It has a tough reputation:vitamin C would prevent sleep. Since our earliest childhood, we have been advised not to drink orange juice before going to bed. But is it really logical? Many fruits and vegetables are indeed very rich in vitamin C, we recommend eating them with every meal, and yet they do not make us insomniac!
So where does this belief that oranges prevent you from sleeping come from? Simply leaflets of vitamin C tablets flavored with this taste, where one can read:"It is preferable not to take this medicine at the end of the day because of its slightly stimulating effect. »
It was when the first vitamin C supplement was marketed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche in 1934 that this detail was added to the list of potentially undesirable effects. If the lab saw fit to add this sentence, as a precaution, it is quite simply that vitamin C participates in the synthesis of dopamine, a chemical messenger of the brain involved in awakening and alertness.
Since that time, this warning has been systematically repeated and has never been questioned.
However, if studies carried out on rats show that at very high doses, vitamin C increases the excitatory effects of dopamine, no study has yet ever shown that it interferes with sleep.
A clinical trial* was thus carried out on healthy volunteers who took four grams of vitamin C before going to bed (the equivalent of ten kilos of oranges). Recordings of their nocturnal brain activity showed no sleep cycle changes or disturbances upon waking.
Other studies have come to similar results. A bit of common sense is therefore welcome to dispel this false reputation:a kiwi contains more vitamin C than an orange, just like cabbage, blackcurrant or pepper, and yet these foods have never made insomniac!
We can therefore bite into oranges before sleeping (and vitamin tablets), or give Junior a glass of juice, without fear!
*Read:Ginger is an aphrodisiac, and other misconceptions about food , by Sarah Pellet-Calaud, Thierry Souccar editions.
