A breathing pacer: inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight.
Noctua is a nightly formula and a companion app,
paced to the oldest sedative there is: your own breath.
Everything on this page moves at 4‑7‑8 — in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Even the sky. Scroll, and the evening will deepen with you.
Most sleep products promise to knock you out. We think that's the wrong verb. A body is not a light to be switched off; it is a tide that has to be allowed to go out. Noctua was formulated for the going out — the long, slow hour between the last notification and the first dream — and it refuses to hurry you.
The formula · by hour
One sachet, dissolved warm, forty minutes before bed. Then each ingredient clocks in at its own hour of the night.
22:00
The evening's first job is not sleep — it's silence. L‑theanine, the amino acid that makes tea calming rather than jittery, nudges the cortex toward alpha‑wave activity: the pattern of a mind that is awake but no longer arguing with itself. The inbox recedes. The ceiling becomes just a ceiling.
Shown to increase alpha-band EEG activity within 40 minutes of a 200 mg dose.*
23:00
Falling asleep is, physiologically, a matter of losing heat. Glycine widens the blood vessels in your hands and feet, letting your core temperature drop — the body's own signal that the day is over. Magnesium, bound to glycine so it doesn't quarrel with your stomach, loosens the muscles that have been holding your shoulders up since the morning meeting.
3 g glycine before bed is associated with shorter sleep latency and less daytime fatigue.*
03:00
Anyone can fall asleep. The hard part is 03:00 — the hour the night splits open and the rehearsals begin. Apigenin, the flavone that makes chamomile more than a folk remedy, binds the same receptors as the body's own calming signals, smoothing over the shallow wakings you'd otherwise remember as "a bad night." You sleep through the hour that used to own you.
Selected for GABA-receptor affinity and a long half-life that covers the second half of the night.*
*Noctua is a concept. These statements paraphrase published sleep research and have not been evaluated by any regulator, because the product — like the brand — is fictional.
The evidence · one night
A hypnogram is a night's architecture: descents into deep sleep early, long rooms of REM before dawn. This is the shape Noctua is built to protect — drawn below as you scroll.
The companion · Noctua Nights
Ten minutes of breath-paced dimming. The screen breathes at 4‑7‑8; you follow. No streaks, no scores, nothing to win. The only notification it will ever send is silence.
Wake to a single quiet page: last night's architecture, your deep-sleep minutes, and one sentence of advice. Never a graph before coffee unless you ask for it.
The app knows when you took your sachet and shifts your wind-down to meet the glycine descent — the forty-minute window when falling asleep is easiest.
The waitlist
Noctua opens in small, quiet cohorts — thirty nights of formula and the app together, $39 a month, cancel any morning. Leave an address. We write at most once a month, and never after 21:00 in your timezone.