let's talk about the 11 ways to boost your melatonin if you want to sleep
better now melatonin is a hormone that is made by the pineal gland and it's
stimulated by darkness and turned off or inhibited by sunlight so if you think
about a muscle you contract it and then you relax it right so you definitely
want to experience darkness at night and not of course sleep when there's any
type of lights in the room or while the TV's on to stimulate melatonin but you
also need the Sun to turn off the release but if you over stimulate
melatonin that's not good either so if you're gonna contract a muscle you also
have to relax it so we need the right balance of darkness and light back and
forth the sunlight preferably sunlight recharges the pineal gland and also the
vitamin D from the Sun also greatly helps the recycling effect of melatonin
in the pineal gland and by the way if you're taking melatonin that will help
your sleep but over time you need more and more
melatonin so then your pineal gland becomes more dependent on it so I don't
recommend taking melatonin as a supplement for your sleep problem
alright number three too much blue light can decrease melatonin that would come
from being on your computer too much your cell phone certain lights that you
have in your house can all admit blue light and that's not very healthy by the
way red light there's a certain types of red light that are therapies can help
increase melatonin number four no heavy eating right before bed you
don't want to consume a texas-style steak right before bed because sometimes
that bloating can affect your ability to sleep alright number five glucose or
sugar will increase insulin okay then what happens is your blood sugars come
down you develop hypoglycemia low blood sugar and then the counter regulatory
hormones like adrenaline and cortisol kick in
that will actually keep you up so refined carbohydrates or sugars might
help you sleep initially but then it's gonna be short-lived when I was in my
20s I couldn't sleep and so my solution was to consume a Ben and Jerry's a pint
before bed I would consume that whole thing go right to sleep like in a coma
wake up at 2:00 o'clock completely awake very very stressed out
so it wasn't a long-term solution I didn't know what to do at the time okay
number six decreasing stress stress obviously lowers melatonin because it
increases cortisol number seven certain TV programs action type movies that you
watch right before bed scary movies not good the news very very bad right before
bed it's gonna keep you up so avoid TV or watch something that's more like a
comedy alright number eight caffeine cut down the caffeine even if you're
consuming caffeine in the morning you're doing like two or three large cups that
can affect your liver and also inhibit your melatonin at night so I would
recommend consuming one medium or a small cup if possible alright number
nine there are certain cofactors or nutrients that are involved in making
melatonin you need magnesium leafy green vegetables folate vegetables b3
b6 b12 zinc and calcium are all needed to make melatonin and number ten there
are certain types of foods that have tryptophan tryptophan is an essential
amino acid okay so it's in most all proteins some high-end walnuts it's
actually in milk if you've heard of like night milk people drink some milk before
bed and they sleep they sleep better I'm not recommending milk I'm just saying
that it has tryptophan in it wine has some tryptophan now the problem with
wine is that it has sulfates and has other things that can also keep you up
at night so so even though it can actually increase your melatonin it can also
counter that as well and then coffee can increase melatonin but it has the
caffeine to inhibit the melatonin so I'm not recommending these to sleep but
believe it or not some people sleep better when they drink coffee go figure
okay eleven yellow and green vegetables can increase your melatonin alright so
if you want more tips on sleep check out these videos on this screen