Most replayed moment: Sleep myths that are ruining your rest | Dr Sophie Bostock

Jonathan Wolf (0:01)

Hello, and welcome to ZOE Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Sleep. It's a bizarre process when you think about it. We lie down, close our eyes, and before we know it, we're waking up the next morning with a head full of hazy dreams. Because of its mysterious nature, sleep has long been surrounded by all kinds of strange ideas and theories about what might help or harm it. From cheese causing nightmares to turkey making you sleepy. So today, I'm joined by sleep expert, Sophie Bostock, to separate facts from fiction. She'll debunk common sleep myths and share simple practical tips that you can use tonight to improve your sleep.

Can eating turkey help you get to sleep?

Sophie Bostock (0:50)

The theory here is that I think it's the tryptophan content in the turkey, which supposedly is going to help you sleep. I believe I read some research that suggests that the amount of tryptophan in turkey that we get would not really be enough to influence your sleep. You'd have to consume 50 turkeys or something to really influence that. We've talked a little bit earlier about generally speaking, a healthy unprocessed diet which might include protein, some lean meat is probably going to be good news for sleep. I have not seen any research specifically on turkey that shows that it improves your sleep. What may be happening around Thanksgiving, you have lots of excitement, lots of food as you're relaxing afterwards, you've had a very social occasion.

There's all sorts of things that will reduce your stress response in that environment, perhaps lead to some good sleep. Might not be the turkey.

Jonathan Wolf (1:48)

Cheese, I grew up, everyone told me if you eat cheese before you go to bed, you get nightmares.

Sophie Bostock (1:54)

There was a paper that was published, I think just a month or two ago on this.

It was actually a survey. This was a Canadian study and over a thousand students who got credit for taking part in the survey. They asked them about the foods they ate and whether the people thought they influenced their sleep and their dreams. Out of a thousand people, I think only 1% suggested that dairy influenced their dreams. The study suggested that that population were more likely to be lactose intolerant. Of course, if you're eating something that really doesn't agree with you, it may well disrupt your sleep.

Jonathan Wolf (2:30)

What about supplements? The two supplements that were particularly came up in these questions were melatonin and magnesium.

Sophie Bostock (2:37)

Both quite big topics. Let's tackle magnesium because in a way it's a bit less controversial. I think of magnesium as the Swiss army knife of supplements really. It seems to do a bit of everything. It's involved in hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the body. There's no question that we need it. There's also no question that if we have a generally pretty healthy diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, we will probably get enough magnesium in our diet. What we don't know from the research is whether magnesium has any impact on your sleep if you're not magnesium deficient. There was a study in December last year that looked at magnesium L3 and 8, and that seemed to suggest, yeah, help people fall asleep perhaps 10, 20 minutes faster, improve sleep quality. Anecdotally, I know a lot of people who take magnesium and say it improves their sleep. I think the effects are probably not that strong.

But if it works for you, try it. It's pretty inexpensive. It's pretty difficult to overdose on magnesium. You're just going to excrete it out again. It's one of those where I'm like, well, you may as well experiment with it. Particularly if you are in a population that has experienced quite a lot of chronic stress, because we know that that decreases your storage of magnesium.

Any chronic stressor, and that might mean a lot of exercise or going through menopause, there are certain populations who will be at more risk of magnesium deficiency.

Jonathan Wolf (4:08)

Thank you. What about melatonin?

Sophie Bostock (4:10)

Melatonin in this country, here in the UK, is only available on prescription from your doctor. I know a lot of people listening will be in the US and other parts of the world, where they may well be able to buy it as a supplement over the counter. So the reason that it is only available on prescription here is it's a natural hormone. It's got very few side effects actually relative to other sleeping pills, but it does have physiological effects. So melatonin, we all naturally secrete from the pineal gland in the brain, and if you have regular sleep patterns, regular circadian rhythms, you'll typically release it about an hour and a half to two hours before your normal bedtime.