Sweet Sleep Banana Elixir Recipe

Name: Sweet Sleep Banana Elixir Recipe
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Ingredients: 1 cups almond milk; ¼ tsp. ashwagandha powder (https://amzn.to/2GTCDWv); 1/4- inch ginger knob (peeled cut into slices); 1/4 tsp. cinnamon; 1/8 tsp. cloves; 1 whole organic **banana (sliced)

I gave you a small glimpse into the upcoming launch for my brand new amazing digital course, which is all about sleep, with my last elixir recipe!

For the time being though, you can give my Sweet Sleep Banana Elixir Recipe a try— it’s the perfect recipe to get you prepped for boosting sleep. Sleep is so crucial to our overall well-being and what my new course is all about!!

Getting our bodies ready for a good night’s rest is mandatory, which means we need to kick our nighttime rituals into high gear and get serious if we want a restful night’s sleep.

Let’s learn more about this particular elixir and why it should be added into our beauty and wellness lifestyle!

Why Choosing Ashwagandha Over Other Sleep Aids Is Better

While it may be tempting to pop a pill to deal with stress and get a better nights sleep, I want you know that there are many highly effective natural ways to deal with stress.

After all, Beauty Detox is all about providing you with completely natural lifestyle choices to nourish, strengthen, beautify and fortify your body. I am dedicated to showcasing the most natural and wholesome ways for you to discover your ultimate health and beauty potential, including a better nights sleep!

Ashwagandha is an herb traditionally used in Ayurveda that loosely translates to mean “the strength of ten horses,” and is known to be a powerful rejuvenating herb without actually being a stimulant.

This amazingly powerful herb has the ability to relieve stress and protect brain cells against the effects of our fast-paced lifestyle (exactly what us Beauties need, right?!).

It also naturally regulates cortisol levels to limit the high levels of stress that we know can have damaging effects, not only on our health and beauty, but our happiness too — all of which effects how well we can turn off our brains and give it a rest!

This adaptogenic herb has many other benefits, such as:

Help in reducing brain-cell degeneration
Protects the immune system
Improves learning, memory, and reaction time
Helps the body cope with external stresses (toxins in the environment and internal stresses)
Has a combination of amino acids, vitamins, and herbs that modulate your response to stress or a changing environment
Providing renewed vigor and enhanced energy

But again, I want to emphasize that with all of its power to relieve and combat stress, these benefits give our body the opportunity to adjust and prepare our minds for a well-rested night that will all need and deserve. This really is key to overall health, beauty and wellness!

When it comes to choosing a brand that you can trust, I personally love my teacher, Dr. Jay’s, organic ashwagandha, which you can source here.

The Benefits of Banana For Sleep

Who doesn’t experience sleeping problems from time to time? Whether it’s from eating too late, eating the wrong foods, snacking on sweets, technology, or the day-to-day stresses, we all have battled the morning blues from lack of ZZZ’s. ????

The question is, how to manage it so we create better sleep, for health and beauty?

I’m an advocate for choosing a healthy and natural way to do this is, including through strategically including certain beauty foods.

When we listen to experts, we find that by consuming the right food before going to bed — ones that are high in minerals (like, magnesium, potassium, vitamin B, and tryptophan) — have a natural sleep inducing effect, and thus, helps to relieve insomnia.

So what food helps you sleep? By the title of this recipe you may have guessed, yes, good ole bananas! Rather than reaching for NyQuil and other over the counter sleep aids that can leave you feeling groggy come morning, head to the kitchen and grab a banana instead! ????

Research shows that bananas can help promote better sleep and keep our digestion healthy.

Help keep your bodies digestive health in top shape with this unique formula!

How can eating a banana at night enhance your beauty sleep, you may be asking? Well, this is due to the bananas amazing ability to increase your intake in nutrients.

You see, tryptophans in magnesium, potassium, vitamins, as well as amino acids, can contribute to better sleep (and better mood). However, we need to counteract mineral deficiencies with only the best nutrient intake in order to benefit from these tryptophans. Bananas happen to be one of natures best choices for achieving this [1]!

Sleep-Boosting Nutrients in Bananas:

Magnesium

Bananas are one of the top fruits with the high levels of magnesium, which helps battle against insomnia and keeping you asleep longer and even faster for some.

By consuming bananas at night we help relax the muscles in your body with a neuroprotective effect — calming the nervous system.

The magnesium in bananas even helps to lower your brain temperature and regulates your hormones. Makes sense if these functions are out of sorts, that our sleep would be too.

If you have magnesium deficiency, the symptoms can include difficulty in relaxing during sleep (tossing & turning), and frequent night cramps.

Potassium

Magnesium and potassium actually work in harmony with one another to improve sleep, relax the muscles and nerves, and in promoting healthy digestion (you can see why I absolutely LOVE bananas and use them everyday in my Beauty Detox smoothies!).

If you have a deficiency in potassium (also known as hypokalemia), you will most likely be effected when it comes to sleep. The symptoms can be muscle fatigue, cramping, and even heart irregularities [2].

Though you may want to ask your health care practitioner for a potassium supplement that will assist your bodies ability to sleep more deeply, you should be able to eat enough potassium, via potassium-containing beauty foods — any excess will be excreted by the kidneys.

Amino Acid Tryptophan

Our bodies use tryptophan to produce hormones known as serotonin and melatonin, which play a large role in regulating different human functions. We need serotonin to regulate our mood and melatonin to help regulate circadian rhythms.

These circadian rhythms are actually in control over our sleep patterns, our body temperature and hormone release. If there is a deficiency in tryptophan, this will contribute to experiencing insomnia on some level, and even depression.

Tryptophan is an amino acid which is naturally present bananas, and thus, is a wise beauty food choice before retiring to bed.

Vitamin B6

With all of all vitamin choices out there, it seems B vitamins have shown the best results in encouraging a good night’s rest. And yes, vitamin B6 is found in bananas —a water-soluble vitamin that aids the production of tryptophan as well as serotonin and melatonin — essential for good sleep patterns.

One large banana can provide half of the daily necessary intake of vitamin B6!

Let’s remember Beauties, that while adding a banana to your nightly routine and changing your overall diet can relieve insomnia, continuous symptoms is your body’s way of telling you there could be other issues going on (which you can of course check with your doctor about if you are getting no relief from lifestyle and dietary shifts).

With all of this packed into one banana, it really is a great natural source to start incorporating into your daily meal plans. If you haven’t already, how about you start NOW!

Prepare ingredients.

Add the almond milk into a saucepan.

Add the Ashwagandha powder.

Add the ginger knobs.

Add the cinnamon.

Add the cloves.

Bring to boil over medium heat. Quickly reduce to a simmer and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the prepared liquid into a blender.

Add the banana and blend until fully combined.

Cool in fridge until cool enough to drink (or enjoy warm if you like ☺ ).

See full recipe below…