Does sleeping through milk really make you sleep better?

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: Do you really sleep better from moon milk?

It's such a typical ‘grandma knows best’ advice: drink a cup of warm milk (with or without honey) before going to bed and you'll sleep like a baby. Meanwhile, Instagram is full of the magic potion ‘moon milk’: pastel-colored, Ayurvedic, vegan milk that promotes sleep. But is that true?

De Volkskrant investigated. At least, in the case of cow's milk. And it looks promising at first glance: cow's milk contains tryptophan, melatonin, and lactium. All three substances that promote sleep.

Bathroom break
But something is being overlooked here: the quantities. In a 200-milliliter cup of milk, there are 91 milligrams of tryptophan. Tryptophan only has an effect at a minimum dose of 1 gram; therefore, eleven cups of milk are needed. Just the number of bathroom breaks you would have to take would significantly disrupt your sleep.

The same goes for melatonin; the amount in one cup is far too little. Even if the cows are milked at night, when they produce more melatonin, a cup contains a maximum of 5.2 nanograms. That's a few hundred thousand times less than the (minimum) dosage of 1 milligram in a melatonin tablet. In short, you can't drink enough to counter that.

The effect of the calming lactium was once studied by Friesche Vlag, but it turned out to be very small. What was notable, however, was that whether they drank regular or enriched milk , the total sleep time of the participants was on average half an hour longer. So does it work after all?

Moon milk
Yes, but for a completely different reason: a full stomach makes you sleepy, having a ritual before bedtime helps with relaxation, and warm drinks have a calming psychological effect. So it doesn't necessarily have to be cow's milk. Et voilà: here comes the Ayurvedic, often nut or hemp-based moon milk. Warm, filling, and enhanced with calming herbs like lavender, chamomile, or nutmeg.

Minor downside: the pastel-colored drinks are so beautiful that it's hard not to take an Insta photo of them. And we all know: once on Instagram, your sleep is hard to find.