Fruit for Insomnia

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I had insomnia for 6 years. Adding certain fruit to my diet so far has helped.

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Insomnia – Side effect of many medications

The insomnia started as a side effect of a medication, Nexium. It did lots of damage until I discontinued it.

That drug is poison to me. It is a proton pump inhibitor, and people do not realize that proton pumps are in every cell in our body. They are not just in our stomachs.

When you inhibit proton pumps in the mitochondria in your cells, it stops energy production. So you collapse.

I would pass out for 4-6 hours a day after taking it, and then this disrupted my sleep at night.

My dream life stopped. No REM sleep.

So for years, this happened to me, and I did not start getting better until about 6 months after I stopped the medication.

It has taken several years to recover more completely.

It was like my nervous system had died of starvation.

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First attempts

I started out taking melatonin.

There was some limited success. But I was still waking up every few hours.

This also went on for a few years.

Then a friend suggested Valerian root. I took 2 capsules each night with the melatonin, and things improved. I do not know the science here.

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Fruits

Then I had a strange dream. A blue angel came to visit me and discussed some “heavenly topics.”

Amazed, I shared the dream with a friend, who also had nervous system damage from medications.

Then he had a dream of the blue angel too.

He was told he was deficient in ferulic acid.

He did not know what ferulic acid was and asked me. I felt embarrassed that I did not know, since I am a biochemist myself, and I had to look it up.

So I learned something.

It is an anti-oxidant.

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Ferulic acid and Other Anti-oxidants

Ferulic acid is a naturally occurring substance in plant material. For example, oats, rice and seeds contain lots of ferulic acid.

Ferulic acid and other antioxidants are found in many vegetables and fruits.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/503714-what-is-ferulic-acid/#ixzz1mBfcPXPe

One fruit high in anti-oxidants, including ferulic acid, is blueberries.

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So maybe that is the connection between the blue angel and the blueberries.

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http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb99/aging0299.htm

 

Blueberries have also been found to help alleviate the cognitive decline occurring in Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions of aging.^[25]

Feeding blueberries to animals lowers brain damage in experimental stroke.^[36][37]

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Ok. So I thought I might try this as an experiment.

I would eat fruit – and drink fruit juices ( 6-8 oz each afternoon) that should have ferulic acid in them.

I picked acai and blueberry juice and ate raisins to see how things went.

Acai is not on the list above, but I checked and it contains ferulic acid.

If I get a blend of juices, it is cheaper, as long as they are predominantly these 2 juices.

Açaí has an exceptional content of fats, including oleic acid (56.2% of total), palmitic acid (24.1% of total), and linoleic acid (12.5% of total),[2] and also contains a high amount of beta-sitosterol (78-91% of total sterols).[2][3] These oil compartments in açaí fruit harbor dense contents of polyphenols such as procyanidin oligmers and vanillic acid, syringic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, protocatechuic acid, and ferulic acid which were shown to degrade substantially during storage or exposure to heat.

I buy refrigerated juices.

I have not tried other juices yet.

This past week also, I have added raisins to yogurt, which is dairy, and has tryptophan in it, and should also help my sleep.

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Results

For the last week, I have been sleeping through the night.

It is wonderful to be able to sleep and dream again, after 6 years.

I hope this helps other people, who suffer from insomnia or other physical problems.