Is Drinking A Glass Of Warm Milk An Effective Insomnia Aid Or An Old Wives’ Tale?
When somebody is suffering from insomnia it’s inevitable that a friend or family member will recommend that drinking a glass of warm milk before bedtime is a good insomnia aid. If you’re one of those individuals having difficulty sleeping I’m sure you’d like to know if this is true or is it an old wives’ tale? And the answer is, it depends! There really are 2 schools of thought and warm milk may or may not be an effective insomnia aid, it simply depends on how much warm milk you’ll be able to drink.
The theory is that the same chemical that we all think makes us sleepy when we eat turkey, tryptophan, is also found in milk. But the idea that the tryptophan in turkey makes us sleepy is also an urban legend. Whereas it’s true that tryptophan will have an impact on our sleep, it’s only the first phase of sleep where it makes a difference, the phase where you are just getting sleepy. In fact, an excessive amount of tryptopah, taken in a supplement form, can have adverse effects on the deeper phases of sleep.
In any case, in order to consume enough tryptophan from turkey for it to actually make a difference in your sleeping patterns, you’d have to eat forty pounds of turkey. Therefore you can imagine how much warm milk you’d have to drink before bedtime if you were counting on it to be a good insomnia aid. And I am sure you can also imagine the extreme adverse effects it would have on your sleep patterns because you’d be running to the bathroom all night.
But, studies do indicate that drinking warm milk at bedtime can make you drowsy if it’s part of your normal bedtime routine. Scientists tell us that anything we do on a routine basis can cause a psychological response of some sort. Therefore if you ordinarily drink a glass of warm milk before bedtime, it isn’t actually the milk that makes you drowsy, it’s that your mind has become conditioned to the act of drinking the milk and it knows it is time to start winding down for the day.
One mistake that a lot of individuals with insomnia make is to drink either an alcoholic beverage or a caffeinated beverage just before bedtime. Whereas alcohol may initially make you drowsy, it also interrupts your sleep patterns and causes you to get a restless sleep. And caffeinated beverages are stimulants that will prevent you from even getting drowsy. Both beverages will also make you wake up in the middle of the night because you have to go to the bathroom.
Therefore maybe that old wives’ tale that warm milk is an effective insomnia aid isn’t so far off the mark after all. Try substituting a glass of warm milk for that glass of wine or brandy, and especially that sugary, caffeinated soda, as part of your bedtime routine. Just remember though that it’s not how much milk you drink, it’s the fact that you make it part of your bedtime routine.
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