Sleep quality

Sleep is a fundamental homeostatic process, and disorders of sleep can greatly affect the quality of life.

Unlike sleep quantity, sleep quality refers to how well you sleep. For adults, good quality sleep means that you typically fall asleep in 30 minutes or less, sleep soundly through the night with no more than one awakening, and drift back to sleep within 20 minutes if you do wake up.

Shorter actigraphy-assessed sleep time and poorer subjective sleep quality were associated with increased carotid atherosclerosis among midlife women. Associations persisted adjusting for CVD risk factors, hot flashes, and estradiol ¹⁾.

Saffron supplementation as a treatment for improving sleep quality have promising clinical application as its great improvement on all efficacy outcomes and no serious adverse events occurred as the dose was increased. The dose of 100 mg saffron supplementation per day was proved to achieve excellent and more stable curative effect on improving sleep quality in a subgroup analysis. However, further investigation is necessary to confirm the efficacy and long-term safety of different doses of saffron for insomnia. ²⁾.