleep problems and mood problems feed each other. We check which came first. Treating the wrong one is why some people never improve.
Chronotype (MEQ-5)
Morning person or night owl
Your biology has a preference. Fighting it makes every intervention harder. We use this to set your caffeine curfew and light exposure timing.
Medication + supplement review
What's helping and what's sabotaging
SSRIs, beta-blockers, corticosteroids, and stimulants all affect sleep. So do melatonin at the wrong dose, magnesium in the wrong form, and stimulant pre-workouts taken too late. If something you're taking is the root cause, no amount of behavioral work will fix it.
What’s different after this protocol
You know whether your sleep problem is behavioral, medical, or both. Not a guess. Real screening, weeks of tracked data.
If it’s behavioral, your team has already run the plan in the right order and you can see it in your own numbers. Consistency is tighter. You fall asleep faster. The morning fog lifts.
If it’s medical, you have a diagnosis. Sleep apnea caught by a home test. A CBT-I referral for clinical insomnia. A medication flagged as the culprit. Something your doctor can actually act on, instead of “try to relax more.”
We rescore at the end. Your ISI, your sleep efficiency, your onset latency, how consistent you are night to night. The numbers either moved or they didn’t.
What this protocol delivers
- Screening for insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs, depression, and anxiety, with clear next steps for each
- Your sleep timing across weeks, so you can see whether you’re consistent or all over the place
- A behavioral protocol run in a specific order: timing first, then light exposure, then caffeine, then stimulus control
- If needed: a CBT-I referral, home sleep test results, or a medication and supplement review with your physician
- Measured improvement in sleep efficiency, onset latency, and ISI, compared to your own baseline
- A maintenance plan so the gains stick once the protocol ends
- Integration notes: your sleep data feeds training timing in Physical Capacity and glucose patterns in Metabolic Health
”Sleep hygiene” is not a sleep program
You know the list. Dark room. Cool temperature. No screens before bed. No caffeine after 2 PM. You’ve read it a hundred times. It hasn’t fixed your sleep.
The problem isn’t that you don’t know the basics. The problem is that nobody has measured what’s actually going wrong. Is it your sleep timing? Your consistency night to night? An undiagnosed disorder? A medication side effect? Anxiety that kicks in the moment the lights go out?
Your doctor’s approach to sleep is “do you sleep okay?” followed by either “good” or a prescription. Your wearable tracks when you sleep, but nobody is reading the data, screening for disorders, or connecting it to a plan.
Sleep is the base layer for everything else. Glucose regulation, hormone levels, recovery from exercise, cardiovascular risk. Fixing it takes measuring the right things and intervening in the right order. Not a pamphlet.
Your team builds the protocol with you
Screening. Your team runs the full battery: insomnia severity, sleep apnea risk, restless legs, depression and anxiety screens, chronotype, and a medication and supplement review. Your wearable data starts syncing that day. If screening suggests elevated apnea risk, a home sleep test is ordered promptly so you don’t lose time waiting.
The behavioral hierarchy. There’s a specific order that matters. First: a fixed wake time, seven days a week, including weekends. Second: bright light within 30 minutes of waking and dim light two hours before bed. Third: a caffeine curfew adjusted to your chronotype. Fourth: stimulus control, which means the bed is for sleep only. These four interventions, done in this order, resolve roughly 80% of sleep issues.
Behavioral interventions first, not pills.
How the team adjusts and rescores once the hierarchy is running
Coached adjustment. Your team reviews your wearable data and screening results together. What’s working gets reinforced. What isn’t gets adjusted. If your ISI score reflects moderate insomnia, your team adds stimulus control techniques and cognitive tools for racing thoughts. If it reflects severe insomnia, a CBT-I referral goes out alongside continued coaching.
Rescore. ISI and sleep quality rescored. Every metric compared to your baseline. If a supplement is indicated after the behavioral protocol is in place, your team talks through options: melatonin at a physiological dose (far below the drugstore tablets) or magnesium glycinate. You leave with a maintenance plan.
Common questions
Is this protocol right for me?
A few patterns fit. You sleep seven or more hours but wake up feeling unrested, and the standard advice hasn't changed that. Your schedule drifts between weekdays and weekends and your energy is unpredictable. You suspect sleep apnea but your doctor has never screened you for it. Your wearable hands you a sleep score every morning and nobody has connected it to a plan. Or another protocol is stuck because sleep is the bottleneck.
How does this work?
Your team screens, measures, and builds a behavioral plan deployed in a specific order. Most people see measurable changes in sleep consistency within the first couple of weeks. The plan runs long enough for the retest to be meaningful.
Do I need a sleep study?
Maybe. We screen for obstructive sleep apnea risk at your first session. If screening suggests elevated risk, we order a home sleep test that you do in your own bed, not a lab. Behavioral coaching continues while we wait for results.
I already use a sleep tracker. Is this different?
Good. We use it. Your wearable collects weeks of timing data that we pull into your assessment: when you fall asleep, when you wake up, how consistent you are night to night. The difference is that we screen for things a wearable can't catch (apnea, insomnia severity, mood, medication conflicts), interpret your data alongside those results, and build a behavioral protocol from the full picture.
Will you prescribe sleep medication?
We start with behavioral interventions because they work better long-term. If a supplement is indicated after the behavioral protocol is in place, we use melatonin at a physiological dose (far below the drugstore tablets) or magnesium glycinate. If your insomnia is severe, we refer to CBT-I, which is more effective than medication for chronic insomnia.
What comes after this protocol?
Sleep affects everything, and fixing it tends to move progress in places that were stuck. Members whose glucose spikes track with poor sleep often move into Metabolic Health next. Sleep data feeds training timing in Physical Capacity. And sleep quality affects hormone levels, which makes Hormonal Health a natural next step if fatigue or low energy don't resolve once sleep does. Your team recommends based on your actual results.
What does this cost?
Included in Protocol membership: $695/mo, or $7,500/yr prepaid (save $840). The Foundation Assessment is the on-ramp: $1,500 standalone, included with annual membership.
From the Protocol blog
There's a reason you wake up tired. We find it and fix it.
Not another sleep hygiene article. A structured behavioral protocol, deployed in the right order, with screening for the things your doctor never checks. Book a discovery call and we'll tell you if Sleep Health is the right place to start.
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