Lucy Wolfe shares her super sleep foods for key workers
Sleep consultant, Lucy Wolfe, who is passionate about people getting more sleep, offers advice on Super Foods that can aid sleep, and tips for essential Shift Workers.
-5983.jpg)
With so much stress and anxiety within all of our lives at present, it's no wonder many of us are struggling to get a good night's sleep, especially important for key workers.
Sleep is necessary to ensure that you are optimally functioning. While sleeping our brain and body is repairing and restoring, supervising a wide variety of biological maintenance jobs and ensuring that we can function at a high level by day and live a long and healthy life.
So many force factors affect our sleep, including psychological, physiological and environmental. Here, we focus on how everything you eat and rink can affect and aid a restful sleep.
Anti-sleep foods include sugar, processed, high-sugar foods and refined carbohydrates. These raise the blood sugar levels and can cause a surge of energy that disturbs sleep, so it is best to avoid these food types if you want to enhance sleep.
Sleep Super Foods
The banana
The non-medical equivalent to a sleeping pill, containing the sleep hormone melatonin and relaxing chemical serotonin and also magnesium, that helps to relax the muscles.
Dairy products
Milk, cottage cheese, yoghurt and cheese are all good sources of tryptophan that helps to make serotonin which makes us feel sleepy. Also, dairy contains calcium which helps the body to process the tryptophan and produce a second sleep inducing neurotransmitter, melatonin.
Oatmeal
Oats are a rich source of melatonin and are filling too.
Honey
A spoon of honey in milk is an age-old remedy for insomnia. Too much sugar is stimulating, but a little glucose signals to your brain to turn off orexin, which is a neurotransmitter linked to alertness.
Whole wheat bread
A slice of brown bread toast with a drink of milk and honey is delicious, but also useful. This will release insulin which enables the tryptophan (makes us sleepy) to get to the brain, where it is converted to serotonin, the sleep-inducing hormone, which in turn lets the body know it is sleep time.
Seeds & Almonds
Some seeds such as flaxseed, jujube seeds and chia seeds can have a calming and sedative effect. Another sleep-inducing food is almonds, you can get them ground or whole. They contain both tryptophan and also magnesium that helps to relax muscles.
The potato
A small baked potato won't send your GI tract into overload, it will clear away acids that can inhibit our sleepy friend tryptophan in order to make way for restful sleep.
Turkey
Probably the best source of tryptophan. Put a slice of turkey on some wholegrain bread and you have one of the best sleep-enhancing foods that you will use.
- Try to eat regularly despite your shift
- Be careful of caffeine intake towards the end of the shift, remember it takes six to eight hours to clear from system
- If coming from a night shift, go straight home
- Be mindful of technology use one to two hours before sleep time
- Wear sunglasses to offset the morning light stimulating the waking part of brain
- Ensure that the temperature in bedroom is cool by day
- Use Black out blinds, eye masks and white noise
- Sleep in two parts to reach your sleep quota
Further natural solutions to enhance sleep I recommend include:
- Magnesium spray
- Epsom salt baths
- Iron supplements
- Essential Oils: chamomile, lavender , camphor, vetiver, chamomile in a diffuser, candles, body lotion, bed and body spray
- Chamomile/Lavender Tea
- Salt therapy Air Purifier-good for sinus, snoring, asthma etc.
Lucy Wolfe CGSC, MAPSC, H.Dip RM, runs a private sleep consulting practice and is a regular guest on television and radio, writing for many magazines and online media sources.
