When it comes to getting the nutrients you need to keep your body and sleep healthy, remember this: food first. There’s no guarantee that your body is going to readily assimilate the vitamin C from a supplement just because the pill bottle says it’s in there. Your cells and healthy gut bacteria are more likely to play nicely with real food than any fancy supplement. So what should you be eating to ensure a great night’s rest? Here are some of the most important good-sleep nutrients and the best foods to find them in: With selenium, a little bit can go a long way. Great sources are Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, beef, oysters, chicken, and cremini mushrooms. Excellent sources of vitamin C are superfoods like camu camu berry, amla berry, and acerola cherry, as well as more everyday foods like bell peppers, green leafy vegetables, kiwifruit, strawberries, citrus fruits, and papaya. Tryptophan is found in turkey, chicken, eggs, sweet potatoes, chia seeds, hemp seeds, bananas, pumpkin seeds, almonds, and yogurt. Leafy greens, potatoes, dulse (a mineral-rich sea veggie), broccoli, cremini mushrooms, and avocados are excellent sources of potassium. If you love guacamole, this is probably the best news ever. Great sources of bioavailable calcium are kale, collard greens, mustard greens, sardines, sea veggies, and sesame seeds. There are a few food sources of vitamin D, such as swordfish, salmon, tuna, mackerel, shiitake mushrooms, and oysters, but the optimal way to get your vitamin D levels up, as the research indicates, is through smart exposure to natural sunlight. Still, it isn’t always possible to get the adequate sunlight we need because of where we live, the protective sunscreen we wear, and the time of year we are outdoors. This would be a smart place to supplement, at least for part of the year, with a high-quality vitamin D3 supplement. Some food sources of omega-3s are chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, halibut, salmon, and flax seeds. Tart cherries are far and away the food source with the highest amount of melatonin, but there is also a trace amount found in walnuts. Some of the foods that have been found to naturally boost your body’s melatonin levels are pineapples (the leader in one particular study), bananas, and oranges. Some of the best sources of vitamin B6 are bananas, yogurt (sugar-free and organic, please!), cashews, peanut butter, almonds, avocados, fish, tomatoes, spinach, sweet potatoes, sea veggies, and eggs. It should go without saying that these foods would ideally be organic and minimally processed. Of course, there are many other foods and nutrients that are important for human health. The great thing about eating real foods is that you’ll get a whole host of other nutrients that come along with the ones above—all in a delicious, bioavailable form. Related reads:
