The Right Foods for Better Sleep

December 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment

The food you eat not only affect to the quality of your health, but also on how well you sleep. Some foods can make your sleeping time better. While others can make sleep difficult or even impossible.

Foods that able to help you sleep weel include fruits, green leafy vegetables, whole grain breads and cereals, and mushrooms. Even spices such as dill, sage and basil help with sleep problems.

Drinking milk before bedtime, a common method to aid sleep, is actually effective. Milk actually contains tryptophan, which can be converted to serotonin, the hormone that controls sleep. Honey, turkey, egg whites and tuna also contain tryptophan, which are good night time snacks.

In contrast, caffeine-rich food and beverages should be avoided right before going to bed. This includes coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, soft drinks and some medications. Some foods that are rich in tyramine can also affect sleep. Tyramine actually causes the release of a substance that stimulates the brain keeping you awake. This is found in bacon, cheese, sugar, ham or tomatoes.

Spicy foods, on the other hand, may cause gastrointestinal reflux or heartburn. While sweet or greasy foods can also cause indigestion and bloating. And though alcohol can make you sleepy, it actually upsets sleep patterns later in the night resulting to frequent waking in the night to urinate.

Even how much and when you eat affect sleep patterns. It is best to keep the last meal of the day light. Eating too much or heavy meals before sleeping may cause indigestion, heartburn and discomfort. It is recommended to start with a hearty breakfast, the main meal of the day around noon, and a light supper early in the evening.

You may also take vitamins and supplements to aid sleep. Calcium and magnesium helps induce sleep. Calcium-rich foods include milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, sardines, salmon, broccoli, tofu, egg, and calcium-fortified food. Magnesium is found in nuts, almonds, cashews, beans, and spinach. Vitamins B6 and B12 are often beneficial and used in the treatment of insomnia. Some of the foods that contain Vitamin B6 are liver, meat, brown rice, fish, butter, wheat germ, whole grain cereals, and soybeans. Foods rich in Vitamin B12 include some plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals.

Be careful on what foods you eat. It can directly affect the way you sleep. By improving your eating habits, you will have a better chance at a good night’s sleep.

Posted by N. A. Hilal | Filed Under Blog, Foods 

Avoid Fast Food, Snacks, and Soft Drink, Buy Fruits Instead

December 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

It’s a public secret that gaining weight is easy, but on the other way losing it is damned hard. Eating is one of the true pleasures in life and refraining from food has huge physical and psychological implications that cannot be easily discarded.Nobody likes to have to give up a pleasure, which is why many people drift farther and farther into fat without doing anything to stop the process. Moreover, recent data showed that the body does not respond to diets as doctors thought it should. The body has to adapt to changes and diets are seen as lean periods that should be offset by making fat harder to burn. While the body is certainly the most complex instrument we posses in our lives, it cannot discern between actual lean times and diets.

Another problem for the body is the widespread use of fast food, snacks and soft drinks. Fast food always fools us, despite the fact that one giant burger is the caloric equivalent of an entire meal, it continue encourage our stomach into call for more. And as known by most of us, the giant burger is not usually enough to fill the stomach of an adult person, so most people eat more than one and wash it down with soft drinks that are little more than sugared water. This is an unfortunate way of eating, since the body gets far more than it needs from burgers and soft drinks. The largely sedentary lifestyles led by most urban residents mean that the excess calories will certainly be stored as fat.

By bringing in too much calories, snacks are another threat to a healthy life. The correct option for between meals snacks is to buy fruit. Sure, it may not taste as good, especially if one is used to chips or other types of snacks, but one or two bananas or some apples are far better for one’s health. A very important point is to remember that habits can be kicked just as easily as they take root. By ignoring the temptation of chips you will gradually lose interest in them and get used to fruit. Once chips are no longer a staple of your diet, you will find yourself wondering what was so good about them anyway.

Posted by N. A. Hilal | Filed Under Blog, Foods 

“Good” Cholesterol Vs “Bad” Cholesterol

April 7, 2008 | 1 Comment

Do you ever try to scan every product available in your local grocery? You will find that majority of that product is labeled as …-free, i don’t mean it is ‘free of charge’ but it’s mentioned as is bromate-free, fat-free, cholesterol-free, preservative-free, etc. You see?

This is not absolutely bad, but we have to be more concern about the foods we consume and the nutrients that we get from them, and that was recommended by health experts. Please note, not everything that is –free is good for our health. Our body need certain substances to run well. Let us take a look at cholesterol for example. Really simply defined, cholesterol is a fatty substance that occurs naturally in the blood, cell walls and most body tissues. Cholesterol is made by the liver, and it enters the body via foods rich in saturated fat.

There are two kind of cholesterol: the good and bad cholesterol. Why they mentioned as the good cholesterol because it is needed for certain important body functions, but cholesterol also has an bad side. If the bad cholesterol present in excessive amounts in our body, it can injure blood vessels, then cause heart attacks and stroke.

Low density lipoprotein (LDL) is the “evil” cholesterol. This is the form in which cholesterol is carried into the blood and is the main cause of dangerous fatty buildup in arteries. The higher the LDL cholesterol levels in the blood, the higher the heart disease risk.
On the other side, high density lipoprotein (HDL) is the “good” cholesterol. This “good” cholesterol carries blood cholesterol back to the liver, where it can be eliminated. HDL helps prohibit a cholesterol buildup in blood vessels. Low HDL levels increase heart disease risk.

Before going into cholesterol deprivation program, You should mention that cholesterol is needed for human life. It develops and repairs cell, it is needed to produce sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, it is converted to bile acids to help you digest food and it is found in large amounts in important organ such as brain.

Posted by N. A. Hilal | Filed Under Blog, Foods