One Simple Trick That Can Make You Sleep Better

How Can Raw Honey Help You Sleep

According to a report published by Aviva last year, 38% of adults in Britain suffer from insomnia.

Insomnia is described as difficulties in falling, or staying, asleep.

Sleep problems contribute to a number of health problems including weight gain, anxiety, low mood, low energy, stress and high blood pressure.

Dr Doug Wright, Medical Director at Aviva, commented, "The last few moments before bed can be crucial in determining how restful our night’s sleep is."

How Can Raw Honey Help You Sleep?

Avoiding caffeine in the evening, reducing screen time at night and eating or drinking the right foods before bed all help achieve a good night's sleep.

Research shows that having foods rich in the amino acid tryptophan helps you sleep.

Tryptophan causes the body to release natural chemicals that relax the mind and help the body sleep.

A 1991 study by the University of Gottingen, Germany, found that tryptophan had a "significant sleep-inducing effect" on humans.

How Can Raw Honey Help You Sleep?

Foods rich in tryptophan include nuts, fish, chicken and milk.

But eating foods rich in tryptophan at bedtime does not by itself induce sleep.

Tryptophan has to first be "activated" by entering the brain. This is where raw honey comes in.

Raw honey in warm organic milk releases a natural substance called serotonin, which helps you sleep.

Raw honey causes a controlled rise in insulin in the body, unlike processed sugars.



This controlled rise in insulin allows tryptophan to enter the brain and induce sleep in the body.

Commercially processed supermarket or pasteurised honey does not have the same effect. It has to be raw honey.

Raw honey also contains the natural sugars fructose and glucose which "feed" your brain throughout the night, helping you stay asleep.

For best results, we recommend taking a teaspoon of raw honey mixed in a glass of warm, not hot, organic milk.

How Can Raw Honey Help You Sleep?
Organic milk is free of hormones that upset the body's natural processes.

The milk should be warmed first before the honey is mixed in. Raw honey must never be heated in a microwave.

Raw honey is deactivated at temperatures above 45C so we recommend that the milk is warm, not hot.

The best honey from our range that we recommend for mixing into warm organic milk at bedtime is our Raw Organic Rainforest Honey From Brazil.

This honey is produced by bees feeding mainly on the pink Mimosa silk tree in the Santa Catarina Brazilian rainforest.

A pharmacoepidemiologic study in Taiwan in 2002 found that the Mimosa tree was the third most commonly prescribed Chinese herbal remedy for treating sleep disorders.

There is scientific basis for the Mimosa tree having a calming effect on the nervous system and it is known in East Asia as the "tree of happiness." 

References

1. "UK adults missing out on 11 hours sleep each week", Aviva UK, 25 October 2018
2. Hajak, Goeran et al. “The influence of intravenous L-tryptophan on plasma melatonin and sleep in men.” Pharmacopsychiatry 24 1 (1991): 17-20.
3. Jung JW et al. Effect of chronic Albizzia julibrissin treatment on 5-hydroxytryptamine1A receptors in rat brain. Pharmacol Biochem Behav . 2005;81(1):205-210.
4. Chen FP et al. Prescriptions of Chinese Herbal Medicines for Insomnia in Taiwan during 2002. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med . 2009 Apr 1
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