The 5 Best Foods To Eat Before Bed

To give you a better understanding of what you should not eat before going to bed, we gave you a list of the 5 worst foods to eat before bed - that's one you may want to print out and post on the mirror.

Today, however, we turn the tables and give you the 5 best foods to eat before bed.

  Cereal and milk

Obviously sugary cereals are bad. But a healthy combination of carbohydrates and protein helps your body produce hormones that will help you relax before bed. Now that I have this firmly implanted, I will not get onto my son for eating a whole box of Chex before bed ever again.

  Passion fruit

You can eat the raw fruit, or drink passion fruit juice or tea. It contains a chemical called somniferum, which helps bring on sleep. This list did not list or eliminate any other fruits (except the next one on the list). Sometimes I like strawberries or blackberries before bed.

Bananas

They have a lot of magnesium, which is a muscle relaxant. And the potassium can also help regulate sleep patterns. My only problem with this is that I will more than likely add this to ice cream or frozen yogurt. I might even combine these with the cereal and milk.

  Cherry juice

It has extremely high levels of melatonin, a chemical in the brain that helps you relax. A recent study in a journal of nutrition found that people who drank two glasses of cherry juice a day slept an average of 39 minutes longer than usual.

 Warm milk

This one might have more to do with the fact that it's warm, as opposed to any chemicals in the milk. So non-caffeinated tea would work just as well, if you don't load it up with sugar. How many times have you heard this from older people that this is almost a nightly ritual to have their glass of warm milk before calling it a night.

So in a nutshell, you need to be careful on what you have before bedtime. Set a schedule. Remind yourself that say after 8p.m. you will not allow yourself to have anything in the 'no' list but maybe once in awhile, allow something in the 'yes' list.