Hi everyone,

Lately I have been having horrible nights of sleep, as in that I wake up during the night and can't really fall asleep again or if I do it seems to be very superficial sleep. It feels as if I can't get into deep sleep anymore once I have woken up during the night.
Sometimes this seems to affect my muscles, brain and stomach as well. The strange thing is that once I get up I feel tired for a bit, then it goes away, until evening comes and feel very tired early on the evening.

I was looking up all kinds of foods that contain melatonin and I noticed that a lot of them are foods that I eat in the morning or during the day (walnuts, oranges, oat, bananas) so I was wondering if it matters WHEN you eat these foods to enhance sleep?

Any other suggestions to enhance sleep are very welcome. As extra info I would like to state that I normally have no problem at all falling asleep, that usually happens in 5-10min.

edit: I also wanted to add the fact that I've introduced raw cacao to my diet lately and was wondering if this could have anything to do with my sleeping problems?

Yes it matters, MEL has a plasma half life of 40min. 2 hours and it's bascially gone.


Working out very hard. Or Valarian, time released MEL caps, doxylamine (very vivid dreams at the end of the night)


Leave it away for a week or two, because xanthines. There are other antioxidants that don't affect sleep.

I had insomnia for years. I sleep pretty good now with occasional bad night of sleep like anyone else. I can list a few things that helped me.

Bed is for sleeping and sex only. Don't eat or read or do anything else in bed. This will program your mind once you lay down that it is time to shutdown.

Install a blue light filter on your computer and/or tablet or other devices. I use f.lux which is free. https://justgetflux.com/

Meditate before bed for 10 mins or so.

Don't ingest any caffeine past noon. Or avoid caffeine all together.

Breathright strips

Get a really nice comfortable pillow. This helped me immediately.

If you wake up in the middle of the night get up and read or something until your tired again. Sometimes just a midnight snack can help you get back to sleep.

Remember that even if you are not sleeping well. You are still resting. Try and enjoy just laying there if you can. Good time to meditate and not follow thoughts.

Good luck with all that. There is no magic cure. Some things work for some and not others. I tried all sorts of things over the years and these helped me the most.

Thanks for the good advice. I already had the l.flux thing on my pc, now I have it on my smartphone as well. Didn't know it was available as app too.

A new pillow would be a good idea, since I have had this one for several years already.