Best Meal Before Bed

February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Best Meal Before Bed

What you eat affects how you sleep – so choose the best meal before bed. The best meal before bed is one that has both complex carbohydrates, protein, some calcium, and tryptophan-containing foods. The brain will use tryptophan to produce neurotransmitters that can stimulate sleep. These neurotransmitters are serotonin and melatonin. Consuming foods that help boost their production are one of the best cures for insomnia, making the best meal before bed possible. And calcium helps the brain use the tryptophan to manufacture melatonin. That’s why dairy products, which contain both tryptophan and calcium, are one of the top sleep-inducing foods.

So to build the best meal before bed, buy dairy products such as milk, cheese, and yogurt – they are both abundant in protein and also recognized as loaded with tryptophan.

You should add some fruits on your best meal before bed as well. Specific fruits can also help decrease insomnia symptoms. Cherries, for instance, contain high levels of melatonin. Bananas, which are loaded with potassium, are also good at relaxing the body. Include a banana in your best meal before bed for a much more undisturbed sleep.

A high carbohydrate meal stimulates the release of insulin, which helps clear those amino acids that compete with tryptophan from the bloodstream, allowing more of this natural sleep-inducing amino acid to enter the brain and manufacture sleep-inducing substances.

If stress is the main reason why you cannot sleep at night, add some foods rich in magnesium in your best meal before bed. Nibble on nuts rather than potato chips. Eat vegetables like broccoli and spinach. These foods are high in magnesium-an essential nutrient that keeps your body protected from stress and anxiety disorders.

Remember, the best meal before bed is one that has both complex carbohydrates and protein, tryptophan-containing, and some calcium.

Try the best meal before bed:

  • a glass of warm milk with honey or whole-grain cereal with milk
  • hazelnuts and tofu
  • peanut butter sandwich
  • slice of whole wheat toast topped with a small slice of low-fat cheese
  • banana with 1 teaspoon of peanut butter
  • rice cake topped with a slice turkey breast

Note: It takes around one hour for the tryptophan in the foods to reach the brain, so put your best meal before bed a few hours before bedtime.

If you are really hungry before bed, you could eat a banana or a cheese string before bed. But an all-carbohydrate snack, especially one high in junk sugars, is less likely to help you sleep. You’ll miss out on the sleep-inducing effects of tryptophan, and you may set off the roller-coaster effect of plummeting blood sugar followed by the release of stress hormones that will keep you awake.

 

Filed Under: Food That Help You Sleep

How to Feel Awake

February 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Both Morning and Night

How to Feel Awake

We all know that sleeping 7-9 hours everyday is ideal. But there are just times/weeks when we don’t have the 7 hours. Our project is due tomorrow, the presentation needs to be written, or whatever reason that is more important than sleep; yet, we don’t want to feel like a zombie after a week of lack of sleep! So how to feel awake in the morning? How to feel awake in the night? How to feel awake when we work? How to feel awake when we need to listen to the lecture? How to feel awake when we need know to? Well, most people probably would go for caffeine-contained beverages such as coffee, even when we know the side-effects of it – but trust me, there are better ways for the “how to feel awake” question that have no side-effects, and are even more effective than Coffee since we will adapt to coffee to a point where it just doesn’t work anymore (but this method won’t). Too good to be true? Well, read on to know how to feel awake when we just don’t have the time to sleep.

Sleepiness can be cured with bright light!
Waking up drowsy and sleepy may be caused by delayed sleep phase syndrome (your internal clock and the time people have set do not match). The body has a natural internal clock that prompts it when it is time to sleep and when it is time to be awake. The normal clock induces a person to sleep at night, but when we don’t sleep early enough for a few days in a sequence, we screws up our internal clock. Using light to reset our internal clock will recondition the body to fall into normal patterns of sleep and wakefulness. It also keeps us awake in the day to do the normal stuffs too!

The solution to how to feel awake: expose yourself to bright artificial light for several intervals (15-30 minutes per interval) throughout the day to induce wakefulness – this is similar to the light therapy approach for patients narcolepsy. So you expose yourself to bright light that produce 10,000 lux of light for a 15-30 minutes. You can try using a light box for this kind of exposure. It’s small enough to sit on a desk or table, so it’s easy to put it at your work place or anywhere you want yourself to feel awake. So you should sit 18-24 inches away from but facing the light box, and complete tasks such as work or reading without looking at the light itself. This helps regulate the controls that keep you awake. But if you feel too awkward to use it in your office, a desk lamp would work too… and since it’s smaller and not as bright, it will blend in better in an office. After the 15-30 minutes of exposure, shut off the light and continue your work. And when you begin to feel fatigue or sleepy again, add another dose of the artificial light to keep you from falling asleep and to allow your body to condition itself into a pattern of sleeping only when it is dark, or at night as you should. But you should use bright white or blue light as it

We all need to sleep enough to feel energetic, but when there’s emergencies such as a sudden increase of workload, sleeping 8 hours per night is simply impossible. For busy college students, sometimes it feels like how to feel awake is more important because sleeping enough is not an option. Consider buying a light box, it helps a whole lot in how to feel awake, both in the morning and at night.

Filed Under: How to Feel Awake

How to Sleep Naturally

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How to Sleep Naturally

Have you ever spent hours in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking how to sleep naturally, wondering if you were ever going to fall asleep? Most people have and for some, it’s a way of life. Not a very good way, but a way none the less.

For anyone who suffers from insomnia and needs to know how to sleep naturally, life can be absolutely miserable before they find out how to sleep naturally. But there are ways to overcome sleeping problems and start catching those zzz’s once again.

The “how to sleep naturally” for me involves completely natural techniques that are drug-free. In fact, a lot of times all that’s required is a bit of relaxation.

Whether you realize it or not, your state of mind has a lot to do with whether you’re going to fall asleep quickly or lay awake for hours on end. If you’re stressed or overly stimulated close to bedtime it’s going to be more difficult to get to sleep. So try to not do work that involves a lot of thinking 1-2 hours before you sleep. Ya, the answer to how to sleep naturally could be quite simple.

Another solution for “how to sleep naturally” is by listening to soothing music in the evening. Some people find that nature sounds are the perfect way to calm down and ready themselves for sleep. With so many choices and options, this can be a great way to unwind.

Reading a book is also a common way to transition from the work day into a more relaxed state. With no offence, I sometimes use the bible as my sleep inducing book. As long as what you’re reading doesn’t stimulate your mind it tends to work well. The main idea is to move from an alert status to a relaxed one so that when bedtime comes it will be easy to fall asleep.

Relax and don’t worry (although insomnia is a serious issue) about how to sleep naturally. There are many ways, read on.

Filed Under: Food That Help You Sleep, Music To Help You Sleep, Sleep Well Naturally

Sleep Inducing Food

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Sleep Inducing Food

You’ve heard it said before… you are what you eat. It bears repeating because it is true. Your diet has a direct influence on your health, the way you feel and, you guessed it — how well you sleep. Yes, there are many sleep inducing food and fruits and even a sleep inducing food diet, but luckily, they all taste good (well, I loved it!) and it’s easy to follow.

While it may seem like a daunting task to take a look at the foods you eat and make sure you’re following a diet that will help rather than hinder your sleep, it’s really not that difficult. Yet there are so many people who turn to drugs whether they be prescribed sleeping medications or over-the-counter sleeping tablets to help them fall asleep each night. For them, taking a pill seems easier than trying to correct the actual source of the problem.

The main issue with this approach is that it’s only easy in the beginning. Once you start to rely on sleeping pills to get you to sleep, your body becomes tolerant of them and they don’t work as well. And here’s a reality you many not have considered… it’s common to awaken from these drugs with a groggy feeling that takes quite awhile to pass. It’s definitely not that refreshed and well-rested feeling you’re after.

Eating the right and sleep inducing food, however, can help you sleep naturally without the need for knocking yourself out with pills. And there’s an added benefit to choosing a sleep-inducing food diet… all of the foods are completely healthy and contribute to your overall health too. They may even help you shed a couple of pounds if you’re carrying some excess weight. With no negative side effects and a few added bonuses, there’s no doubt that food is the way to go.

So what kind of sleep inducing food should you eat? Foods that contain tryptophan are great for helping you feel sleepy. Turkey is famous for it but if you’re a vegetarian, bananas and beans work as well. You can also find it in dairy products, nuts and other foods containing protein. In addition, eating plenty of healthy fruits, vegetable and whole grains will help you too. These sleep inducing food helps you feel better, and when you feel better it’s a lot easier to get to sleep at night.

A discussion about sleeping and food would not be complete without mentioning a couple of cautions. Common sense probably tells you that it’s best not to go to bed on a full stomach. Eat dinner a few hours before bedtime so it doesn’t interfere with your sleep. If you feel hungry just before bed, try having a small banana to tide you over and help you sleep at the same time.

Filed Under: Food That Help You Sleep