I always thought drinking warm milk before going to bed helps one fall asleep.
According to Dr.Oz's friend, it does
Dr. Oz talked with a sleep expert who said warm milk will help you fall asleep at night. The milk helps you fall asleep because it contains small amounts of tryptophan and melatonin, both of which help you sleep.
According to zocdoc.com it does
Your mother was right that drinking warm milk before bed can help you sleep. This is because milk contains tryptophan, which is an amino acid which helps induce sleep.
According to Art Spielman it does not
But when milk was tested, it failed to affect sleep patterns. “Tryptophan-containing foods don’t produce the hypnotic effects pure tryptophan does, because other amino acids in those foods compete to get into the brain,” explains Art Spielman, M.D., an insomnia expert and professor of psychology at the City University of New York.
According to an article published by Anahad O'Connor it's debatable
But whether milk can induce sleep is debatable, and studies suggest that if it does, the effect has little to do with tryptophan.
To have any soporific effect, tryptophan has to cross the blood-brain barrier. And in the presence of other amino acids, it ends up fighting — largely unsuccessfully — to move across.
One study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated this in 2003. The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that eating protein-rich foods — like milk — decreased the ability of tryptophan to enter the brain.
