"How to Treat Jet Lag with Melatonin-Rich Food"
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee
of the strength or purity of
over-the-counter melatonin supplements,
which have been found to contain impurities
that raise serious safety questions.
For these reasons, melatonin supplements
cannot be recommended.
Too bad there’s no way you can get
the benefits without the risks—
unless, melatonin was somehow found naturally
in certain foods you could eat.
Melatonin was first discovered in plants
in 1995 and has since been found
throughout the plant kingdom.
But, enough that eating them actually affects your levels?
Yes.
You randomize people to eat
more or fewer vegetables,
and you can see the effect.
Hard to get people to eat vegetables though.
How about beer?
The melatonin present in beer
contributes to an increase in the levels
of melatonin in the human bloodstream.
Though, alcohol consumption may actually mess with
your own endogenous melatonin secretion;
so, beer probably isn’t the best choice.
Eat two bananas, or drink the juice
of about 2 pounds of oranges or pineapple,
and you can get significant bumps
in melatonin concentrations in your blood,
and the melatonin levels found
in those fruits are pretty modest,
compared to some other foods.
Here’s the breakdown.
The single food within each category
with the highest recorded melatonin level,
and how much you’d have to eat
at one time to reach a
physiological dose in your bloodstream.
We make melatonin; so, it should come
as no surprise that other animals do too.
The most melatonin-rich meat tested was salmon,
but because there were only
billionths of a gram per serving,
you’d have to sit down and eat
about 200 pounds to get the effect.
OK.
So, forget meat.
What about whole grains?
The highest recorded was a strain of corn
so rich in melatonin you’d only have
to eat 16 ears of corn.
All right, scratch that.
What about other vegetables?
Plain white button mushrooms top the list.
Only two pounds.
A hundred times more melatonin than meat,
but still, they’re so light,
2 pounds is like eating
10 cups of mushrooms.
That’s a lot in one sitting.
Thankfully, cranberries to the rescue,
the most melatonin-rich fruit.
Just a single ounce, and it’s like you
just took a melatonin supplement,
with only good side effects,
other than, of course, the extreme sourness.
That’s about a third of a cup of cranberries.
They’re pretty sturdy;
so, you could travel without them
getting smooshed, but what do you do
with them once you get there.
Easy to blend into a smoothie,
but what if you’re stuck in a hotel?
Can you eat dried cranberries,
like what are they called—craisins?
A study of various tart cherry products
suggests that the drying process
wipes out the melatonin;
so, no melatonin in dried cherries
and presumably dried cranberries either,
nor in juice.
The level of melatonin in cherry juice
concentrate was almost nondetectable;
so, drinking cranberry juice would
also presumably be a wash,
which brings us to nuts.
Pistachios are not just the most
melatonin-rich nut,
they are simply off-the-charts
as the most melatonin-rich food ever recorded.
To get a physiological dose of melatonin,
all you have to eat is two.
Two what?
Just two pistachios.
Check it out;
here are the data.
More than 200 micrograms
of melatonin per gram,
point two milligrams per gram.
And, you can get the normal daily
spike your brain gives you by taking
just 0.3 micrograms:
so, just two nuts.
So, taking a whole handful
of pistachio nuts is like taking
one of those high dose melatonin supplements.
So, the best food for jet lag
appears to be appropriately timed pistachios.