How Many Foods To Help You Sleep Better | HealthInfi

Trouble sleeping? Yeah, I thought so. Chances are that you’re not getting enough sleep, having trouble nodding off, struggling with nighttime wakings or some combination.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls insufficient sleep a public health epidemic. Lack of sleep, it says, is linked to motor vehicle accidents, industrial disasters and medical and other occupational errors. Sleep deprivation causes the brain to slow down, leading to confusion, and can even increase chances of engaging in risky behaviors.

Those facts spurred the Better Sleep Council to survey a sample of U.S. adults. Its findings? Although Americans know that they’re sleep deprived, they’re not doing much to change it.

And in another survey, it found that six in 10 Americans crave sleep more than sex with some even admitting to falling asleep during sex! Other places and situations where people find themselves in the embarrassing situation of nodding off: work, schools, cars (as a passenger and a driver), movie theaters, bars and parties.

While there are many things you can do keeping your bedroom cool or getting plenty of exercise (but not too close to bedtime), for instance there are also many foods you can eat that can help your slumber.

Adding these foods to your diet may help to increase your odds of a successful slumber.

Some people have trouble falling asleep. Others can’t stay asleep. And then there are the people who have trouble turning life “off” and tucking into bed at a reasonable hour.

Whatever the reason, we’re not alone more than 50 million Americans don’t get enough shut-eye. Yet the health benefits of a good night’s rest are countless: sleep helps keep you happy, your brain sharp, your immune system strong, your waistline trim, your skin looking youthful and lowers your risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

Here’s the good news: Adding these foods to your diet may help to increase your odds of a successful slumber.

More delicious foods that will help you sleep better

Fish

Most fish—and especially salmon, halibut and tuna boast vitamin B6, which is needed to make melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone triggered by darkness), according to an article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Walnuts

Walnuts are a good source of tryptophan, a sleep-enhancing amino acid that helps make serotonin and melatonin, the “body clock” hormone that sets your sleep-wake cycles. Additionally, University of Texas researchers found that walnuts contain their own source of melatonin, which may help you fall asleep faster.

Almonds

Almonds are rich in magnesium, a mineral needed for quality sleep (and also a known headache remedy). A study published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine found that when the body’s magnesium levels are too low, it makes it harder to stay asleep.

Jasmine Rice

When healthy sleepers ate carbohydrate-rich suppers of veggies and tomato sauce over rice, they fell asleep significantly faster at bedtime if the meal included high glycemic index (GI) jasmine rice rather than lower-GI long-grain rice, in a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

While the authors aren’t sure how it happened, they speculated that the greater amounts of insulin triggered by the high-GI meals increased the ratio of sleep-inducing tryptophan relative to other amino acids in the blood, allowing proportionately more to get into the brain.Read More