4 healthy foods that will help you sleep better
06-01-2014
One of the biggest sleep inhibitors is stress. Our modern world is one of growing stress, everyone has more to do and more to worry about, there are so many demands on us during the day that it can be hard to switch off at night. Unfortunately stress and lack of sleep can become a self-perpetuating cycle, you struggle to get to sleep because you are stressed and then you get more stressed because you are exhausted. Here at Ergoflex we often talk to customers who are kept awake by stress and we found a list of healthy foods that can reduce stress and help you sleep.
Stress! It is stressful. And it makes sleeping difficult. Stress is one of the biggest barriers to sleep for most of us in the modern world. Trying to sleep when you are worried about something can be extremely difficult if not impossible. Then once you are sleep deprived the stress will grow, making it harder to get to sleep the next night and making you even more stressed the next day. That is why it is important to try to alleviate the stress, to do everything you can to make sure that it doesn't negatively impact your sleep. Here are 4 healthy foods that'll help you kill stress.
1. Raw soybeans, tofu, or tempeh are a great source of tryptophan. Tryptophan is one of the ten essential amino acids and is important as it works as a precursor for the neurotransmitter serotonin. In turn serotonin helps the body regulate sleep patterns, and mood and is related to both restfulness and relaxation. Low levels of serotonin can exacerbate stress as well as depression, anxiety, irritability, impatience, impulsiveness, the inability to concentrate, weight gain, overeating, carbohydrate cravings, and insomnia.
2. Sweet potatoes are an excellent source of carbohydrates. What makes them so great is that they are complex carbohydrates. Their chemical structure that is comprised of three sugars linked together in a chain. These sugars are rich in fibre, vitamins and minerals, and take a lot longer to digest. This means that complex carbs are more effective in delivering sustained energy and will help you power through your day without the negative impacts of sleep deprivation making you more stressed.
3. Strawberries are another good stress killer. Strawberries have 140% of your the Vitamin C you need every day. Vitamin C helps to reduce the body’s cortisol back to regulatory levels which will relax you and lower your blood pressure.
4. Avocados are a good antidote to stress. They contain around 19% of you daily recommended intake of vitamin B6, which helps your body convert tryptophan to serotonin which as explained above can greatly influence stress levels. The Vitamin B6 will also help with a number of other nervous system reactions, with well over 100 enzymatic reactions being impacted by B6.
These 4 foods can reduce your stress and exhaustion so use them when you feel the stress levels building and the sleep dropping.
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