Tasty Treats For Sweet Dreams
These 7 foods are proven to help you sleep deeply
The brain depends on a complex array of nutrients to ensure peaceful, uninterrupted slumber. If you’re struggling to fall asleep at night, here are seven foods that you should eat 1 to 4 hours before bed to sleep more soundly.
- Spinach: The beauty of spinach is that it’s rich in magnesium and calcium. The former helps relax the nerves and muscles, while the latter helps the brain use tryptophan to manufacture melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone.
- Nutritional yeast: eating just 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast contains more than the full daily value (DV) for vitamin B12 and 480% of the DV for vitamin B6. Studies have found significant correlations between B12 and duration of sleep, while B6 helps boost serotonin levels, which, when depleted, disrupt sleep.
- Hummus: Like spinach, chickpeas are rich in the sleep-induced amino acid tryptophan.
- Almond butter: Almonds and other nuts are very high in magnesium and rich in sleep-promoting tryptophan. They’re also high in potassium, which can significantly increase sleep efficiency and decrease awakenings after falling asleep, and B vitamins, which promote restful sleep.
- Cherries: One study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food found that tart cherry juice was as effective as the sleep herb valerian. Sweet cherries are also high in melatonin and may have many of the same sleep-promoting effects.
- Kiwis: Apparently theses flavorful vitamin bombs are rich in sleep-promoting phytochemicals, along with antioxidants. Studies show that poor sleep is linked with lower levels of antioxidants.
- Organic corn: This food is rich in carbs, and carbs stimulate insulin, which indirectly makes tryptophan more available. In short, eating some organic corn can set you up for some good sleep.
Need ideas for how to work these foods into your diet? Look no further.
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Addressing Anxiety
How to be a resource for someone who is struggling
Anxiety is the most common mental health problem in the U.S., so we at the Optimist Daily are big on sharing stories on stress reduction, from foods that help to meditation methods. If you have never experienced anxiety yourself, it can be difficult to understand what a friend or family member is experiencing, but this does not mean you can’t help. This week we are sharing an article from PsychAlive with a couple simple tips for helping someone who is struggling with anxiety, so you can be a support system for those you love.
Reaching out and asking if a friend is okay is a big first step for helping someone who may not be comfortable asking. Be sure to listen carefully, and assure them that you are there to listen. Let them know it’s perfectly normal to struggle with anxiousness. Sometimes someone just needs open ears and an open heart.
Lastly, encourage them to consider professional help. While talking to friends and family can be beneficial, reaching out to a therapist can help people break through the root of their anxiety.
The stigma surrounding mental health can make it difficult to talk about. Checking in with those around you means you can be a resource for someone who may be struggling in silence, and it helps break the stigma about addressing mental health.
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Fat Bear Week
These rotund bears are the greatest thing you’ll see on the Internet today
Hibernating to skip the cold months of winter may sound lazy, but the fact of the matter is, bears have a lot of work to do to prepare for their long slumber. They have to eat, then eat some more, and then eat a little more. Well, basically they just eat nonstop until they look giant stuffed teddy bears. The result of all this eating is quite frankly amazing, which is why the employees of Katmai National Park in Alaska created Fat Bear Week: a whole week to honor the brown bears that have grown the fattest over summer.
Since 2014, Katmai National Park asks people online around this time of year to vote, March Madness-style, on which bear has grown the fattest over the summer. Between now and Tuesday, October 8, the park will post picture match-ups of bear pairs on its Facebook page. And you, loyal citizen, get to choose which one looks fattest.
To be clear, this is not about fat-shaming, a press release from Katmai insists. It’s a celebration of life. After all, “large amounts of body fat in brown bears is indicative of good health and strong chances of survival” over the winter.
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Do you need to say NO more?
6 signs you need to say NO from time to time
Saying “no” to a request is understandably difficult. We either want to help, want to be liked, want to accommodate a friend’s request, or we fear we may upset someone we care about. That’s why we’re naturally inclined to say yes when it comes to people we care about or things we are truly interested in.
But if your schedule is already filled with work, obligations, chores, deadlines, and community events, you may be doing more harm to yourself the more you say yes to requests. If you are overstretched with different demands, you may start feeling exhausted and overly tired. Even worse, you won’t be able to perform your best at everything.
Needless to say, being helpful and willing is generally a good thing. We may feel more satisfied with ourselves and create stronger relations with others, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of our own well-being. How do we know when to say no then?
These 6 signs may tell us that we need to start saying “no” more often:
You feel exhausted, overworked or burnt out.
You lack time, energy or money for things that matter the most.
Your quality of work is starting to deteriorate.
You’re unfulfilled.
You regularly feel angry or resentful.
Your health (physical or emotional) is starting to suffer.
When you are starting to feel overcommitted, sometimes you need to take a step back and say no from time to time. You will feel less stressed and start to feel you are taking back control of your life.
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