Kelsey Kinney: Let’s pull this link up because I thought it was an interesting little study here. This was looking at different kids of tropical fruits and their effect on melatonin production. Perfect. There is a picture, so you can see bananas, mango, pineapple, oranges … I don’t know what that berry-looking one is, actually. But, yeah, they found that all of these foods increased melatonin production pretty significantly. Of course, I am a big fan of carbs before bedtime for people with sleep issues as well, so I would probably recommend something along these lines, where you’re getting carbs in the form of a fruit, and then I would probably combine that with some sort of fat as well. Any fruit is fine, at least in terms of a carb source, but these in particular, these tropical fruits, showed that they had a significant impact on the melatonin production. I think pineapple ended up being the best. They increased melatonin by two-and-a-half times, I think, and bananas pretty much doubled it. Oranges didn’t do too hot here. They increased it by 47 percent. So pineapples or bananas. Actually a lot of people don’t tend to eat pineapple as a bedtime snack just because it’s a little harder to cut up and have ready, but bananas are obviously a very, very easy thing to eat right before bed, and I have had a lot of clients that do that. They’ll typically have a banana with some sort of nut butter or coconut butter. I’ve had people combine bananas and olives, which doesn’t sound too delicious to me, but, hey, they do it, and it works really, really well for them. That is potentially a reason why that combination works well. Not only is the carb from the banana helping, but potentially that banana is increasing their melatonin levels as well. That works really well.
So I would say I wouldn’t be relying on food sources of melatonin. I definitely think that training the circadian rhythm is more important than thinking about food as the instigator of melatonin production, but it can help to get that circadian rhythm more entrained, as well, as you’re working on that. So if someone is having trouble falling asleep, obviously that’s going to make them want to wake up later, so it becomes this vicious cycle, and anything that helps you break out of that is worth trying. It’s certainly worth a shot, especially if you want them to be having a bedtime snack anyway, which, if they’re having trouble sleeping, I have found is one of the best ways to really get people to sleep through the night or fall asleep more easily. I hope that helps.