Do you have trouble getting your zzz’s every night? Is it affecting your everyday life? Do you often feel like you are dragging the next day? You are not alone

According to the sleep foundation, when you sleep, the body undergoes changes that enable rest which is important to our overall health. When we sleep well our brain and bodies slow down, so that we may recover, promote better physical and mental performance for the next day and over the long-term.

Lack of or disturbed sleep can affect your health in many ways, it could be emotional and same physically as well. Some of the side effects of disturbed sleep are

• Negatively affects your memory
• Negatively affects your concentration
• Negatively affects your mood
• Higher risk for depression
• Higher risk for obesity
• Higher risk for type 2 diabetes
• Higher risk for heart disease
• Higher risk for high blood pressure

Let’s now take a look at some of the natural remedies to help to start sleep more/better-Have a drink…there are some drinks out there that can aid in sleeping.  Such as, warm milk; per the sleep foundation, “A study of adults over age 60 found that drinking fermented milk over the course of three weeks reduced nighttime waking’s.”  This is due to milk having the amino acid tryptophan, which is known to help assist in sleeping.

Another popular drink that can be used to aid in sleep is chamomile tea.  This is due to it containing apigenin, which is an antioxidant that binds to receptors in your brain.  These receptors help promote sleeplessness, reduce insomnia, or the chronic inability to sleep.

Finally with the drinks, next is one of my favorites (and I made a batch of it with a cold press juicer recently), tart cherry.  Tart cherry juice contains both tryptophan and melatonin, which both are known to help aid in sleep. Not only does tart cherry juice can help with sleep it has many other health benefits such as, improve muscle recovery, reduce pain, reduce blood pressure, cancer prevention, and improve memory/brain health.  So you can see with all these health benefits, why tart cherry juice is one of my favorites when combatting insomnia.

If having a nightly drink doesn’t help, try exercise; physical activity can improve sleep- moderate aerobic exercise boosts the amount of nourishing slow wave (deep) sleep you get.  HOWEVER, limit the time because aerobic exercise can also release endorphins that can keep you awake and raise your body temperature. I wouldn’t work out less than two hours before bed.

Next, I want to examine melatonin supplements, per the NIH “Melatonin is a hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness. It helps with the timing of your circadian rhythms (24-hour internal clock) and with sleep. Being exposed to light at night can block melatonin production.” Some people prefer to take this supplement over some of these other methods.

With that, sometimes you just need to go dark, invest and use blackout curtains. Leave no lights on, and even use a flashlight if you need to get up in the middle of the night as putting on the lights will make it more difficult to go back to sleep.

These are just some of the many things to help you sleep better, and of course a subject that will be revisited over and over again because it hits all the subjects we like here, mental, nutrition, and fitness health. And it’s always good just to sleep, well.