The cortisol test at the longevity clinic. The breathwork protocol at dawn and the cold plunge after. The $40,000 retreat that promises cellular restoration.
All of this exists because the ultra-wealthy, like all human beings, find sleep elusive — and the wellness industry has constructed an extraordinary edifice of products, programmes, and philosophies to address the demand.
And yet the ultra-wealthy who sleep best are, almost universally, people who have none of this.
Or rather: people who have all of it and have discovered it is not the variable that matters.
What Actually Produces Good Sleep
The research on sleep is clearer than the wellness industry finds commercially convenient.
Sleep is regulated by two primary biological systems: the circadian rhythm, which is entrained by light exposure and consistent timing; and the sleep-wake homeostatic system, which builds sleep pressure through waking hours and releases it through sleep.
Both systems are disrupted by the same factors: inconsistent timing, artificial light exposure in the hours before sleep, the cortisol elevation that accompanies unresolved anxiety about the following day, and the specific cognitive activation pattern that accompanies reviewing financial, legal, or operational problems in the late evening.
No device tracks these factors into resolution. No protocol fixes them without addressing their root cause.
What the Ultra-Wealthy Who Sleep Well Have Actually Done
They have structured their lives so that the primary source of sleep disruption — unresolved anxiety about controllable future outcomes — has been systematically eliminated.
Not through relaxation techniques. Through structural decisions.
The legal structure that has been properly built so the succession question is not live at midnight. The relationship with the family office that operates with enough independence that the principal does not need to be the last decision in every chain. The personal security architecture that has been built with sufficient robustness that the principal does not need to assess their own exposure nightly.
These are not wellness decisions. They are governance decisions. And they produce sleep outcomes that no breathwork protocol can replicate.
The Irony
The ultra-wealthy who spend the most on wellness are frequently the ones who sleep worst.
Because the spending is a substitute for the structural change that would actually address the cause. The retreat addresses the symptom for a week. The life that produces the symptom is waiting on return.
What Hype Luxury Provides That Contributes to Sleep
This is not a joke.
The principal whose travel is managed with sufficient competence that they never wonder whether the aircraft will be there, whether the car will arrive, whether the hotel has been briefed correctly — this principal travels with a cognitive freedom that others who manage logistics imperfectly do not.
The anxiety that travel normally produces — the variables, the contingencies, the arrangements that might fail — is, in our client relationships, removed.
We are not selling wellness.
We are selling one less thing to worry about at midnight.
The best sleep supplement is a life that has been properly organised.
