Banana and milk or melatonin as a sleeping aid

One of the most important things for quality life is getting enough and good quality sleep. A natural sleeping aid is a mixture of (preferably warm) milk and bananas. Somebody asked me why this worked - here's my answer:

Either of them by themselves will also work somewhat, though there's a positive interaction. Note that this will pull towards increased weight - but bad sleep patterns will usually push even more in that direction.

Background: Bananas is a good source L-tryptophan and simple carbohydrates. L-tryptophan is an amino acid, and it gets converted to 5HTP in the brain, which again gets converted to serotonin (a calming neurotransmitter) which again gets converted to melatonin (which is the natural controller of hormonal rythms in the body, especially sleep).

There are several interactions with milk. One is that L-tryptophan only cross the blood-brain barrier if it is not in competition with too many other amino acids. When you drink milk, your body release insulin (milk sugar is quite effective at this), which "push" most amino acids from your blood into storage (in lean body mass - this is OK). That makes the tryptophan available for the synthesis above. In addition, milk contains calcium (which is calming.) Oh, and warm milk is a source of L-tryptophan in itself.

Note that the rate-limiting step of the serotonin to melatonin conversion is hypothized to be the availability of noreniphrine (noradrenaline), so drinking green tea in the daytime might help. Possibly even better with caffeine free green tea extracts at night.

What's the pull towards increased weight? You're getting high GI carbohydrates fairly shortly before bedtime[1], so your body will be going through an insulin/blood sugar swing, and you'll burn less calories during the night. This can make a difference.

Referring to another post: I agree that melatonin is an excellent natural sleep aid - I often recommend it. And while it is probably the sleeping aid in existence with least side effects, people should still know how to use it. Extreme doses will work as a reliable contraceptive, and if you start off with too high doses, your body will sort of adapt and high doses will *stop working*. I was stupid enough to start at 3mg, and had a slightly mixed up hormonal balance for at least half a year afterwards. When I use it now, I use about 1mg - but the effect isn't as good as it probably would have been if I'd never overdosed.

Melatonin is primarily a sleep rythm restorer. It's best to take it depending on when you're going to get UP, not when you want to fall asleep, and it should preferably be taken at the same time every day. For getting up at 7, I usually took melatonin at 23:30, and went to sleep at 00:00 to 00:10. You'll find that you get unbelivably tired, and then you just fall asleep as you lie down. For many, there's a fairly short window, though - and at least I had the effect that if I fought off the sleepiness from melatonin ("I'm just going to finish this chapter"), I couldn't get to sleep at all. One expert I discussed this with thought that was due to me using too high doses, though.

Oh, and the natural trigger for melatonin is lowered light levels. This is messed up by electric lights and living "in the wrong place". Where we were made to be - just about the equator in africa - there's just 15 minutes of sunset as the sun goes from "high day" to "night". Then, a few hours after this, you get tired. And sleep. And it all feels just right.

Instead, we keep on electric lights, which are way too dim and stay around too long. This mess up the melatonin system.


OK, I'm finished babbling now.


[1] Actually, from theory I'd recommend taking milk+banana 1 to 1.5 hours before bedtime - as I said, there's about 45 minutes from intake of melatonin until full sleepy effect, and there should be time for the other reactions to occur to produce the melatonin.