Natural Sleep Aids: Home Remedies to Help You Sleep

4 mins to read

Explore some simple natural sleep aids or home remedies that can help you get the optimum sleep your body needs.

Stress relief & sleep supportWellbeing news

It can be difficult to get to sleep in a world of digital distractions and busy social lives, and some of us turn to working more than one job to meet the rising cost of living. Being so busy and time-poor can lead us to turn to fast fixes such as medications or alcohol when we can’t get to sleep. However, there are many remedies readily accessible in our own homes to help us transition into a mode of relaxation and eventually to sleep. You may be surprised at how effective these home remedies can be, and you won’t know until you try them.

Warm bath

There is interesting science behind the research that suggests a warm bath or shower an hour or two before bedtime can help you unwind and promote faster sleep. Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist and sleep specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses this on an NPR's Life Kit podcast episode on better sleep rituals. According to Walker, core body temperature needs to drop to initiate good sleep and then maintain deep sleep. A warm bath helps the body to lower body temperature, as the hands and feet then help to radiate the heat out of the core of the body to the surface of the body.

A warm cup of warm milk before bed

It seems it’s not just babies who can fall asleep better to a drink of warm milk. The Sleep Foundation reports that there is scientific evidence to suggest that consuming warm milk before bed may encourage a good night’s sleep. A commonly cited reason for milk’s ability to induce sleep is because it contains the amino acid tryptophan. Interestingly, milk contains the highest levels of tryptophan, which is something the body doesn’t produce naturally and that we need to obtain from food such as milk. Tryptophan plays an important role in the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, cognitive reasoning, and memory. Serotonin gets converted to melatonin, a hormone released by the body in response to darkness, which induces sleep. According to Sleep Advisor, to aid digestion, warm milk is better than cold milk and adding honey to it may help too. Sleep Advisor also states that milk with higher fat content will help the body to produce more tryptophan.

Teas

The great thing about settling yourself in with a cup of tea is this very act itself is a relaxing ritual that can aid in transitioning to a calmer state conducive to sleep. While teas may not exactly help put you to sleep, they can promote relaxation and help put you in the right state of mind to better prepare you for sleep. Avoid teas that contain caffeine and try not to drink them too close to bedtime to prevent toilet trips in the middle of the night. The Sleep Foundation recommends the following teas that can help promote a relaxed state: -Chamomile: -Valerian -Lavender -Magnolia Bark -Passionflower -Lemon Balm

Listen to a sound bath

Sound healing has been around for a long time and was an ancient therapy used in countries such as Greece and India and, for example, with Aboriginal Australians, with the production of the sounds from their didgeridoos. During a sound bath, you are bathed in the sounds of instruments such as percussion, turning forks, chimes, gongs, Tibetan singing bowls and crystal singing bowls. Buddhist monks have long used Tibetan singing bowls for meditation. The singing bowls vary in size and shape, and so when they are hit, they produce different sounds of deep sound vibrations. According to Cleveland Clinic, these vibrations correspond to different energy centres that may be out of balance. The theory is that the sound bath frequencies can help to correct the imbalance of these energy centres and, in this way, heal the body. The great thing about sound baths is that it is quite an effortless activity, which is the whole idea behind it, for you to feel completely relaxed. You can either sit in a comfortable position or lie down as you listen to the sounds that work to induce calm and relaxation. This will allow the mind to switch off and start the journey to sleep. There are many apps, as well as YouTube sound bath recordings, that you can access, although it can be highly beneficial to experience one in person.

Meditation

We sleep better when the mind and body are free from tension. Meditation is an effective practice that can help settle the mind and body so that they can unwind and help you drift off to sleep. According to Headspace, meditation helps lower the heart rate, activating the parasympathetic nervous system and encouraging slower breathing. The act of meditating trains us to become present at the moment, to recognise distracting thoughts, but to let them go. All this contributes to helping us to let go of all the things that have happened in our day and to have a more peaceful mind. There are many ways of meditating, but the key is to have a relaxed focus on something that can bring you into the present moment and help you stay there, away from any distracting, worrying thoughts. This can be done lying down or sitting, with the eyes closed. A guided meditation on an app or YouTube can be helpful and make it less of an effort for you. Otherwise, you may find that even meditation in stillness, in a dimly lit room, is highly beneficial, especially if you work in a busy and noisy environment during the day.

Yoga or stretching

Yoga often incorporates meditation and can be considered a meditative practice in itself. It is now well known to aid in relaxation and destressing, physically and mentally. This can support a better passage to sleep, and one of the key ways that yoga does this is through the breath. The focus on the breath helps to draw attention away from worries or intrusive thoughts, to help relieve tension and become more present in the moment. Yoga introduces breathing techniques often linked with poses, creating almost a rhythmic and meditative dance between the breath and movement, thereby creating awareness and slowdown of the breath and the body. All yoga sessions will end with Corpse Pose, as the name suggests, where you lie like a corpse, during which the teacher often guides you through meditation. Another helpful yoga pose is the Legs Up the Wall pose, where you lie down with your legs up the wall with the hamstrings and calves flat against the wall, feet relaxed and arms comfortably resting at your sides, palms up. Yoga also involves stretching, which, according to the Hospital for Special Surgery, can help improve blood flow and relieve muscle tension to help the body's muscles relax. There’s no need to know how to do certain eloquent yoga poses to reap the benefits of better sleep. You can start with a beginner’s yoga class that will run you through some very basic but effective poses that will help you feel relaxed. According to John Hopkins Medicine, certain styles of yoga are better to practice before sleep, such as hatha yoga and nidra. Whereas you would avoid invigorating yoga styles such as vinyasa.