5 December 2007 — Japanese dairy company Nakazawa Foods in October of this year launched a super-premium milk product called “Adult Milk” in the U.S. The company is targeting today’s stressed-out adults in the need for sleep.

Adult Milk is priced at 5,000 yen a bottle, which is nearly 30 times as expensive as ordinary milk.

According to Nakazawa, the milk is taken from cows once a week at the break of dawn, very soon after they have discharged a lot of a stress-relieving hormone called melatonin during the night. The milk is then bottled within 6 hours of milking at a farm near Tokyo.

The company says that Adult Milk contains 3 to 4 times as much melatonin as ordinary milk.

According to a 2006 National Sleep Foundation poll, 68 percent of American adults don’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep needed for good health, safety, and optimum performance. For those of you who have ever experienced a few sleepless nights in a row you are likely familiar with the feeling of desperation that sets in as you struggle to function during the following day.

Why do we Sleep?

For an activity that takes up one-third of our lives, little is known about sleep and humans. It’s known, for example, that during the deepest phases of sleep, growth hormone is released, energy is restored and the immune system is strengthened, and during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep we have vivid dreams which may be the result of our brains working on consolidating memories.

Further, a study published in Nature magazine found that our brain restructures new memories during sleep, helping us to solve problems and become more insightful. However, how and why this occurs, and how we’ve evolved to thrive off of a certain amount of sleep each night is largely unknown.

While it was once thought that our brains were inactive or dormant during sleep, it’s now known that they are very active during sleep and require the activity of special nerve cells just to maintain a state of sleep. The effects of sleep on our physical and mental health are only just beginning to be understood.

Insomnia’s Effects on Your Health

What is known about sleep is that when we don’t get enough of it there are serious consequences to our physical and mental health. Insomnia, which can occur intermittently or for several days or months at a time, is classified as:

• Difficulty falling asleep
• Waking frequently during the night
• Waking too early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep
• Waking feeling un-refreshed
Insomnia will affect your hormone levels and accelerate aging and has been named as the culprit in a variety of diseases including:
• obesity
• depression
• diabetes
• cancer

If you’re one of the nearly two-thirds of Americans who have trouble in the sack — sleeping, that is — you are one of that not-very-elite group being targeted not only by the Japanese, but by all of the pharmaceutical companies. Valium, Ambien, Provigil, Klonopin, Trazodone, Requip, Sonata, Mirapex, Halcion, Doral, Dalmane, ProSom… how many of us have not heard of at least one or two of these?

So what can be done to help me sleep besides ingesting the Adult Milk or the drugs listed above? Believe it or not, there are some food remedies that can help.

While studying in college in the 1970s, one of my professors recognized that serotonin, a neurotransmitter that crosses the blood/brain barrier relaxing the dendrites in the brain, helping an individual sleep. Serotonin is produced by the breakdown of tryptophan in foods in the neural system. It is especially prevalent in milk, hence the old tradition of warm milk before bed. In the process of her work, she also noticed that if milk was ingested with a sugar/simple carbohydrate source, that the action of the serotonin was enhanced. Think warm milk with cookies, oatmeal with a little maple syrup, cold cereal and milk. Her conclusion; then, was to be sure to have a little sugar with the milk, and in my experience, it works.

While working as a commercial fisherman in Alaska many years ago we would work for 21 hours at a time and then have to “sleep fast.” My body was moving at twice its normal rate, and I found it difficult to sleep for the first month. Finally I remembered her research and began eating a bowl of boxed cereal each night before bed. I fell asleep within 15 minutes and slept through.

Other foods that contain tryptophan are: cheese, potatos, seafood, sesame seeds, oatmeal, apricots, bananas and turkey.

Another food therapy for insomnia is to eat magnesium-rich foods, as magnesium is a natural sedative. Deficiency of magnesium can result in difficulty sleeping, constipation, muscle tremors or cramps, anxiety, irritability and pain. It has also been use for people with restless leg syndrome.

Foods rich in magnesium are legumes and seeds, dark leafy green vegetables, wheat bran, almonds, cashews, blackstrap molasses, brewer’s yeast and whole grains.

Chamomile tea has also proven to be a wonderful sleep aid for me. I make a nice “cuppa” before bed and sip half of it while relaxing in my room. I leave the other half on the bedstand for midnight (or 4 a.m.) emergencies. It seems that when I do awaken in the middle of the night, a few sips of the tea puts me right back into dreamland.

Non-ingestible remedies are also effective, such as lavender. The scent of English lavender has long been used as a folk remedy to help people fall asleep. Research is starting to confirm lavender’s sedative qualities. It’s been found to lengthen total sleep time, increase deep sleep, and make people feel refreshed. It appears to work better for women, possibly because women tend to have a more acute sense of smell.

The good thing about lavender is that it begins to work quickly. Try putting a lavender sachet under your pillow or place one to two drops of lavender essential oil in a handkerchief. Or add several drops of lavender oil to a bath — the drop in body temperature after a warm bath also helps with sleep. Other aromatherapy oils believed to help with sleep are chamomile and ylang ylang.

Of course, you could cut out caffeine. Caffeine can have a pronounced effect on sleep, causing insomnia and restlessness. In addition to coffee, tea, and soft drinks, look for hidden sources of caffeine such as chocolate, cough and cold medicine, and other over-the-counter medicine. Even a cup of coffee taken at 2 p.m. can contribute to a night of poor sleep.

And finally, of course, lack of exercise can contribute to poor sleep. Muscle tension and stress build in the body. Exercise can promote deep sleep that night. However, intense exercise too close to bed can increase adrenaline levels, leading to insomnia.

Beliefs and stress can also contribute to sleepless nights.  More on that at another time.
If you have some of your own tried and tested remedies, please e-mail me as I am always on the lookout for methods and foods especially, that help in the promotion and the maintenance of a good night’s sleep.

In the meantime, here’s hoping you have a very “Good-night Mary Ellen, Good-night John Boy….”

Laurel Robinson has a degree in Dietetics and is a Master NLP Practitioner. Currently she teaches weight-loss and seasonal cleanse classes. She also works as a psychologist and life coach from her office on Colorado Avenue. Call 708-0356 or e-mail laurelmrob@yahoo.com.