Chilipad Review After Using It Awhile

Chilipad review from me to you. It did cost some money, but I got a decent discount clicking on someone’s affiliate link at one of those sleep-specific blogs.

Update 6/6/2023:

I’m still waiting until the bed bugs are definitely dead. Unfortunately, that could take another few months (although I’m 90% sure they’re gone now). Anyways, I’m looking forward to getting my Chilipad up and running again. I’ve had it for about 2.5 years now and it’s always worked smoothly.

Update 8/25/2022:

I ended up getting bedbugs (they suck) so I think that will throw a wrench in using my Chilipad. The main reason is because the pad needs to be washed on cold water settings only and you pretty much need to nuke all your stuff to kill bed bugs and their eggs. I’ll definitely try and think of alternative solutions here, like isolating the Chilipad and its tube for long enough so all the bugs starve to death.

Since about late 2018, I’ve had some sleep issues. The main thing has been that I wake up and I’m really hot. It might be because of ramping up how many healthy fats I eat, but, it’s tough to say.

One thing I do know is that I’ve had the Chilipad on my radar since early 2018 when I read about it in Tim Ferriss’s book Tools for Titans.

At some point I think I was also trying to sell to their company when I was a Sales Development Representative. Either them or their competitor BedJet.

I did sign up for text notifications and didn’t get those for some reason. When the package arrived, I was taking a lap around the house to get some exercise while working from home. I happened to look outside and noticed that it was sitting on our doorstep and ready for my Chilipad review.

Setting it up was pretty easy, in the instructions (double check on this) it didn’t mention needing to press the power button twice to turn it off so I had to mess with it a bit to figure that out. Not a huge deal, but just know that you can’t wake up in the morning, press the power button once on the remote, and go about your day. That won’t work.

Chilipad Review Night 1

The first night I used the Chilipad was Halloween, October 31st 2020. I did sleep really well with it set at 59 degrees. At the same time, the real test would come on the second night when I was going to bed at a normal time (not exhausted at 2:30 am like on Halloween). I play hockey until about 9 pm on Sundays so I’m usually also pretty warm from all the cardio.

The remote control and the machine have a calming blue display the turns off pretty fast after you press any of the buttons.

Night 2

Slept pretty well all night, woke up a little early because of being dehydrated. I played hockey on Sunday night and ate a pretty big steak for dinner so I saw that coming. No knocks on the Chilipad review here.

Night 3

Slept badly, blaming inflammation from eating way too much fiber.

Night 4

Slept badly, still blaming inflammation from too much fiber. I’m convinced that my diet governs 90% of the quality of my sleep. It helped that the bed was cool, no question about it. But I woke up at 3:15 am and didn’t go back to sleep until about 5 since I ate a 150 calorie Rice Krispy bar. Carbs always put me back to sleep, this time they had to be fiber-less or have very little fiber.

Night 5

On the 5th night, I actually couldn’t go to sleep at all. I ended up bugging one of my roommates for a Melatonin at about 12:45 (I usually try to be asleep at 10). The reason is obvious, I drank a big cup of coffee at about 10 am that day, the first one I’d had in a month or two. My body wasn’t ready for processing that much caffeine.

The Chilipad was working fine, too. I learned a good lesson: it’s not a silver bullet against the same stuff that’s always kept me up at night.

Chilipad Review Night 6

I probably got 7 full hours of sleep on the 6th night of the Chilipad review. I was hoping for 8, but all the water I drank at the gym and before bed the night before woke me up around 5 am. After that, I couldn’t really go back to sleep, unfortunately.

Chilipad Review Night 7

Not a great night, it’s safe to blame the food though.

Chilipad Review Night 8

Again, not the best night for the Chilipad Review. Woke up around 4:00 am after going to bed at 10 pm. I could probably blame whatever I ate again, the bed was still cool and comfortable when I woke up. I got back to sleep with a bowl of white rice pretty quickly.

End of Week 2

Okay, week two of my Chilipad Review. I really need to stop eating things high in saturated fat right before bed, because I cannot sleep when I do. Doing a Jimmy Dean review on Tuesday night pretty much ruined my sleep no matter how hard the pad tried to soothe me.

Chilipad review on a fast

The first half of the week I was using the Chilipad and it was fine until I destroyed my body with Jimmy Dean. On Wednesday, I decided to do a 24 hour fast, which did fix the damage from the previous night.

The nice thing about doing a 24 hour fast is that I always sleep like a rock when I’m doing those for some reason. I try to time the sleep so it covers the last 7-8 hours before I eat.

As usual, I was out like a light and the night was fine. Then, I started to wake up at 3ish in the morning to a blue light flashing by the foot of my bed. Not great for the Chilipad review.

The Chilipad was running low on water, so the front screen was blinking. I wasn’t thrilled about that, especially because I was in so deep of a sleep that I didn’t want to get up and do anything about it.

By 3:30 or 3:45 I pried myself out of bed and tried to turn it off with the power button. No dice. I decided to unplug it and hop back in bed because I was a major zombie at that point and didn’t feel like going to add more water.

I decided to pause the Chilipad review for the rest of the week.

End of Week 3

Week three of the Chilipad review was all around positive. I slept really deeply every night and put a piece of paper over the top of the unit just in case it ran low on water (to avoid any screen flashing).

However, it didn’t run low on water that week.

Week 4

At the end of week four, things were also fine. I messed up a few nights and either had my thermostat (in the room) too low or drank coffee later in the day which messed up my sleep a bit. This Chilipad review has had a few ups and downs when it comes to quality/consistency of sleep, but, for the most part the machine has been fine.

Nothing will ever be a silver bullet to getting a good night’s rest. It’s a lot to do with our lifestyle choices like what we eat, what we do before bed, how stressed out we are, and other factors. I’ve found that my sleep is 90% related to how my diet goes.

Week 5 of Chilipad review

Week 5 of the Chilipad review was pretty rough. When I say rough, we’re talking I woke up at 3 am Tuesday, 2 am Wednesday and 1 am Thursday night. The insomnia was undoubtedly caused by my diet + some stress from day job-related things going on.

The Chilipad itself was working fine throughout all of this, which was nice. I really need to get better at balancing my diet!

Week 6 of Chilipad review

For week 6, my sleeping was decent but not great, again. I know I can blame the ol’ diet this time around too, especially since the Chilipad helped me get back to sleep when I woke up a few times either too cold or too hot.

Week 7 of Chilipad Review

This was also the week where I did some long-overdue cleaning of the unit using the cleaning solution packet that I originally received with this.

Straight from their website, they say that you need to empty the unit, fill it with clean, distilled water, pour in their cleaning solution, then connect it to the pad and run it on “HI” for 1 hour.

In addition to that, you will need to drain the cleaning water once it’s done and refill with fresh distilled water.

Cleaning it is pretty quick and easy, just remember to do it every 1 -3 months depending on how often you use it.

Fast Forward About 4 Months

I sort of stopped updating this Chilipad review because things were working pretty consistently with it. The unit does a great job of keeping the bed cool and also worked well to warm my bed up when the thermostat in my room broke. At this point, I’ve owned it for about 6 months.

I know I’ve mentioned this a million times in the article, but a lot of your sleep quality (at least mine) is governed by diet. If I eat a ton of carbs, I’ll hit the pillow and won’t move for eight or nine hours.

Eating too much fat (healthy or unhealthy) will cause me tons of sleep problems. Same with not having enough sodium or sugar.

I’ve been experimenting with food since May 2020 and at this point, it’s clear that controls a lot of my sleep quality. Before you invest some money in an external solution, see if an internal one is the answer by balancing your diet.

Tying It All Together

The Chilipad is a really solid machine that does an effective job of keeping your bed cool or warm. It’s a great alternative if you want to skip having an air conditioner. It also works well if the heating in your room isn’t perfect. That being said, it also won’t necessarily make you sleep better immediately. Staring at a screen before bed or eating certain diets can play an equally large role in your sleep quality.

The system is built well and the remote control works fine. Having a temperature display on there is awesome, too.

Click here to check out a Chilipad or some of their other products today!