 It's really frustrating when you can't get to sleep. Thousands of people in the UK suffer from insomnia every day and nearly everybody will have trouble sleeping at some point in their life. There are countless insomnia remedies and sleep tips out there but do any of them really work. Warm milk has an age old reputation for curing insomnia. Many people who drink a glass of warm milk every night claim that it helps them to get to sleep. A common reason given is that milk contains the amino acid tryptophan that is well known for its sedative effect. Exponents of warm milk before bedtime claim that tryptophan in milk helps us to sleep. In actual fact our bodies don't absorb enough tryptophan to have any soporific effect. That's because the tryptophan has to compete with lots of other amino acids attempting to cross the blood brain barrier and very little actually gets across. Scientists believe that the routine of drinking warm milk every night may be the real reason that it helps sleep. The psychological association between milk and sleep is stronger than any chemical present in the milk. So keep drinking the warm milk it may make you drowsy it's just not down to the tryptophan.