Home
Newsletter
Events
Blogs
Reports
Graphics
RSS
About Us
Support
Write for Us
Media Info
Advertising Info
Insomnia

I have sleeping problems, are there any herbs or foods that help with insomnia?

Tuesday, October 19, 2004
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: insomnia, sleep disorders, melatonin


Most Viewed Articles
https://www.naturalnews.com/001973.html
Delicious
diaspora
Print
Email
Share

A reader asks, "Are there any foods, vitamins, herbs, etc, that can help with insomnia? I've had sleeping problems for years, and I would really appreciate any kind of useful information."

With insomnia, it all basically boils down to endocrine system imbalances. Sleep is a physiological function that is controlled by hormones, and these hormones are of course released by endocrine system glands according to a natural cycle. A person who is having trouble sleeping is merely experiencing a disruption in this natural cycle.

To answer this question, it is helpful to look at what promotes healthy sleep cycles in the first place. Perhaps the single most important influencing factor in setting these cycles is exposure to natural sunlight. In fact, simply getting natural sunlight during the day often corrects the problem outright. I know it sounds simple, but exposure to sunlight is fundamental to healthy sleep cycles.

A lot of this, of course, has to do with the production and suppression of melatonin, which is also called the sleep hormone. Melatonin levels normally rise at night, and peak during sleep. Once a person wakes up and goes outside to get natural sunlight exposure, melatonin levels are suppressed. This tells the body that daylight is here, and that we should be awake and alert during the day.

But when a person avoids sunlight -- if they have an office job and only get fluorescent light or other forms of artificial light during the day -- these melatonin levels are not suppressed during the day. They remain unnaturally high, and this tells the body that it may still be night. This is why a lot of people tend to feel drowsy during the day or have a lack of energy, and subsequently, they can't sleep at night either. It's all due to the unnaturally high levels of melatonin during the day which cause unnaturally low levels at night time as well.

So once again, the most effective strategy is to get sunlight --- to suppress those melatonin levels during the day and let them come back strong at night. If you live in a climate where you can't get a lot of natural sunlight, you can help yourself through the use of light boxes. However, light boxes are not a replacement for natural sunlight. In fact, nothing comes close to the intensity of light you receive from the sun. Even high-powered light boxes only provide a fraction of the light energy of natural sunlight. So make sure you get natural sunlight on your skin. And by the way, getting it through a window is not the same as getting it outdoors. Windows filter out ultraviolet light, so you have to expose your skin to direct sunlight.

(This is why many of the kings and queens in European history went mad, by the way: they wanted to keep their skin pale by avoiding sunlight. Nearly all royals were chronically deficient in vitamin D -- and that causes schizophrenia, depression, aggression and other mental disorders...)

There could be other problems causing insomnia as well. You might have low melatonin production. Maybe you're getting sunlight during the day, but at night your body isn't producing melatonin in the way that it should. A shortcut to solving this is to take melatonin supplements. These are available at health food stores or vitamin shops online. Melatonin supplements should be taken an hour or so before bedtime, and they will typically help people sleep more soundly.

But understand this is just a stop-gap measure. If your body isn't producing melatonin, there's something imbalanced in your system, and you need to get back to the fundamentals of health in order to recreate an environment in which your body will naturally produce the required levels of melatonin that support healthy, sound sleep.


Receive Our Free Email Newsletter

Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.




About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

comments powered by Disqus



Natural News Wire (Sponsored Content)

Science.News
Science News & Studies
Medicine.News
Medicine News and Information
Food.News
Food News & Studies
Health.News
Health News & Studies
Herbs.News
Herbs News & Information
Pollution.News
Pollution News & Studies
Cancer.News
Cancer News & Studies
Climate.News
Climate News & Studies
Survival.News
Survival News & Information
Gear.News
Gear News & Information
Glitch.News
News covering technology, stocks, hackers, and more