Feeling drowsy or after meals?

Have you ever felt drowsy, tired or like you have low blood pressure after eating meals?

I usually feel this way when I have a lot of carbohydrates in my meals,  and it seems that my body needs a solid amount of time to metabolise, so I get really tired and sometimes cold, since my body is using up the energy to metabolise the food. 

Things that I do to prevent this or help, are; I either try to eat less carbs in the evening, or I have a cup of peppermint tea or fennel seeds. If you find that your blood pressure drops, you could add some honey or agave to the tea. Salt also assists with low blood pressure, so another idea is to add a little more salt to your food – of course you need to check with your doctor or nutritionist if it is ok for you to use more salt in cooking. 

In general, you would also ideally drink more water and exercise more. 

Do you have low-blood pressure? How do you deal with it?

How to get a good nights sleep, especially if you normally experience insomnia

Something that I find difficult, is to sleep easily if my routine and sleep times keep changing.  There are various other things in my routine that I have also incorporated;

• Try to sleep at the same time each night
• Don’t eat after 7pm (if you do keep it light – so no heavy carbs etc)
• Have a warm cup of milk about 30 minutes before sleeping, milk aids sleep but it also fills your stomach, so that you aren’t waking from an empty and hungry stomach
• Limit your television watching, especially later at night, or any other kind of electronic equipment such as laptops/computers/ipad or music devices
• Do anything that calms you down, so you may listen to music that relaxes you mentally and physically, this may contradict with not using any electronic device, however if it calms you then it may be OK
• Do some light yoga moves, say about 5 minutes or so, or some light stretching
• Meditation also helps, anything to calm the mind and make the body feel tired enough to get a good nights sleep
• If you find that you wake around 4am, you may be waking because of hunger, I usually drink milk 30 minutes before sleeping to prevent this, you may have something else you can eat or drink that will fill you enough to sleep – yup your body needs a tiny bit of energy to cary out the function of sleeping

If you have any of your own tips to share about sleeping well throughout the night feel free to share your comments below!