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Diet Linked To Sleep Quality

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Diet Linked To Sleep Quality

Trending News: What You Eat Can Affect How Well You Sleep

Why Is This Important?

Because diet and sleep are basically the two most essential things in life.

Long Story Short

New research has found that the quality of a person's diet can affect the quality of their sleep. Consumption of saturated fats and sugars is associated with lighter, less-restorative sleep.

Long Story

Eating well (that is, eating healthily) is one of the most important things you can do — it's essential to looking good, performing well and living to see your 70th birthday. Sleep is equally important. Scientists still aren't sure why we need it, but get less than the prescribed 6-9 hours per night, and there will be consequences. Get none at all, and you will literally die. Maybe it's not surprising, then, that the two are inextricably linked: Eat a bad diet, and your sleep will suffer.

The research, conducted by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, involved 13 men and 13 women with an average age of 35. Each participant spent 5 nights in a sleep lab, in bed for 9 hours and averaging 7 hours and 35 minutes of sleep each night. For the first three days, the subjects' meals were prepared according to guidelines provided by a nutritionist. For the last two, participants were free to eat however they pleased.

The nutritionist's meals were higher in fiber and lower in saturated fat than the meals the subjects chose for themselves, and the difference was stark: Participants fell asleep much faster with the controlled meals, an average of 17 minutes versus 29 for their chosen meals. The nutritionist's meals, which were also lower in added sugar, were associated with deeper, more restful sleep in general.

"The finding that diet can influence sleep has tremendous health implications, given the increasing recognition of the role of sleep in the development of chronic disorders such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular disease," said principal investigator Marie-Pierre St-Onge.

The troubling thing about the link between diet and sleep is that it can easily be cyclical. If you eat poorly and then sleep poorly, you'll be tired the next day. That makes it harder to make good food choices, leading to more poor sleep, and on and on and on. The good news, however, is that in only took one night of poor eating to have a negative impact on sleep — if the opposite is true, that means that exerting a little bit of willpower to make healthy choices may be all you need to get back on track.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Does eating unhealthy meals earlier in the day have any effect?

Disrupt Your Feed

A salad for dinner sounds boring, but a solid 8 hours of sleep sounds magical.

Drop This Fact

Humans are the only mammals that willingly delay sleep.

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