Can’t sleep? Change your diet
We have all heard the advice, “Don’t eat a big meal too close to bedtime.” Although this advice sounds simple, it is very important and not that easy to follow. Many of us eat a meal late at night, within two hours of bedtime because we have not made time during the day to enjoy […]
We have all heard the advice, “Don’t eat a big meal too close to bedtime.” Although this advice sounds simple, it is very important and not that easy to follow. Many of us eat a meal late at night, within two hours of bedtime because we have not made time during the day to enjoy food. In fact, we let ourselves get so hungry that we don’t really care anymore about the joy of eating. We just want something in our stomach!
Research shows that the timing and size of our evening meal is closely related to the timing and size of our other meals throughout the day. When we have a cup of coffee in the car on the way to work, grab a sandwich for lunch, or take care of all the household chores before getting around to dinner, we are setting ourselves up for a bad night’s sleep.
Sometimes we rationalize and think that a big meal will actually help us get the much needed sleep by exhausting our body as it tries to digest the large meal. It is tempting logic, but research evidence points in the opposite direction. A large meal does the opposite of slowing our body down. It asks our circulatory system to move more blood to our digestive tract. It asks our stomach to secrete more gastric acid. It asks our pancreas to become more active and produce digestive enzymes. It asks the smooth muscles around our intestines to become active. In short, when it comes to our physiology, a large meal does anything but relax us.
In addition, our digestive tracts are set up to work best when we are standing; lying down results in gravity pulling the “wrong way” to help foods digest. Even though the practice of napping after a meal is common, it is not ideal from the standpoint of digestion. Sitting and resting are fine but lying down to sleep just does not help digestion.
Some components of food, such as caffeine, artificially wake us up, so it makes no sense to have stimulant-containing foods before bed. Unfortunately, this applies not only to caffeinated coffee, but to all caffeine-containing foods. Chocolate and many soft drinks (including diet soft drinks) have substantial amounts of caffeine. An ounce of chocolate can contain from 10-60 milligrams of caffeine, and a soft drink will usually fall into this same range. Brewed coffee can have over 100 milligrams per cup, depending on the grind and brewing time. Eliminating these foods from your evening meal routine is recommended for improved sleep.
Exercise helps regulate our appetite just as much as it helps regulate our sleep. When we are active, moving and placing physical demands on our body, it gives our body a healthy context for deciding when food is needed and when it is not. Even if it is simply a twenty-minute walk, coordinating our meal plan with exercise is a huge plus when it comes to sleep. Food, sleep and exercise are three components of our life that are meant to work together. Replacing your lunch hour with an exercise hour does not make sense any more than skipping a walk to provide a more leisurely dinner. For healthy sleep, we need to plan our day so that both components get included.
It is also worth thinking about the physiological purpose of eating in regard to late-night meals. Nutrients and energy get released from food after we eat, not before. They help increase our vitality hours after the meal has been eaten. They cannot go back and compensate for a prior day’s worth of activity that received no nutritional support. The time to have our largest meal is always before we need the most nutritional support, i.e., before we have the most physically demanding part of our day. Sleep is the least physically demanding part of the day, and the least logical target for release of food energy and nutrients. We tell ourselves we have had a hard day, and we are starved, but at this point, it is too late to repair any nutritional damage done. We need the nourishment before the hard day and hopefully it will make the day less difficult. I should also mention how important it is not to go to bed actually hungry; this can interfere with sleep, usually by failing to keep the brain supplied with enough glucose.
Your evening meal should be eaten about four hours before bedtime so that the main digestive effort is finished, but the energy from these foods can be released gradually throughout the night. If it is necessary for you to eat a snack at bedtime, then make it a small cup of herbal tea or warm milk preferably soy, fresh or dried fruit or a handful of raw nuts or seeds.