Can Your Diet Affect Your Sleep?

Foods that you should eat to ensure a good night's sleep:

• Having a banana before going to bed seems to be ideal to relax and fall asleep. The sugar content of the fruit calms down the cells, while the minerals present in the fruit, including magnesium and potassium, helps to relax the muscles for a peaceful sleep. 
• Studies show that passion fruit tea quickly induces sleep, and ensures a more sound sleep. Harman alkaloids — the chemicals present in passion fruit — are known to act on the nervous system and induce sleep.
• Dates contain the right combination of carbohydrates and the sleep-inducing amino, acid L-tryptophan. The fast-acting carbohydrates in this dry fruit increase the use of all other amino acids, raising the levels of sleep-inducing amino acids in the blood. Thus, a handful of dates before going to sleep are the best bed time snack for a rejuvenating sleep.
• Results of a study report that having cherry juice twice a day is ideal to improve the quality and quantity of sleep. Cherry juice contains L-tryptophan, the sleep-friendly amino acid, which gets converted into melatonin. Melatonin is a chemical that induces the sleep pattern.
• Foods that increase the amount of melatonin are ideal for having a good sleep. This includes milk, yogurt, oats, eggs, and peanuts. Eating these foods raise the level of melatonin circulating in blood, improving an individual's quality of sleep.
• Glutamic acid-rich foods help to enhance the levels of gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), which regulates the neuron excitability in the nervous system. Chinese food contains monosodium glutamate, a salt of this amino acid thus increasing the GABA levels in blood and helps in inducing sleep.