Which Bedtime Foods Work and Which Don't?

What foods help you sleep at night?  Let us know in comments!

There’s a great article on Yahoo’s Shine that talks about which foods can help you sleep better and which are .. at best .. part of an old wive’s tale.  Out of the five listed, including warm milk, herbal tea, alcohol, and sleep supplements … the only one listed that might actually have promise is a carbohydrate-rich dinner:

A light bedtime snack can stave off hunger, a known sleep robber. But eating quickly-digested carbs (a.k.a, “high-glycemic-index” or “GI” carbohydrates such as jasmine rice) hours earlier at dinner—might also help. A study found that when healthy sleepers ate carbohydrate-rich suppers of veggies and tomato sauce over rice, they fell asleep significantly faster at bedtime if the meal included high-GI jasmine rice rather than lower-GI long-grain rice. The study authors speculated that the high-GI meals triggered greater amounts of insulin, which increased the ratio of tryptophan relative to other amino acids in the blood, allowing proportionately more to get into the brain and make people drowsy.

For some, the most shocking note in the article may be that warm milk may not actually help you sleep any more than warm water.