Two Important Nutrients That Help With Sleep

You may already know that eating heavy meals before bedtime can disrupt your sleep. Instead of resting and recuperating, your body is active and digesting.

However, it is still important to feed your body the right nutrients that actually well help your sleep.

It’s all about the quantity and the timing. And there’s one important pair that, if you get enough of it, can help you get to “lights out!” faster every night.

How Food Helps You Snooze

Your sleep cycle is very dependent on hormones and neurotransmitters having properly timed releases, largely associated with your circadian rhythm and sleep drive.

In car terms, it’s very much like the timing of fuel injections into your engine’s pistons; and your oil’s cycling throughout the car.

To make this happen, your cells must be ready and maintained with all the right vitamins and minerals.

As you drift off into the deep sleep cycles, these vitamins and nutrients maintain the cells that help with repairing organs, boosting your immune system, and maintaining your memory.

The less aches and pains you have throughout the night, the better quality sleep you can have.

Yet there is one pair of vitamins and minerals that work well together for very specific sleep functions.

Ensuring you get adequate amounts of both will keep those sleep cycles going.

The Dynamic Duo

The first part of this dynamic duo is Vitamin D. Recent peer-reviewed meta studies have indicated poor sleep duration and extended sleepiness during the day are linked to lack of vitamin D.

Why is that? One reason is linked to the discovery of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells ( ip RCGs). These cells in the eye are responsible for helping regulate the circadian rhythm and the sleep clock. Poor RCGs have also been associated with vitamin D deficiency.

When the sun goes down and your skin is not being exposed to large amounts of light, melatonin begins its secretion from the pineal gland. The release flows into your bloodstream and makes you sleepy. Vitamin D is also in the pathway of melatonin secretion. because it partners with the second half of the dynamic duo: Magnesium.

Like vitamin D, Magnesium serves in many functions throughout the body. With sleep, Magnesium acts as a muscle relaxer, in part by regulating melatonin as it releases.

It also binds to your GABA receptors, which help calm your nerves if you have anxiety before sleep. You could have all the vitamin D you need, but it’s useless until it’s properly converted.

Sources of Magnesium and Vitamin D

If you have problems getting vitamin D or Magnesium, they are often available as supplements. However, you will get more bang for your buck by getting them naturally through food sources, since food can provide other needed vitamins and minerals.

Eggs, sockeye salmon, and white mushrooms are common sources of vitamin D. But your best source is the sun. Your eyes have special photoreceptors called Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs. They help signal the brain as to when you should start or stop the sleep process. Directly exposing your skin to ultraviolet rays for at least 15 minutes a day can give you all the vitamin D you need (600 IUs) to keep those ipRGCs healthy.

Magnesium’s recommended daily allowance is anywhere between 360 and 410 milligrams for adults. You can find higher levels of magnesium in pumpkin and chia seeds (150mg and 110mg per serving, respectively). More common sources include various nuts and beans, although they require more serving sizes.

Just as I tell my sleep coaching clients, timing is everything when it comes to helping you get the sleep you deserve.

It is highly recommended that you get it during the day and not in the afternoon. Vitamin D signals the brain that it is the start of the day, which helps time the melatonin release at night. Going back to the car analogy, it would be like throwing the timing off of fuel going into the pistons for spark ignition: you get a backfire result. Nighttime vitamin D can trick the body into thinking it’s not time for that melatonin release. Magnesium an hour before bedtime can help prevent restless legs and relax your mind.

Keep this dynamic duo in mind when you want to eat your way to good sleep.