Feeling restless at night? Unable to turn off your mind? or waking up at the same odd hour each night? Sleep is crucial to your overall well-being. Not only does it determine your mood for the day, but your body actually repairs and restores itself at night - a crucial function of the liver. Here I’m going to share some tips on optimizing liver health for improved sleep quality:
1. 'Eat Your Bitter Greens'
The bitter flavour can have a calming effect on the Heart in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM). This organ helps you to get a good night's rest in TCM. The more calm your Heart is, the better your sleep will be. Perfect examples include bitter melon, mustard greens, kale, arugula, or brussels sprouts.
2. Vitamin A & Liver Health
Many clients often complain of having difficulty falling asleep at night. In TCM, this is often seen as an excess of heat in the liver - due to overthinking, overplanning, and overconsidering any potential threats - from work or your personal life.
Eating foods higher in vitamin A, can gently support the liver, nourish it, and help it calm down for a better night’s rest.
The hours of 1AM - 3AM is considered the Liver time. This is when it stores blood, which leads to repairs, and feeling refreshed the next time. Skip this time, or wake up at this time, and it could disrupt optimal rest, and healing.
Vitamin A rich foods include:
Carrots
Sweet potato
Cabbage (kimchi)
Spinach
Milk - I recommend 1 glass of milk before bedtime. You can warm it up.
Butter
Cheese
Egg yolks
3. Reading Or Mini-Meditation Before Bedtime
Again, the issue of overthinking is common amongst many of us. So how do we get out of this cycle, you might wonder? Reading without screens can be less stimulating on the eyes. Bright screens overstimulate the eyes - which has a strong connection to your liver in Chinese Medicine.
5 minutes of reading or meditation can help quiet your mind before sleep. Meditation allows you to process what happened during the day, so your mind doesn't have to wrestle with it all night.
Give it a shot, it only takes 5 minutes.
4. Exercise After Work
Exercising too close to bed time can actually make it harder to calm down and rest at night. After work is a great time to do a quick run, or hit the gym. As you engage your body in physical activity, it takes your mind off work, or problems that you still haven't quite solved yet.
Usually this unnecessary lingering stress is what keeps our minds busy and unable to take a break, making it difficult to fall asleep at night.
Break the cycle of overthinking with regular exercise.
5. Avoid Alcohol, Caffeine, and Late Night Snacks
Alcohol and caffeine are considered heating foods. Excessive heat in the stomach can lead to heart-burn in TCM, and cause discomfort as you try to sleep. Snacking any time after 8pm can lead to poor assimilation of food. As food stagnates in the stomach, not only can this lead to bloating, but also causes discomfort in the upper abdomen and leads to heart burn.
6. Try Acupuncture
Acupuncture is great for many health complaints - and sleep is no exception. This includes getting a better night's rest as points are used to calm the mind, and induce a state of relaxation - again just trying to break the cycle of hyperactive overthinking.
Regardless of the cause, acupuncture treatments are uniquely customized to your body's needs and get down to the root cause of your imbalances.
If you're unsure of what's causing your troubled sleep, feel free to come in for a consultation. You can enjoy some tea, meet the practitioner, discuss your health concerns, and enjoy a nice relaxing acupuncture treatment.