Book of Days Tales

The Friday of the second full week in March is World Sleep Day, a day set aside for consideration of the importance of getting adequate sleep regularly. I am writing this post at 2 am which you might think is an indicator that I do not get enough sleep. I do. But I do my best writing between 1 am and 8 am when the world around me is generally quiet and peaceful.

When I was a boy, in the 1950s, the general rule was that it was bad for you to eat before bedtime, and certain foods were especially to be avoided – notably cheese. The idea, that goes back to Dickensian times, was that you would have bad dreams or disturbed sleep if you ate specific things. Read Christmas Carol (when Scrooge encounters Marley’s ghost): “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Nowadays, nutritionists believe that eating a small amount of nutrient rich (not processed) foods before bed can be beneficial, although they advise against eating right before bed. The list of recommended foods includes white rice, fatty fish, almonds, walnuts, kiwi, and turkey. But . . . they advise against using rich spices and condiments, so you need to be selective. They advise against alcohol and caffeine, but advocate milk. It has always seemed paradoxical to me that it is common in England to drink (usually milky) coffee before bed, and for many people it does appear to be a sleep aid. I avoid caffeine 24/7.

Eating always makes me sleepy for the simple reason that when you have eaten a decent sized meal, blood tends to migrate to the stomach and away from the brain to aid in digestion. Not complicated. It is a fun anatomical fact that the human body does not have enough blood to service all the parts equally all the time, and, so, makes choices by expanding and contracting selected blood vessels. When the brain does not get enough blood you feel sleepy. My go-to option is a handful of nuts because it is simple and there is nothing to clean up afterwards. But you do you. I will confess that sometimes I heat up some leftover rice if I have it. When I cook rice, I always make more than I need at the time because leftovers have myriad uses.

Sweet dreams.