It's often recommended that you should stop drinking water two hours before going to bed. This way, you're not flooding your body with extra fluids that may cause an unwanted trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
When You're Drinking Too Much Water. In most people, with normal kidney function, drinking too much water can irritate your bladder increasing the risk of urine leakage. As fluid intake increases, the amount of urine made will increase along with it.
Should You Drink Water Before Bed? – Dr.Berg On Water Before Sleep
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What should you not do before bed?
Don't drink caffeine-containing beverages (coffee, tea, soft drinks) after dinner. Don't eat heavy or spicy food in the evening. Don't eat late evening meals or drink large quantities of liquids in the evening. Don't watch TV, eat, or read in bed.
Foods include: whole-grain bread, pasta, crackers and brown rice. Foods include: peanut butter and nuts such as walnuts, almonds, cashews and pistachios. Foods include: spinach, nuts, seeds, avocados and black beans. Beverages include: warm milk and herbal teas such as chamomile or peppermint.
Milk (and other dairy products) are a really good source of tryptophan. It's an amino acid that can help promote sleep, so it can come in particularly handy especially if you're used to tossing and turning before finally getting off to sleep.
Carbohydrate-rich snacks may be best, experts say, because these foods likely increase the level of sleep-inducing tryptophan in the blood. Protein, on the other hand, is more difficult to digest (although you can get away with a small piece of cheese or a dab of peanut butter).
According to Lauren Popeck, RD, a dietitian at Orlando Health, Greek yogurt is perfect for bedtime, because it contains the sleep-inducing chemical tryptophan. And because it's such a rich source of protein, Greek yogurt can also help you avoid that same glucose spike.
Milk taken from cows in the evening (hence the name “night milk”) supposedly should have the most positive affects as a sleep aid. The major benefits of drinking milk before bed include healthy proteins and amino acids that assist your body in getting a completely uninterrupted satisfying night's sleep.
While cheese is generally considered a comfort food, it is actually one of the worst foods to eat before bed. Strong or aged cheese, as well as preserved meats such as bacon, ham and pepperoni, contains naturally high levels of the amino acid, tyramine, which make us feel alert.
1. Cherries. Cherries (especially sour cherries like the Montmorency variety) are one of the only (and highest) natural food sources of melatonin. Studies have shown a boost in circulating melatonin after consumption of cherries, though sweet cherries have half the melatonin content as sour cherries.
Eggs and fish are higher melatonin-containing food groups in animal foods, whereas in plant foods, nuts are with the highest content of melatonin. Some kinds of mushrooms, cereals and germinated legumes or seeds are also good dietary sources of melatonin.
