Guest post by The Sleep Advisor.
As a child, bedroom routines were sacrosanct. We’d tumble under a duvet, awaiting our warm glass of milk and a cookie/biscuit.
But times have changed. You’re all grown up and, unfortunately, so have our health concerns. Cookies, whilst tasty, are jam-packed with sugar – not an ideal pre-bedtime treat if you want to, firstly, look after your teeth and, secondly, get a great night’s sleep.
Luckily, we now know which foods are ideal for promoting better sleep. Foods such as those listed below are a dream (excuse the pun) for getting some shut-eye:
- Cherries
- Oats
- Bananas
- Dark greens
- Honey
- Almonds
- Dates
- Figs
- Cashews
You can get the whole family on board with the bright and colourful array of nutritious, sleep-inducing foods that are out there to be enjoyed and benefited from. Best of all, you can get maximum benefit by blitzing them in a blender. The result? A delicious smoothie which will help you sleep well.
5 Healthy Smoothies for Better Sleep
The methods for these smoothies are simple: Just throw the ingredients into a blender and blitz. Easy!
1. Banana-Beet Smoothie
- 1 sliced raw beet
- ½ banana
- 8 ounces coconut water
- 1 teaspoon sliced almonds
2. Banana Almond Vanilla Smoothie
- 3 frozen medium bananas, cut into chunks
- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 2 tablespoons of almond butter
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon almond extract
3. Sweet Cherry Smoothie
*This recipe requires a NutriBullet
- 1 Cup Cherries, pitted
- 1 ½ Cups Unsweetened Almond Milk
- ½ Banana
- ¼ Teaspoon Nutmeg
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
4. Cinnamon Smoothie
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 banana
- 1 cup vanilla almond milk
- ½ cup plain Greek yoghurt
- ¼ cup old-fashioned whole oats
- Sprinkle a small number of crushed almonds on top
5. Pineapple Smoothie
- ½ cup pineapple chunks
- ¾ cup almond milk
- ¼ cup Greek yoghurt
- ¼ banana
When should I stop eating/drinking before bed?
The Sleep Advisor is just one specialist website that often recommends halting all carbohydrate and sugar intake from the afternoon onwards, until the next day. By doing this, it allows your body time to process all the nutrients you consumed and drank in the hours before you slip off to bed.
Additionally, if you’re struggling with a nutrient-deficient diet that is missing the essential components required for a healthy sleeping lifestyle, you can add magnesium to your smoothies to help with this.
For example, magnesium can be found in bananas, almonds, cashews, and spinach.
Next up in the sleep-positive nutrients is potassium. It helps with natural sleep and also sends you into a deeper sleep as well, which is a rather enticing trait! Bananas are the most popular source, but you can also find potassium in beets too.
Then we’ve got tryptophan; this is accountable for why you experience that feeling of tiredness once you’ve devoured those big Sunday roasts! Tryptophan is an amino acid that your body utilises to produce two of the sleep-promoting chemicals in the body; serotonin and melatonin. What’s more, tryptophan has an antioxidant property that assists in protecting your body’s cells from damage.
Finally, there’s vitamin B12. This is actually not a vitamin the human body can produce, and therefore, you need to get it from the things you eat and drink. It’s involved in each of your cell’s metabolism, and your metabolism is directly related to your circadian rhythm in the brain.
You can find vitamin B12 in non-dairy milk.
My Wellbeing Journal 