Are you getting your sleep?
You
go to bed, it’s a reasonable hour you’ve planned the perfect sleep to feel your
best tomorrow. However, this isn’t how it pans out, hours later you are lying
there wide awake, mind is in overdrive and you are so frustrated that even the
ticking of your bedside clock sounds like a gong to your eardrums. You finally
drift off and with barely a shut of an eyelid the alarm goes off and your day
begins!
This
is a reoccurring scenario affecting around a third of the UK population, let’s
bring that statistic down with some nutritional support today.
Soothing teas
Aim
to have a nice hot bath with bath salts at the end of the evening accompanied
with a hot drink of lemon balm with chamomile or hops tea. The combination will
relax stressed muscles and have a gentle sedative effect to help you unwind
from a busy day.
Does
a cup of warm milk really work?
A
cup of warm milk before bed really does do the trick as it contains one of the
richest sources of amino acid tryptophan. Tryptophan is a natural precursor to
the sleeping hormone melatonin. However, tryptophan is only the beginning of
the journey to aid melatonin synthesis and most people are not keen on food
before bed. A preference for many is taking 5-HTP supplementation half an hour
before planning to go to drift into the night's sleep.
A
good nights' sleep
Often
a deficiency of magnesium is related to poor sleeping patterns and irritability
and therefore magnesium can be useful for correcting this. By adding taurate tomagnesium there may be better effect as the magnesium reduces the physical
tension and taurate calms the chemical responses of the nervous system.
Stop
your caffeinated drinks early in the day
Don’t
think of sleep as something that you need to tackle just before bed. You can
begin preparing hours before by changing habits in your daily routine. If you
drink plentiful amounts of caffeine make your last cup at 3pm the latest to
allow your body to get the caffeine out of your system. A heavy intake of
caffeine will not only make your wired but also have negative effect on
magnesium levels which is also going to disrupt sleep. Whilst reducing caffeine
intake swap your caffeinated drinks for herbal teas and your last caffeinated
drink of the day could be green tea. Green tea naturally contains the amino
acid theanine which is a nutrient that crosses the blood brain barrier to
stimulate relaxing neurotransmitters; dopamine and GABA.
Relaxation techniques
Aim
to stop watching TV an hour before bed to prevent your mind from being over
stimulated from high levels of adrenaline. Instead aim to read a light hearted
book or learn meditation techniques.
A
lack of sleep can really make the difference between a good and bad day. If you
persistently struggle to sleep we would recommend you seek medical
advice.
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