HHave a glass of hot milk. No, a cup of herbal tea. Eat carbohydrates, but only good carbohydrates. Have fat, but not too much. Take a filling meal. No, not this filling. Eat early, but not too early or you will be hungry again.
Ask for advice on the internet on how to eat for a good night’s sleep and you could lose an entire night trying to find a clear answer. But in the midst of a global shortage of good sleep (48% of Australian adults say they have at least two problems related to sleep), Eating habits emerge as a key factor that can make the difference between refreshing rest and a night spent regretting each choice of food you made in the previous 24 hours.
Some of the most useful ideas on the effect of timing, the size and quality of meals on sleep come from studies from those working all night to keep our world on the move. In Cquuniversity in Adélaïde, the research psychologist, Dr. Charlotte Gupta, studied how the various eating habits affect workers’ performance. His most important advice for a good night’s sleep is to eat well before bedtime.
“We are not ready to digest food at night,” said Gupta. A meal consumed too close to sleep forces the body to concentrate energy and resources on digestion, while it should rest and perform other tasks that take place while we are based. “It is therefore likely that this has an impact on the quality of our sleep; We are more likely to wake up overnight, remember our dreams, not this really restful sleep, ”she says.
The ideal is to eat your last food at least two hours before going to sleep, which does not mean pecking pre-sleep to the remains or at midnight of the refrigerator for a spoonful of cold pudding.
The size of this end meal can also make a difference. Ideally, we should have a larger meal in the middle of the day, when exposure to light means that our body is very awake and started for digestion, and a smaller meal in the evening. But not too small. “We don’t want it to be so small for dinner that you are really hungry during the night, that your body will wake you up and want food,” said Gupta.
On the question of what to eat for a good night’s sleep, the answer is less white cut, explains the physiologist and nutritionist of the exercise, Dr. Elizabeth Machan from the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and the University of Sydney. “We have no in-depth research that gave us the perfect recipe for what the evening meal should be,” she said.
There is evidence that higher meals are more generous, so in theory, people will have a more relaxing sleep, says Machan. But the regimes rich in fats are also associated with a shorter sleep period.
Likewise, despite the popular idea that eating carbohydrates before bedtime is bad, some studies suggest having a higher meal in carbohydrates can actually help people fall asleep. “I think that many people could avoid carbohydrates in the evening, for example, or they will reduce their carbohydrate contribution in the evening, and that’s when they can become more food for night at night,” she said.
Machan says it is important to include vegetables in this evening meal to help slow the digestive process. “Your intestine will be exposed to these nutrients longer, it will be better to absorb them,” she says. “So, if you have a meal that is a lower energy, for example, it will keep you full, you are not going to wake up in the middle of the hungry night.”
There is a lot of interest in micronutrients such as amino acid tryptophan, which the body can convert the sleep hormone of melatonin, and which is in a range of foods, including eggs, tofu, salmon, milk, turkey and nuts and seeds.
While some studies suggest increasing the intake in tryptophan could stimulate melatonin and improve the quality of sleep, Machan is more skeptical, arguing that exposure to light is much more important in the regulation of melatonin. “You are not going to do (melatonin) if you are sitting in the light – it is a signal that we do not need to fall asleep, that it is the day,” she said.
One of the challenges of exploring the link between diet and sleep is that it is a double -meaning street, explains Dr. Jen Walsh, director of the Center for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia.
Studies connecting late meals with poor sleep does not necessarily measure the quality of sleep one night, but in the last month.
“I think what it tells us is that individuals who have more sleep are more likely to eat later in the evening.”
Although a way of examining it is that eating later means a good quality sleep, another way of interpreting data is that people who have a lower sleep in quality are more likely to eat later. “This is potentially (the case) That people who eat later have worse health behavior in general, ”she says.
Like so many other health stories, a good sleep finally seems to come back to this same old chestnut of a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle. “I say that sleep has an impact on the diet and it also has an impact on the exercise, so we really have to sleep, and that will do everything else,” explains Walsh.
