1 trick for better sleeping
Sleep is good
A common myth for good sleep is to leave 2-3 hours between eating and sleeping. This is a good recipe for lying awake fretting.
The rational behind this is something like you don’t want your bodies resources spent on digesting food when sleep is the prime time to heal and repair.
Now, how is your body supposed to do the best job it can when it is starved?
Ok, now here’s the nitty gritty. Do you ever have trouble sleeping because you can’t seem to control your thoughts and that thinking too much? You may be surprised to know that the problem is more to do with food than it is your mind.
When your blood sugar drops your body has to make glucose from your muscles. This in itself is not good, however the killer is that the hormone your body uses to metabolise your muscles in order to produce glucose to keep you alive is cortisol. You know, the stress hormone. That is what makes your thoughts rampant.
The hormone that suppresses cortisol is insulin, which your body releases when you eat. Good foods that lead to insulin release are oat cakes, bananas and dairy. Another good effect of bananas and cheese is that they contain tryptophan which is a nice, dreamy, serotonin helping hormone which also helps you sleep (and gives you good dreams).
If you don’t want to go to bed on a full stomach then maybe an oat cake at bed time will see you through. Personally, I always wake up around 3 or 4am. I used to have trouble getting back to sleep with the whole mind whirring thing, but since I worked out this trick, I have a few slugs of full fat milk and I’m naturally back asleep before I know it. Clients of mine that I have given this advice to have had great success. They may use oatcakes, cheese or nuts beside the bed.
As an aside, in order to have a good insulin response and for general health, avoid refined and high GI carbs during the day like sugar, potatoes and bread.