Eat to sleep, perchance to dream

In “Heartburn,” Meryl Streep (Rachel) and Jack Nicholson (Mark) eat spaghetti carbonara in bed -- and they’re headed for a breakup. In “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” Renee Zellweger (Bridget) snuggles under the covers for a rendezvous with excessive amounts of comfort food. Neither is a formula for a good night’s sleep. But there are foods that can improve your sleep -- just don’t eat them in bed, or too close to bedtime.

Soy: A 2015 study in Nutritional Journal found that eating two servings a day of soy, which is rich in isoflavones, increased sleep times and quality and was especially helpful to postmenopausal women.

Fiber-rich foods: A study out of the Obesity Research Center and Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University revealed that the more fiber you eat, the better quality your sleep -in part because it ups the amount of slow-wave sleep you get. (Slow wave is the deepest phase of nonrapid eye movement sleep.) This may be because fiber stops blood sugar swings. A study in Plosone found that folks with higher glucose levels had poorer sleep. And another study found that 62% of people with prediabetes have poor sleep.

Fish -- especially salmon: Seems that salmon (as well as canned tuna and halibut) boosts levels of B6, which is essential for making the sleep hormone melatonin.

Other sleep-friendly foods include tart cherry juice (it ups the availability of sleep-inducing tryptophan and quells inflammation), B6-rich bananas and green leafy vegetables like kale that contain calcium and magnesium (a deficiency of either makes it harder to sleep).