12 Melatonin Boosting Foods
It’s late, you know you should go to bed, but you just never seem tired. Does this sound familiar? If you’re a college student there’s a good chance it does!
With all the stress of classes, working, relationships, and everything else going on it can be a challenge to settle down for the night.
Sleep is so important to effective learning and our overall success in school. We already covered how to create the best atmosphere for sleep but, now, let’s talk about a simple, natural method of prepping your body for sleep.
What’s Melatonin?
You’ve probably seen the bottles of the supplement melatonin on store shelves. This is the hormone that’s responsible for regulating your sleep patterns. Your body naturally increases the production of melatonin at night to make you sleepy and decreases it once you wake in the morning to keep you alert.
Now, you could just go to the store and pick up a bottle of melatonin. Or, you could take a simpler approach and naturally increase your body’s desire to sleep by eating certain foods that boost melatonin.
One study showed a significant increase of the hormone in healthy people who ate common, easy to find foods such as pineapples, bananas and oranges. Why take a supplement when you could just eat tasty fruit, right? And, it’s not just fruit.
Check out the list of common, easy to eat, foods that you can use to boost your melatonin levels.
Melatonin Boosting Foods
If you have problems getting to sleep, it wouldn’t hurt to try out these foods…
Pineapples
Bananas
Oranges
Tomatoes
Olives
Cucumber
Walnuts
Peanuts
Sunflower Seeds
Rice
Barley
Oats
Sleep & Nutrition
The foods listed also have many nutrients that are key to a healthy lifestyle, nutrients like manganese, potassium, calcium and vitamins A, C, B5 and B6. You can eat these foods knowing they are good for you.
You’ll get the benefits of better skin, a stronger immune system, reduced blood pressure, better digestion and stronger bones.
On top of all that, you’ll get more of the sleep you need!
