The question that seems to keep popping up over and over again is “does warm milk help you to sleep?”.  At first I thought it was either placebo affect or an old wives tale that had no bearing on people’s sleep habits (or lack thereof).

Since people kept asking me about it I decided to dig in a little and see if there’s any legitimacy to the idea of drinking a glass of warm milk before bed to help you fall asleep.

It turns out that it’s not just some kind of folk medicine but hot milk before bed was used by ancient cultures all over the world. Were they all wrong? Were they all drinking the cool-aid buying into a placebo?

As I researched I found many traditional cultures used this idea of drinking a warm glass of milk before bed.

Some of these cultures include..

1. Indian Culture (Ayurveda)
   • In Ayurvedic medicine warm milk was used to balance the 3 doshas (Vata, Kapha, and Pitta) and helped people relax before bed. They also added milk to herbs and spices like ginger, turmeric, nutmeg, or saffron which may in themselves promote sleep and relaxation for some people.
2. European Traditions
   • In the UK, Scandinavian countries and Ireland a long time staple is adding honey to warm milk for children before bed. I think I’d like that better than using herbs myself.
3. Chinese Culture
   • I love traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and really think that system of health has a lot to offer the world. In modern forms of TCM they do use the warm milk combined with honey to balance yin and yang properties. Warm milk seems to be in alignment with more yin, which some TCM practitioners say can help with sleep.

So this idea of using warm milk to help you sleep is not only something we practice in the Western world but all over the world people do this. And they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Clearly people world wide would not be doing it for thousands of years if it didn’t work right?

There must be more to this.

What’s So Special About Milk & Sleep?

So I decided to look further into milk, sleep and what the connections are. Turns out milk contains lots of tryptophan. It also contains more tryptophan than other foods like turkey, chocolate, spinach, quinoa, bananas, eggs, oats, lentils, yogurt, cheese, pumpkin seeds, tuna, sardines, salmon and chicken.

Milk has more tryptophan than all of them.

Tryptophan is a critical amino acid that converts to serotonin (a potent) neurotransmitter in your gut. Serotonin then converts (via photons of light and enzymes) to melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone of all hormones. It isn’t a sleep hormone, in as much as it controls sleep/wake cycles and your circadian rhythm.

A quick caveat, if melatonin isn’t taken correctly it will not work.

Your circadian rhythm is controlled by UVA light from watching the sunrise that travels through the central retinal pathway to the optical nerve then to the pineal gland and the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus in your brain. The SCN is the master clock that controls all the other circadian timing mechanisms of your body.

Does warm milk help you sleep? It does but only if you’re doing everything else correctly. These would be watching the sunrise for UVA exposure, blocking blue light during the day and wearing blue blockers at night and many other things to promote sleep.

Milk Contains….

• Tryptophan
• Melatonin
• Calcium
• Vitamin D
• Magnesium
• Milk proteins
• Lactose

Warm Milk vs Cold Milk

From an Ayurvedic perspective the temperature of the food we eat matters. In the warm summertime it makes sense to eat foods that are cooler like salads, vegetables, fruits whereas in the Winter when it’s cold drinking warm milk to help sleep makes sense but also soups, warm cooked meats with veggies makes sense.

If you drink warm milk before bed, it raises the body temperature slightly. Just like taking a magnesium bath does. In order to find homeostasis and to cool the body before bed, your body will lower its internal core temperature.

Oddly enough the body will compensate and cool you down in response to drinking warm milk. This will help you feel more drowsy and tired before bed. I’ve never really felt that but I’ve only drank warm milk to fall asleep one or two times when I dealt with insomnia years ago.

I also didn’t like doing it because the few times I did, I had to get up to pee in the middle of the night.

Your body temperature is around 98.6 Fahrenheit and 37 degrees Celsius. If you drink cold milk, it requires energy for your body to heat it up to your body temperature. Eating cold food actually requires energy from your body.

I don’t recommend drinking cold milk before bed for this reason.

Diary Milk or Plant Based Milk for Sleep

It seems like vegan or lactose free milks are all the rage these days. Almond milk seems like it’s the most popular. I didn’t mind it but it never really tasted that good to me. I would have to strain the nuts and then add some vanilla extract to it with some honey just to make it palatable.

Other milks people like are Soy milk, Oat milk, Coconut milk, Rice milk, Hemp milk, Cashew milk, Pea milk, Flaxseed milk, Macadamia milk, Hazelnut milk, Walnut milk, Quinoa milk, Spelt milk, Barley milk, Peanut milk, Pistachio milk, Sunflower seed milk, Tiger nut milk, Sesame milk etc.

The problem with these plant based milks is that they contain polyunsaturated fatty acids that are toxic to the human body. They’re called lipofuscin or “age spots”. Some people call them liver spots. These are oxidized lipids that store in the lysosome of the cell and bioaccumulate over time, aging us quickly.

The other downside to these plant based “milks” is that they don’t contain any of the amino acids like tryptophan which converts to serotonin and then the hormone melatonin.

For these reasons I’d avoid them for sleep and to increase your longevity.

Tips For Better Sleep

Taking a warm bath with added magnesium, boron and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) along with drinking warm milk to help you sleep can and does help with falling asleep. You could also add in a couple cherries to the added melatonin boost.

Does warm milk help you to sleep? Yes it does but I would only consider it as an add on to every other sleep promoting biohack in your tool chest.

Here are some other sleep tips that I recommend.

1. Watching the sunrise (non negotiable)
2. Opening windows during the day
3. Grounding outside during the day without sunglasses, reading glasses or contact lenses in
4. Exercise every day (preferably outside)
5. Wearing yellow blue blocking glasses during the day
6. Using Iris Tech during the day and night
7. Installing circadian lighting inside your home
8. Wearing orange glasses that block blue light after sunset
9. Wearing red glasses 2 hours before bed.
10. Taking a melatonin 2 hours before bed
11. Stretching, reading and mediating before bed
12. Taking a magnesium bath before bed
13. Using a sleep mask when you go to sleep
14. Blocking all light in your bedroom

Conclusion

While I could write entire articles on each of these “biohacks” for sleep (which is my intention behind this blog) because there’s a lot of nuance to them, the goal is to get started and do better each day.

So yes drinking warm milk could be something helpful to add to an already great night time sleep routine but I wouldn’t rely on it by itself to move the needle much. With that said I heard quite a few anecdotal stories that drinking a warm glass of milk 30 minutes before going to sleep works magic for some people.

Questions

• What do you think? Does it work for you?
• Do you watch the sunrise every morning?
• Does it take you a long time to fall asleep?
• What is your daily bedtime sleep routine?

Comment below!