Vitamins for Sleep and Anxiety

Healthy nutrition status sets the foundation for better sleep and emotional stability.

Don’t freak out... but a vitamin-deficiency might be responsible for why you’re getting poor sleep and freaking out so much.

Or it could be that poor sleep and anxiety are the root causes of your vitamin-deficiency.

After all, it’s difficult to maintain a healthy diet when you’re feeling stress all the time.

Either way, a healthy nutrient status seems to correlate with healthy sleep habits and emotional stability.

But which vitamins are the best for improving sleep quality and anxiety?

Admittedly, the direct links between specific micronutrients and health patterns associated with sleep and mood require further research.

For us to better understand the full scale and implications of micronutrient status on sleep and anxiety.

Even so, general micronutrient deficiencies remain a global public health concern, and successful public health interventions have included multivitamin supplementation, fortification, and other food-based strategies.

With that in mind, adding an effective, comprehensive multivitamin supplement to your daily health stack seems best practice for addressing any and all issues related to micronutrient deficiencies.

However, for better sleep and anxiety relief, a few minerals and vitamins do stand out.

To improve your sleep quality and emotional stability, consider adding the following micronutrients to your daily diet.

What are the Best Minerals and Vitamins for Sleep and Anxiety?

Magnesium

Involved in 300+ bio-pathways, magnesium is a life-essential mineral linked to sleep quality, emotional wellbeing, and overall mind-body performance.

Magnesium is one of most important dietary minerals for both mental and physical health, and it’s a mineral that many of us could get more of in our diets.

Among athletes and nootropic nerds, magnesium is perhaps best known for its relaxing “inhibitory” actions on the central nervous system (CNS).

In the body, the magnesium cation (Mg²⁺) is a key cofactor required to calm excitable neural activity in the brain and in muscle tissue.

This explains why athletes and bodybuilders frequently take magnesium-rich “muscle soak” baths: magnesium helps decrease neuromuscular tension and muscle spasms.

Magnesium’s role as a “relaxing” mineral in the body also explains its importance to sleep.

By settling down the nervous system and relaxing worn-out muscle tissue, magnesium promotes deeper, longer sleep that’s undisturbed by firing neurons and twitchy muscles.

And research suggests that magnesium supplementation may improve sleep quality by promoting:

• Sleep onset
• Sleep duration
• Sleep efficiency
• Fewer incidents of waking up too early

In addition to improving sleep quality, magnesium also plays a role in maintaining emotional stability.

Check out Performance Lab® Magnesium

With evidence suggesting that magnesium modulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the physiological axis that facilitates the stress response, magnesium deficiency seems to correlate with stress disorders:

• Magnesium deficiency in mice has been linked to enhanced anxiety-related behavior associated with HPA dysregulation, suggesting that “dysregulations of the HPA axis may contribute to the hyper-emotionality in response to dietary induced hypomagnesaemia .”

Under conditions of magnesium deficiency, stress-related symptoms of anxiety and emotional imbalance are heightened.

For both mineral-sweating athletes and magnesium-deficient elderly, adding a magnesium supplement to your daily health stack is a smart move to limit your risk of magnesium-deficiency and Mg-deficiency-related symptoms of insomnia and anxiety.

Related Post: Best Vitamins for Insomnia and Sleep Deprivation

Top Food Sources of Magnesium

A few magnesium-rich foods you can add to your diet to better optimize your magnesium levels include:

• Green leafy vegetables (e.g., spinach and kale)
• Raw cacao, or dark chocolate
• Avocado
• Bananas
• Cashews, almonds, and Brazil nuts
• Legumes
• Whole grains
• Salmon

Recommended Daily Allowance for Adults: 310 – 420 mg, depending on age and gender.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D, or “Sunny D,” is a fat-soluble vitamin synthesized by our skin when exposed to the sun that plays a key role in regulating bone health and mood.

Vitamin D, or cholecalciferol, is the only nutrient our body synthesizes when exposed to the sun, making sunlight a key ingredient to a nutritionally rich lifestyle.

And, yet, roughly 50% of the world population may be getting a lack of sunlight, potentially aggravating the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency.

According to a 2011 study, around 41.6% of the U.S. adult population is deficient in vitamin D, suggesting a dire, widespread need for vitamin D supplementation.

As one of several micronutrients critical for our health and wellbeing, vitamin D is associated with a wide range of bodily systems, including cognition, immunity, bone health, protein synthesis, and testosterone production.

It’s been hypothesized that vitamin D play may also have a significant effect on sleep patterns:

• Though the suggestion that vitamin D deficiency is linked to sleep disorders is somewhat controversial, one meta-analysis on the clinical research pertaining to vitamin D’s effects on sleep quality found that “vitamin D deficiency is associated with a higher risk of sleep disorders.”

The particular sleep disorders associated with vitamin D deficiency include:

• Poor sleep quality
• Short sleep duration
• General sleepiness

For those who live in areas with seasonally low sunlight, taking a vitamin D supplement can be a serious life-changing decision. With regards to the relationship between vitamin D status and cognition, some research suggests that:

• Low vitamin D levels correlate with depression and anxiety disorders.
• Vitamin D supplementation may improve depression symptoms associated with seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

The combination of poor sleep and anxiety can make the miserably dark winter months much more miserable.

This is why it’s so important to take an effective vitamin D supplement come wintertime, if you live far from the Earth’s equator.

Check out Performance Lab® D3+K2

Top Food Sources of Vitamin D

While the best (and easiest) way to increase your vitamin D levels is to get more sunlight in your life, dietary vitamin D remains a key component of a healthy, whole-food diet.

Here are a few of the top food sources of vitamin D:

• Salmon, sardines, tuna, and herring
• Cod liver oil
• Egg yolk
• Mushrooms
• Fortified dairy products

Recommended Daily Allowance for Adults: 600 – 800 IU; however, some research suggests a higher intake of 1,000 – 4,000 IU may be taken for optimal blood levels.

Zinc

Involved in immune health, protein synthesis, and testosterone activity, zinc is a life-essential trace mineral that must be consumed regularly to avoid deficiency.

The importance of zinc to human life can’t be understated. Required for healthy human development, zinc cofacilitates the healthy growth and development of adolescents, and this trace mineral remains a key ingredient to a healthy lifestyle throughout adulthood.

Because zinc is a trace mineral, it’s only required in small amounts to perform its metabolic duties throughout the brain and body.

And, yet, in areas of high cereal and low animal food consumption, zinc deficient is a problem.

This isn’t necessarily due to a lack of available zinc in the diet but rather a lack of bioavailable zinc, meaning zinc that may be properly absorbed and used by the body.

Those committed to an entirely plant-based diet are particularly susceptible to zinc deficiency, hence the emphasis on zinc in many vegan multivitamin supplements.

However, for vegans and non-vegans alike, zinc is a mineral worth emphasizing in the diet, given its importance to sleep and cognition.

According to both animal and human research, the relationship between zinc and sleep seems to cut both ways:

• Amount of sleep seems to influence zinc serum concentration.
• Zinc supplementation seems to improve sleep amount and quality.

In other words, sleep deprivation and zinc deficiency can be somewhat of a mutual downward spiral.

Lack of sleep may contribute to a lack of zinc activity, and vice versa.

Of course, this spiral may be disrupted by either getting better sleep or adding an effective zinc supplement to diet—or, ideally, both.

The second option (supplementing zinc) has been clinically observed to improve sleep quality, even among commonly sleep-deprived professions like nursing:

• One study on the effect of zinc supplementation on sleep quality of ICU nurses observed a simultaneous improvement on serum zinc levels and sleep quality scores measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, leading the study’s researchers to the conclusion that “zinc supplementation could be associated with better , subjective , and sleep latency in this group of workers.”

Similarly, another study on a commonly sleep-deprived demographic (female students) observed an inversely correlated relationship between serum zinc levels and mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety.

Receive unique insights, advice and exclusive offers.

Email address Subscribe

In a nutshell, maintaining optimal levels of zinc not only benefits sleep quality but may improve depression- and anxiety-related mood disorders.

Check out Performance Lab® Zinc

Top Food Sources of Zinc

Because the body doesn’t store zinc, this mineral must be consumed daily to constantly maintain all the zinc-related metabolic pathways. With that in mind, a few of the most zinc-rich foods include:

• Beef, lamb, pork, and chicken
• Oysters
• Crab
• Lobsters
• Legumes
• Flax, hemp, pumpkin, squash, and sesame seeds
• Almonds, peanuts, pine nuts, and cashews
• Eggs
• Dairy
• Quinoa, rice, and oats
• Raw cacao, or dark chocolate

Recommended Daily Allowance for Adults: 8 – 11 mg, depending on gender; however, the RDA jumps to 12 mg during pregnancy and 13 mg during lactation.

B-Vitamins

A complex of water-soluble vitamins that are vital to healthy cognitive development, metabolic energy expenditure, and mood-related neurochemical synthesis.

Feeling down? Take B-vitamins for the blues!

Most commonly associated with feel-good energy drinks and mood enhancement, B-vitamins include a nootropic complex of eight essential vitamins that co-regulate various metabolic pathways involved in neurotransmitter synthesis, energy expenditure, and circulation.

These eight B-vitamins include:

• B1 – Thiamine: required to break down carbohydrates into fuel.
• B2 – Riboflavin: required for normal cell growth and function.
• B3 – Niacin: assists with cardio health and cognitive performance.
• B5 – Pantothenic Acid: helps metabolize macronutrients into energy.
• B6 – Pyridoxine: required for neurotransmitter synthesis and cell formation.
• B7 – Biotin: converts food to energy; strengthens hair, skin, and nails.
• B9 – Folate: important vitamin for healthy cell growth and metabolism.
• B12 – Cobalamin: vital cofactor in DNA synthesis, nerve health, and red blood cell formation.

The general bio-mechanisms of B-vitamins involve metabolic energy expenditure, red blood cell formation, neurochemical production, and nervous system function.

And much more. It’s not hyperbolic to say that B-vitamins are important to virtually all aspects of mind and body health, with B-vitamins showing pronounced benefits on mood symptoms related to depression and anxiety.

For sleep in particular, a few studies have identified improvements in sleep quality with B-vitamin supplementation. Respectively, these studies found have observed that B-vitamins may help with:

• Reducing sleep-disruptive nocturnal leg cramps.
• Production of sleep-related serotonergic neurochemicals.
• The anxiolytic effects of magnesium when combined with vitamin B6, as opposed to taking magnesium alone.

This last point, the combined benefits of magnesium and vitamin B6, suggest of the sleep boosting advantages of ZMA (Zinc + Magnesium + B6), a sports nutrition trio of minerals and vitamins associated with athletic performance enhancement.

As cofactors in various metabolic pathways, B-vitamins may potentiate the effects of other sleep and mood boosters, such as magnesium, L-tryptophan, and melatonin.

Because B-vitamins are water-soluble, the body doesn’t store these vitamins. Hence the importance of getting adequate B-vitamin intake on a daily basis.

Check out Performance Lab® B-Complex

Top Food Sources of B-Vitamins

Though dietary sources of B-vitamins typically vary in the types and ratios of B-vitamins they supply, you may generally improve your B-vitamin status by adding the following foods to your diet:

• Leafy greens
• Salmon and trout
• Oysters, clams, and mussels
• Red meat
• Organ meats (liver)
• Eggs
• Dairy products

The Recommended Daily Allowance for Adults: 1.1-1.2 mg B1, 1.1-1.3 mg B2, 14-16 mg B3, 5 mg B5, 1.3-1.7 mg B6, 25-30 mcg B7, 400 mcg B9, 1.8-2.4 mcg B12; depending on gender and pregnancy state.

Bonus: Melatonin

In our screen-lit, natural melatonin supplements are increasingly becoming the key to attaining healthy sleep and an overall healthier lifestyle.

Though not an essential vitamin or mineral, melatonin is a reliable sleep aid supplement that may potentially work even better when paired with the abovementioned sleep- and mood-supportive micronutrients.

Naturally secreted by the pineal gland during bedtime, melatonin is a neurochemical that triggers the “sleep” portion of your sleep-wake cycle. And so, when melatonin activity is off, your entire sleep schedule is off.

Due to our stressful, caffeine-loaded, screen-lit work environments, our melatonin secretion is off, contributing to an out-of-balance circadian rhythm.

With that in mind, adding an effective, natural melatonin supplement to your nightly routine may help you sustain a more consistent bedtime and, thus, getting your circadian rhythm back in rhythm.

One of the best sources of natural melatonin are Montmorency tart cherries. Research suggests that tart cherry juice may:

• Improve morning energy that lasts throughout the day.
• Reduce feelings of tiredness upon waking.
• Reduce number of spontaneous awakenings during the night.

Combined with a natural, effective multivitamin, a natural, effective source of melatonin may significantly improve your sleep quality and daytime mood and performance, especially as daytime solar light continues to invade our evening spaces via electronic screens, TVs, smartphones, etc.

Best Melatonin Supplement for Sleep and Anxiety: CherryPURE®

• CherryPURE® is a research-backed concentrate of Montmorency tart cherry powder, a rich, natural source of melatonin and antioxidants.
• Thanks to CherryPURE®’s potent standard, 500 mg of this cherry extract is comparable to the bio-activities of 25 g of non-extract Montmorency tart cherries.
• CherryPURE® is the only Montmorency tart cherry brand backed by brand-specific clinical research.

As a natural source of melatonin, Montmorency tart cherries are great for sleep and recovery, and they’re great in a way that OTC melatonin supplements are great, minus the groggy, drowsy side effects that tend to come with synthetic melatonin stacks.

In addition to melatonin, Montmorency tart cherries are ripe with fruit antioxidants that may help soothe achy joints and muscle tissue, making CherryPURE® a particularly one of the most effective natural sleep aid supplements for athletes, bodybuilders, and recreational exercisers.

Conclusion

Performance Lab® NutriGenesis® Multi Combines the Best Minerals and Vitamins for Sleep and Anxiety

Despite the increasing number of food options available to us, the widespread prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies is a major barrier to achieving healthy sleep and emotional stability.

Though many supplement regimens emphasize macronutrients (carbs, protein, fats), a healthy lifestyle starts with the micronutrients—the vitamins, minerals, aminos, and so on.

And, unfortunately, much of the modern diet fails in both the macronutrient and micronutrient food categories.

Fortunately, with patented, potent, easy-to-absorb NutriGenesis® micronutrients, Performance Lab® Multi helps fill the nutrient void left by the modern diet.

Using a unique, probiotic-cultured approach to supplying nature-identical vitamins and minerals, Performance Lab® NutriGenesis® Multi actually registers as nutrition by the body when absorbed, unlike many of the synthetic multivitamin options out there.

And with both “For Men” and “For Women” formulations, Performance Lab® Multi has been customized to meet the specific nutrient needs of everyone.

The same goes for these formulas’ use of only all-natural ingredients and NutriCaps® capsules, making this the cleanest plant-based multivitamin for both vegans and non-vegans alike.

Performance Lab® NutriGenesis® Multi is completely plant-based, vegan-friendly, eco-friendly, non-GMO, gluten-free, synthetic-free, and allergen-free—inside and out.

If you’ve been desperately trying to get better sleep and anxiety relief with many elaborate health supplements and strategies to no avail, maybe it’s time to get back to the bare essentials—specifically, the 24 life-essential vitamins and minerals found in Performance Lab® NutriGenesis® Multi.

From there, you’ll have a sturdier foundation to enhance much more than just your sleep and your emotions.

To build a bigger, better you, the first step is always the smallest.

We’re talking micronutrient small.

To get the best deal on Performance Lab® Multi, click here.

For Even Better Results, Stack Performance Lab® NutriGenesis® Multi with…