Sleep in a bottle: spray your way to a restful night

Hongkongers are terrible sleepers. More than 2.2 million of us suffer from insomnia, according to a recent study. If you had trouble falling asleep last night, or tossed and turned in the early hours, you can forget counting sheep. An American start-up may have finally come up with a solution: sleep in a bottle.

Sprayable Sleep is the world's first topical melatonin spray, created by the same Harvard dropouts who created Sprayable Energy, a topical caffeine spray. They've shipped tens of thousands of units of Sprayable Energy to more than 50 countries, and are hoping for the same success with their latest product.

You've probably heard of melatonin - it's an important hormone that regulates your sleep cycle. Known as the "vampire hormone", it is produced in darkness and tells your body when to sleep. It has been available in pill form in Hong Kong for 20 years to simulate this natural production. But, unlike melatonin pills, which first make their way through your digestive system, Sprayable Sleep enters the bloodstream directly through your skin.

This is important. Not only does topical application appear to be a more direct way of administering the supplement, it also means only the required amount of melatonin is delivered to our system.

Oral pills, on the other hand, must first make their way to the liver where most of it (about 90 per cent) is broken down. To accommodate, melatonin pills are most commonly found in dosages of between three to 10 milligrams.

Here's the catch: our bodies only produce 28.8 micrograms a day of melatonin, so some of these pills are providing more than 300 times the body's natural production. Studies have shown that too much melatonin can disrupt your circadian rhythm and, consequently, your sleep.

Sprayable Sleep, meanwhile, attempts to mimic the natural production of melatonin, releasing it gradually during the night.