Just like grandma used to cook up for you with love and foresight. This nightly sleep aid and anabolic tonic holds great wisdom, incorporating one of the most nourishing foods: cows milk, with the intelligence of natures herbs and spices. You’ll sleep like a baby and super charge overnight.
Dreaming of a Good Night’s Sleep?
This Ayurvedic remedy will reduce your stress to allow you to switch off and gain a more restful and undisturbed sleep.
Supersede the Stress
Insomnia, which can increase the risk of most degenerative diseases(1) is mostly caused by stress. When we are under stress, cortisol levels (stress fighting hormones) do not decrease, rather they keep us revved up throughout the night and we don’t have the energy to calm them back down.
Modern science has once again proved ancient wisdom by showing milk has certain peptides that lower cortisol and support sleep by 50%. The improvements of sleep are remarkable:
- Promotes deeper sleep (3)
- Supports more restorative sleep (3)
- Provides relaxation at the level needed for sleep (4)
- Calms anxiety (4)
- Improves numerous stress markers (5)
- These peptides further support digestion, emotional state, cognitive function and even cardiovascular function. (6)
Interestingly, these peptides in milk activate GABA receptors.(4) Pharmaceutical drugs that are widely used as sedatives for stress, anxiety, and sleep target these same GABA receptors!(7)
Ojas Building
Even if you sleep well, this night-time tonic will not only upgrade your sleep to be more deep and restful, but also build your Ojas.
Ojas (OH-jas) is considered to be the most refined by-product of digestion, said to reside in the heart. Ayurveda considers ojas to be a bio-celestial substance that is our vital essence.
Our vitality, immunity, vigour, skin, sleep, digestion, spirituality and physical strength are all directly influenced by our reserve of ojas.
Ojas builds our inner silence. It Increases the ability to genetically connect with the circadian rhythms allowing the body to resonate with the rhythms and thrive. If your body is under stress, emergency alarm bells will keep ringing (flight or fight response/sympathetic nervous system) disconnecting you from the genetic ability to hear these rhythms.
Building ojas is an art. Yoga, pranayama breathing exercises, meditation, spending time in nature, sleeping at the right times, laughing, showing love and affection and giving to others, spending time being creative, relaxing, and doing things that make you happy all build ojas.
Perhaps one of the best ways to consistently build ojas is to eat a diet of fresh, unprocessed whole foods in the appropriate season.
Further, there are certain foods and herbs in Ayurveda that are great ojas-builders. These were traditionally blended with warm milk and taken before bed as a sleep aid and an ojas-builder.
Ayurveda's Super Sleep Recipe
Recipe: Hot Milk Elixir with Spices
- Boil 3/4 cup of un-homogenised cows milk + 3/4 cup of water. You can adjust the ratio according to your taste and digestion – more creamy or more diluted.
- After you turn the stove on, add 2 strands of saffron + 1 chopped medjool date + 3 crushed and peeled almonds. Boil till it fully foams up (and is about overflow out of the pot)
- For extra digestive boost and purity, you can let it sit for a few minutes before boiling it again till it foams up. Repeat this process a total of 3 times (including the first boil).
- After the milk has boiled, add:
- Pinch of cardamom powder
- pinch of cinnamon powder
- pinch of ginger powder
- pinch of turmericpowder
- pinch of black pepper
- ½-1tsp ghee.
*Note you can add or subtract the spices and the food items according to your taste and liking.
Stir well and enjoy.
Recipe: Hot Milk Elixir with Therapeutic Herbs
Boil 3/4 cup of un-homogenised cows milk + 3/4 cup of water. You can adjust the ratio according to your taste and digestion – more creamy or more diluted.
- Boil till it fully foams up.
- For extra digestive boost and purity, you can let it sit for a few minutes before boiling it again till it foams up. Repeat this process a total of 3 times (including the first boil).
- After the milk has boiled, add one pinch of Bliss and 1tsp of ghee.
*Alternative/additional herbs to Bliss that can be used are Dhatu, Swarna Dhatu, Ashwagandha or Shatavari.
Stir well and enjoy.
When to Drink It:
- Have between dinner and sleep – approximately 45-60mins after dinner and 45-60mins before bed.
- You can even make this your dinner.
- Drink one cup of the golden milk each night for 3 months to rebuild ojas levels and support sleep patterns.
- You can also have this in the morning approximately 45 minutes before breakfast or make it your breakfast, (good for people who don’t have an appetite in the morning). It is also a great replacement to coffee.
“But I Don’t Do Dairy”
If you are intolerant to dairy, it is probably indigestion, some weakness and/or your mind getting the better over you by ‘accepting’ the intolerance. Additionally, most milk is difficult to digest because it is unnecessarily homogenised, pasteurised the wrong way, added chemicals, pesticides, preservatives and anti-biotic’s.
However, drink the right milk and correct your agni, and you may find you can slowly introduce this medicinal lactation back into your diet.
Most places you can find milk that is non-homogenised without all these nasty additives. Getting non-pasturised or vat-pasturised, (heated at low temperature for short time), is a bonus, but the main precept is to drink non-homogenised milk. This has become so popular that mainstream supermarkets in Australia and New Zeland are now selling it. Additionally, most health-food stores will have it.
If you are very sensitive to milk, I suggest first correct agni, then slowly introduce dairy by drinking thin Lassi with lunch.
You may substitute substitute coconut or (freshly made) almond milk. Though you won’t get the benefits of the milk peptides, you’ll still have a vehicle for the ojas-building foods and herbs and some calming benefits from the warmth of the milk.
Take this milk to build some resiliency towards the stress that prevents us from sleeping like we should.
It’s tasty, nourishing and a great way to end the day, plus it’ll send you off with the clouds for the night.
References:
(1) Occup Med (Lond). 2010
(2) The Open Sleep Journal. 2009;2:128-32
(3) J Dairy Sci. 2000 Jun
(4) Ther Umsh. 2009
(5) Eur J Nutr. 2005
(6) Eur J Clin Nutr. 2007
(7) FASEB J. 2001
A scientific review on “Milk derived bioactive peptides and their impact on human health” by D.P. Mohanty et al