🥛 Can probiotics help unlock better sleep?

The growing field of gut health continues to reveal how gut microbes may influence human mood and emotion.

Past research already shows that probiotics may have potential benefits in clinically depressed populations.

A recent research in 88 healthy volunteers wanted to discover if the same effect was true in healthy populations.

Probiotics supplementation reduced negative mood after only 2 weeks.

This was captured by daily self-reports, as conventional pre- and post assessments failed to detect these changes.

Is this a major flaw? Not really. Not everything can or needs to be measured or benchmarked to evaluate improvements, especially with emotional states.

The researchers also identified traits of individuals who responded most strongly, opening the door to personalised microbial strategies for mental health support.

🥊 Punchline

Probiotics may benefit emotional resilience even in the general population.

🥝 Kiwis before bed for better sleep?

Kiwis naturally contains melatonin, folate, antioxidants, and potassium - compounds known to support sleep initiation, maintenance, and recovery physiology.

A recent study looked at the effects of eating 2 green kiwis 1 hour before bed in 15 elite athletes from different disciplines.

4 weeks of eating kiwi pre-sleep led to:

• 47% lower time awake after falling sleep

• 27% less night time awakenings

• 60 mins more sleep

• 7% improvement in sleep efficiency (from 86% to 93%)

It is true that this study was small, done in athletes and based on subjective sleep metrics only.

But, a sleep efficiency of more than 85% and 60 mins more sleep are clinically meaningful.

🥊 Punchline

Eating 2 kiwis before bedtime improved sleep quality, alertness, and reduced fatigue in athletes. More robust studies are needed to confirm this, especially for the general population.

🍵 L-theanine as a natural sleep aid?

Sleep quality has a profound affect on overall health and wellbeing, with deficient sleep estimated to affect 30 % of the global population.

A recent review of 18 randomized controlled trials with a total of ~900 participants looked at the effects of L-theanine supplementation on sleep outcomes.

For context, L - theanine is commonly found in green tea, black tea and certain types of mushrooms.

L-theanine supplementation improved

• subjective sleep quality by 45%

• sleep onset latency (aka ‘hard to fall asleep’) by 15%

• daytime dysfunction (aka ‘wired but tired’) by 33%

The optimal effects were typically observed with doses ~200 mg per day.

However, before you splurge at Holland & Barrett, consider that most studies have limitations, such as:

• Tracking subjective sleep quality rather than objective sleep metrics

• L-theanine is often combined with other other bioactive ingredients making it difficult to attribute improvements solely to L-theanine

• Many different doses, timings and duration of supplementation have been studied, making it hard to understand a dose-response relationship

🥊 Punchline

L-theanine shows promise in improving sleep quality, but more research is needed to establish its effectiveness and optimal usage for supplementation.