Can eating resistance starch help with sleep? What is resistance starch? It is starch that we can not digest. But it feeds our good bacteria in our gut. So it is like a pre-biotic. And like any probiotic or prebiotic that affects our gut microbes, you should start slow and build up (if you are going to try it).
The forums are filled with many people who have intestinal disturbances after trying resistance starch — mainly bloating and digestive issues. If your body doesn’t agree with it, skip it. Or take smaller doses and start slower. Should not do on a daily basis.
Mark’s Daily Apple shows us how to get resistance starch from food (there are supplements too now, but real food is recommended). It includes cooked-and-cooled potatoes or rice and unriped bananas. Make sure you don’t have any potato sensitivity before trying.
He also mentions raw potatoes and cooked-and-cooled legumes, both of which I do not recommend. You really should never eat raw potatoes. And legumes are non-paleo.
In his post, one of the benefits of resistance starch is …
“Improves sleep, conferring the ability to hold and direct (in real time) private viewings of vivid movie-esque dreams throughout the night.”
and believes this may be due to increased GABA from the increased butyrate, or better production of serotonin by your gut bacteria. Serotonin is a pre-cursor to melatonin (the sleep hormone).
Guest post by Richard Sprague on ubiomeblog has positive results with sleep after taking resistance starch. His test showed that it increased his B. infantis microbes, which modulates trypophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid involved with sleep. It turns into 5-HTP which turns into serotonin.
He writes …
“Whoah! You wouldn’t believe how wonderfully I slept that night. Over 8 hours of rock-solid, uninterrupted sleep, and more vivid dreams than I’ve had in years. It was amazing!”
So it appears that dream recall is related to quality of sleep. That may also be why 5-HTP supplement may also improve sleep and dream recall.
To see how important the microbiome is to our health, read Mr. Heisenbug article, “Why Resistant Starch & Prebiotic Fiber Improve Sleep and Dreaming”