Two kiwi fruit an hour before bedtime may improve sleep quality and duration, without the side effects associated with sleeping pills.
Kiwifruit for Insomnia
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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
The number one question in sleep research is “Why do we sleep?”—followed by the question, “How much sleep do we need?” After literally hundreds of studies, we still don’t know the best answer to either question. A few years ago, I featured a large 100,000 person study suggesting that “Both short and long sleep duration were associated with increased mortality,” with people getting around 7 hours of sleep living longest.
Since then, a meta-analysis of all such studies including more than a million people was published, and they found the same thing. We still don’t know, though, if “sleep duration is a cause or simply a marker of ill-health.” Maybe, sleeping too little or too long does make you unhealthy. Or, maybe we see the associated lifespan shortening because being unhealthy causes you to sleep shorter or longer.
Similar work has now been published on cognitive function. After controlling for a long list of factors, men and women in their 50s and 60s getting seven or eight hours appeared to have the best short-term memory, compared to those that got much more, or much less. Same thing was just demonstrated with immune function: “Both reduced and prolonged habitual sleep durations [were] associated with [an] increased risk of pneumonia.”
It’s easy to prevent over-sleeping; set an alarm. But, what if your problem is not getting enough? What if you’re the one in three adults that suffers symptoms of insomnia? Sure, there are drugs, like Valium, you can take for insomnia in the short-term. But, they have a number of adverse side effects. And non-pharmacological approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, are “often difficult,…time-consuming,” and don’t always work. Wouldn’t it be great to have “natural treatments that can improve both sleep onset and help patients improve the quality of sleep while improving next-day symptoms over the long term?”
The “Effect of kiwifruit consumption on sleep quality in adults with sleep problems.” Two kiwifruit an hour before bed, every night, for four weeks. Why study kiwifruits? Well, people with sleep disorders tend to have high “levels of oxidative stress,” so, antioxidant-rich foods might help. But, all fruits and vegetables have antioxidants. Ah, but kiwifruits contain twice the serotonin of tomatoes. But, it really shouldn’t cross the blood/brain barrier. Kiwifruit has folate, and a deficiency might cause insomnia, but, there’s lots more folate in some other plant foods.
The reason they studied kiwifruits is because they got grant money from a kiwifruit company. And, I’m glad they did, because they found some really remarkable results: significantly improved sleep onset, duration, and efficiency using both subjective and objective measurements. Went from sleeping six hours a night to seven, just eating a few kiwifruit.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Lin Xu, Chao Qiang Jiang. Short or Long Sleep Duration Is Associated with Memory Impairment in Older Chinese: the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Sleep 2011 34(5):575-580.
- M. M. Ohayon. Epidemiology of insomnia: What we know and what we still need to learn. Sleep Med Rev 2002 6(2):97-111.
- S. R. Patel, A. Malhotra, X. Gao, F. B. Hu, M. I. Neuman, W. W. Fawzi. A prospective study of sleep duration and pneumonia risk in women. Sleep 2012 35(1):97-101.
- F. P. Cappuccio, L. D'Elia, P. Strazzullo, M. A. Miller. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep. 2010 33(5):585-592.
- M. A. Grandner, L. Hale, M. Moore, N. P. Patel. Mortality associated with short sleep duration: The evidence, the possible mechanisms, and the future. Sleep Med Rev. 2010 14(3):191-203.
- H. H. Lin, P. S. Tsai, S. C. Fang, J. F. Liu. Effect of kiwifruit consumption on sleep quality in adults with sleep problems. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2011 20(2):169-174.
- M. Basner. Sleep duration and chronic sleep debt: are 6 hours enough? Biol Psychol. 2011 87(1):15-16.
- H. P. Van Dongen, G. Maislin, J. M. Mullington, D. F. Dinges. The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep. 2003 26(2):117-126.
- S. Ikehara, H. Iso, C. Date, S. Kikuchi, Y. Watanabe, Y. Wada, Y. Inaba, A. Tamakoshi, JACC Study Group. Association of sleep duration with mortality from cardiovascular disease and other causes for Japanese men and women: the JACC study. Sleep. 2009 32(3):295-301.
Images thanks to Simo ubuntu and Lisa Rosario Photography via flickr, and Batholith via Wikimedia. Thanks to Stephane Lahaye and Ellen Reid for their Keynote help.
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
The number one question in sleep research is “Why do we sleep?”—followed by the question, “How much sleep do we need?” After literally hundreds of studies, we still don’t know the best answer to either question. A few years ago, I featured a large 100,000 person study suggesting that “Both short and long sleep duration were associated with increased mortality,” with people getting around 7 hours of sleep living longest.
Since then, a meta-analysis of all such studies including more than a million people was published, and they found the same thing. We still don’t know, though, if “sleep duration is a cause or simply a marker of ill-health.” Maybe, sleeping too little or too long does make you unhealthy. Or, maybe we see the associated lifespan shortening because being unhealthy causes you to sleep shorter or longer.
Similar work has now been published on cognitive function. After controlling for a long list of factors, men and women in their 50s and 60s getting seven or eight hours appeared to have the best short-term memory, compared to those that got much more, or much less. Same thing was just demonstrated with immune function: “Both reduced and prolonged habitual sleep durations [were] associated with [an] increased risk of pneumonia.”
It’s easy to prevent over-sleeping; set an alarm. But, what if your problem is not getting enough? What if you’re the one in three adults that suffers symptoms of insomnia? Sure, there are drugs, like Valium, you can take for insomnia in the short-term. But, they have a number of adverse side effects. And non-pharmacological approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, are “often difficult,…time-consuming,” and don’t always work. Wouldn’t it be great to have “natural treatments that can improve both sleep onset and help patients improve the quality of sleep while improving next-day symptoms over the long term?”
The “Effect of kiwifruit consumption on sleep quality in adults with sleep problems.” Two kiwifruit an hour before bed, every night, for four weeks. Why study kiwifruits? Well, people with sleep disorders tend to have high “levels of oxidative stress,” so, antioxidant-rich foods might help. But, all fruits and vegetables have antioxidants. Ah, but kiwifruits contain twice the serotonin of tomatoes. But, it really shouldn’t cross the blood/brain barrier. Kiwifruit has folate, and a deficiency might cause insomnia, but, there’s lots more folate in some other plant foods.
The reason they studied kiwifruits is because they got grant money from a kiwifruit company. And, I’m glad they did, because they found some really remarkable results: significantly improved sleep onset, duration, and efficiency using both subjective and objective measurements. Went from sleeping six hours a night to seven, just eating a few kiwifruit.
Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.
- Lin Xu, Chao Qiang Jiang. Short or Long Sleep Duration Is Associated with Memory Impairment in Older Chinese: the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study. Sleep 2011 34(5):575-580.
- M. M. Ohayon. Epidemiology of insomnia: What we know and what we still need to learn. Sleep Med Rev 2002 6(2):97-111.
- S. R. Patel, A. Malhotra, X. Gao, F. B. Hu, M. I. Neuman, W. W. Fawzi. A prospective study of sleep duration and pneumonia risk in women. Sleep 2012 35(1):97-101.
- F. P. Cappuccio, L. D'Elia, P. Strazzullo, M. A. Miller. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep. 2010 33(5):585-592.
- M. A. Grandner, L. Hale, M. Moore, N. P. Patel. Mortality associated with short sleep duration: The evidence, the possible mechanisms, and the future. Sleep Med Rev. 2010 14(3):191-203.
- H. H. Lin, P. S. Tsai, S. C. Fang, J. F. Liu. Effect of kiwifruit consumption on sleep quality in adults with sleep problems. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2011 20(2):169-174.
- M. Basner. Sleep duration and chronic sleep debt: are 6 hours enough? Biol Psychol. 2011 87(1):15-16.
- H. P. Van Dongen, G. Maislin, J. M. Mullington, D. F. Dinges. The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep. 2003 26(2):117-126.
- S. Ikehara, H. Iso, C. Date, S. Kikuchi, Y. Watanabe, Y. Wada, Y. Inaba, A. Tamakoshi, JACC Study Group. Association of sleep duration with mortality from cardiovascular disease and other causes for Japanese men and women: the JACC study. Sleep. 2009 32(3):295-301.
Images thanks to Simo ubuntu and Lisa Rosario Photography via flickr, and Batholith via Wikimedia. Thanks to Stephane Lahaye and Ellen Reid for their Keynote help.
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Título
Kiwifruit for Insomnia
LicenciaCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
URLNota del Doctor
For more on the power of kiwis, see Kiwifruit & DNA Repair and Kiwifruit for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and for more on sleep, see Sleep & Immunity and Optimal Sleep Duration.
Videos on other natural remedies for various conditions include:
- Flax Seeds for Breast Pain
- Rose Hips for Osteoarthritis
- Saffron for the Treatment of PMS
- Lavender for Migraine Headaches
- Prunes vs. Metamucil vs. Vegan Diet
- Black Raspberries vs. Oral Cancer
- Strawberries vs. Esophageal Cancer
Stay tuned for Tart Cherries for Insomnia.
For further context, check out my associated blog posts: Two Kiwifruit an Hour before Bedtime and Foods with Natural Melatonin.
2023 Update – Check out my newer sleep videos, Is Six Hours of Sleep Enough? and How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep Without Sleeping Pills.
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