Chasing Sleeping Beauty: Food, Habits, and Natural Ways to Improve Sleep
Photo: Unsplash
Alyssa
After a month of travel and standing on the edge of an international move, my anxiety decided to make itself at home the moment I got into bed.
During the day I could manage my thoughts. But at night they lived rent free and I refused to rely on melatonin pills indefinitely. The quality of my sleep was showing up all over my face and in my energy levels throughout the day. Something had to change. So I started looking at my habits, including what I was eating.
Food has always done more than fuel us. So there was no reason, I thought, why it couldn't also help me sleep.
The summer season in Milan had just begun, brushing the last of the flowers away to make room for bright rays. And with it came my absolute favourite fruit: cherries. What many don't know is that cherries contain natural melatonin that supports sleep quality. So it wasn't accidental that when I ate a kilo of them last summer for about two weeks, I had the absolute best sleep.
Beyond fruit, a more balanced intake throughout the day can help ease the body into its natural sleep rhythm. Walnuts, pistachios, mushrooms, oats, eggs, and whole grains are all worth adding to our diet, helping us sleep like Sleeping Beauty and wake up refreshed, energized, and mentally at ease for the day ahead.
But melatonin wasn't the only thing that changed my sleep. Magnesium did something I didn't expect.
As an anxiety ridden person this has done wonders for my mental health, it has enabled my mind to slow down as I slip into the covers. When taken in the morning it energizes; taken before bed it settles.
It regulates stress responses in the brain, eases muscle tension, and slows mental activity enough to let sleep arrive. I used a local magnesium supplement that worked well for me, but there are other ways to incorporate this into our daily lives through foods like almonds, pumpkin seeds, peanut butter, edamame to name a few.
A personal favourite of mine is dates filled with organic almond butter topped with pumpkin seeds. Quick, easy and soo satisfying. Don't say I didn't warn you. For context, I have been in Italy for so long, I’m “quasi” Italian cause I’ve adapted some of their habits. I won’t deny that the Mediterranean diet is as fabulous as most claim it to be, fresh tomatoes tossed with olive oil, divino.
Despite such luscious dishes I wouldn’t say everything is divino. I love coffee, specifically espresso black and with no sugar to truly taste the richness of it. But coffee is where I had to be honest with myself. Some days I was having four espressos and this became my standard.
Caffeine works by blocking the brain's signals for tiredness, keeping you artificially alert and, as I learned, disrupting hunger cues too. Limiting coffee to twice a day and only in the mornings made a real difference. The brain could finally start winding down naturally by evening. And it's not just espresso, caffeine hides in tea too. What I have found valuable was after lunch, I switched to herbal infusions that support digestion, and I'd recommend skipping decaf entirely as there's always a very low percentage of caffeine still present.
Which brings me to digestion because it plays a more direct role in sleep than most people realise.
This is how I learned the hard way of avoiding spicy food and late dinners. I had to accept that my body wasn’t as young as I believed it be. Late dinners and spicy food were no longer things I could get away with which meant I had to ensure that I had dinner at least 3 hours before I planned to sleep and have it relatively light (no highly saturated food or dense carbs). It is worth noting that not everyone has a sensitive stomach, but alcohol and heavy meals close to bedtime are disruptive for most people regardless.
I am still on my sleep journey but what I can say is that it has been an instrumental shift in my daily life, I feel more ready and capable to tackle the day’s challenges and I am able to feel more emotionally present.
Clearly getting good sleep it turns out, isn’t isn’t just about lavender candles and cotton sheets. It’s also about what we put into our bodies and when.
And how we live through our days.