5 Foods That Improve Sleep Quality
Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast
Dr. Eric Berg
4.6 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this podcast, I’m going to tell you how to improve your sleep quality for your best, restful sleep. To do this, you need to optimize the hormone melatonin. Boosting melatonin is great for better sleep, but you also want to avoid the things that inhibit melatonin.
If the temperature is 75 or warmer in your room when you sleep, you will have significantly lower melatonin. Keep the temperature between 60 and 69 to optimize melatonin for your best sleep.
Sleeping after consuming a large meal can interfere with your sleep. If you’re doing intermittent fasting, try having your first meal at breakfast and your last meal at lunchtime.
Avoid blue light in the evening because it suppresses melatonin. Try increasing sun exposure during the day, which provides vitamin D and also helps build up melatonin.
EMF waves, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, medications, high-carb diets, and exercise before bed inhibit melatonin. Avoid these things for better sleep.
Try these 5 foods to boost melatonin and improve sleep quality:
1. Tart cherries contain melatonin and tryptophan, which turns into serotonin and then melatonin. Research has shown that tart cherry consumption increases sleep for some people by 84 minutes!
2. Kiwis contain serotonin, a precursor to melatonin. One study found that people who consumed 2 kiwis per day for 4 weeks had a significant improvement in quality of sleep, length of sleep, the time it takes to fall asleep, and the feeling of being refreshed upon waking.
3. Fatty fish like salmon, tuna, and trout boost melatonin.
4. Kefir is similar to yogurt but has even more microbes. Try blending it with berries, which are rich in polyphenols for better sleep.
5. Sauerkraut contains microbes and tryptophan to help improve your sleep. Cabbage also increases the neurotransmitter GABA, which helps calm you down.
Focusing on slow breathing through your nose can also improve sleep.
DATA:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21669...
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are five foods that you need to know about to improve your sleep quality. |
| 0:04.8 | This is one of those videos that you want to save and keep watching over and over just to remind yourself of these key things to help you sleep. |
| 0:11.0 | I personally have a sleep problem extremely bad for well over a decade and I wish I would have known what I'm going to tell you right now. |
| 0:19.0 | The big thing about sleep is to optimize a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone |
| 0:24.7 | that helps you go to sleep and get into some of these deep restful waves of |
| 0:29.8 | sleep. More importantly than boosting melatonin, it's important to know how to avoid things that reduce |
| 0:36.3 | your melatonin. |
| 0:37.3 | The first thing has to do with your temperature in your room. |
| 0:40.9 | If you're going to bed and your temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, you're |
| 0:47.6 | going to have a significantly lowered melatonin level as well as a lowered REM level. The quality of sleep is going to be really crappy. |
| 0:56.8 | The best temperature to optimize melatonin between 60 and 69 degrees Fahrenheit with the optimum perfect number at 65 |
| 1:06.4 | degrees Fahrenheit. If your room is at that temperature your melatonin will be |
| 1:10.9 | optimized. Even your body's core temperature, |
| 1:13.7 | which should be 98.6, between 12 o'clock and 5 o'clock, |
| 1:18.6 | your core temperature goes down between 1 and 2 degrees. People that have insomnia don't have that mechanism where |
| 1:27.1 | their body gets cooler by one to two degrees. A lot of you watching are doing intimate |
| 1:31.7 | fasting and you probably watch my videos in the past where I told you to get up in the morning, skip your breakfast, have your first meal at 12 and your last meal at 6. But here's my conclusion on that. I think initially it's very good to do that, |
| 1:45.2 | especially if you're trying to lose weight and you're trying to correct insulin resistance. |
| 1:49.1 | Because here you are, you fast it all night. Might as well ride the wave wave go as long as you can and then have your |
| 1:54.8 | first meal but after you do it for a period of time let's say you do this for over a |
| 1:58.8 | year or even six months and you kind of correct this insulin resistance, you may want to experiment to have your first |
| 2:05.2 | meal in the morning and your second meal at lunch and maybe not even have a dinner because one thing that will |
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