Nutrition Lifestyle Blog

Much as been written in recent days about people having chronic sleep deprivation in this country.  This may be down to a variety of reasons but undoubtedly our hectic and, often, very stressful lives do little to help the situation.  Trying to turn off the brain can sometimes prove very difficult!

However, there are things that we can do naturally which can really help, before reaching for those pharmaceutical drugs which can cause severe drowsiness the next day.

Think about the following options:

• It sounds obvious, but make sure your bedroom is dark.   The neurotransmitter, melatonin which regulates the sleep cycle kicks in as it gets dark.
• Melatonin is produced from serotonin and many women are deficient in serotonin.  Waking far too early in the morning, and not being able to get back to sleep is a classic symptom of being serotonin deficient.  The pre-cursor to serotonin is 5-HTP which can be taken as a supplement.  Sometimes, just supplementing it for a month, half an hour before going to sleep, with a little carbohydrate such as an oatcake can bring everything back into balance.
• The mineral, magnesium, is known as nature’s natural tranquiliser.  If you are particularly stressed, you will use up more magnesium so it is worth both supplementing and including foods containing magnesium into your diet in the evening.  Magnesium rich foods include seeds, nuts, green vegetables, wholegrains and seafood.
• Cut down on the stimulants.  Caffeine is an obvious one to avoid before bedtime.  Sugar is also a stimulant which will affect your blood sugar balance.  This in turn will switch on the stress response which gives you instant energy. Not really the effect you want when trying to get to sleep!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.