IF YOU struggle with sleep, you’ve likely tried everything from a hot bath to a meditation app.
Are you interested in improving your diet?
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Experts believe this is the key to better sleep but it is often overlooked.
Marie-Pierre St-Onge is an associate professor at Columbia University in New York. She has been studying the topic for nearly a decade.
She claimed that food is essential to our health. “unrecognised contributor”Good or bad sleep.
She has repeatedly returned the exact same results.
Cutting back on sugar and saturated fat, while upping fibre, could be the trick to getting a good night’s rest, she says.
Dr. St.Onge wrote an essay for Knowable Magazine: “Our studies over the past seven years have shown that eating more fiber and less saturated fat and sugar during the day results in deeper, less disturbed sleep at night.
“It may be particularly helpful to eat a Mediterranean-type diet rich in fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole grains and olive oil.”
Med diet has less red meat, processed meat, and whole-fat dairy. It also includes more fish-based meals.
“In our research, those who followed this diet were 1.4 times more likely to have good night’s sleep and 35 per cent less likely to have insomnia”, Dr St-Onge said.
She explained that these foods are high in tryptophan.
Although the body cannot make this amino acid, it can be found in foods such as chicken, eggs and bananas, cheese, fish and nuts, tofu, and turkey.
Tryptophan is a common supplement that can be used to alleviate sleep disorders such as insomnia.
Although the evidence regarding its effects on sleep is lacking, experts believe that it could act as a prelude to the release of brain-inducing chemicals.
It increases the body’s natural sleep hormone melatonin.
Melatonin is a hormone that makes us feel tired in the evening. It’s the opposite to cortisol which makes us awake in the morning.
The body begins to produce it at night when it becomes dark outside. It stays elevated all night.
Dr St-Onge said: “Other foods — including tomatoes, pineapple, tart cherries, bananas, apples, vegetable oils, nuts and animal products — contain melatonin itself
“Eating such melatonin-rich foods may also boost your own melatonin levels, although research on this is sparse.”
One of Dr St-Onge’s most recent research papers was published in the journal Annual Review of Nutrition in August, Daily Mail’s Good Health reported.
According to the paper “whole diets rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other sources of dietary tryptophan and melatonin”These factors have been shown to predict positive sleep outcomes.
These foods are also high in fibre – and most Brits don’t eat the recommended 30g of fibre per day.
Dr St-Onge’s said her work has shown fibre contributes to the best “sleep efficiency”, Good Health reported.
One diet that’s rich in both fibre and tryptophan is the Mediterranean diet, deemed the most healthy in the world after troves of research shows its disease-preventing links.
Catherine Collins, an NHS dietitian based in Surrey, said: “The Mediterranean diet is the gold standard of diets, there is no doubt about that.
“However, studies to date have not involved enough people or been conducted for long enough to say for sure that specific components of it aid sleep.”
She added that she believes there isn’t enough evidence yet to recommend a single diet or ingredient as a way to improve sleep.
Sleep starvers
Meanwhile, Dr St-Onge’s team found that some components of the diet could wreck sleep – namely saturated fat and sugar.
Saturated fat is the type of fat that can be found in butter, lard, ghee, fatty meats and cheese.
Sugar in its refined form, such as pastries, cookies, and fizzy drinks, can be very dangerous.
26 volunteers participated in a 2016 study that examined their eating habits. Then, they indulged on what they wanted for the fifth day.
Researchers monitored their sleep with special machines all the time.
Dr. St-Onge stated: “On the fifth day, it took almost twice as long for them to get to sleep — 12 minutes longer — compared to the previous days.”
They also spent five minutes less in deep sleep, which is when cells regenerate and memories are formed.
This may not seem like a lot. But it’s in fact 15 per cent less deep sleep than on the nights they had eaten well.
The good news? It appears that healthy eating can have a positive effect on your sleep quality.
Experts know this from looking at certain foods and drinks, such as coffee, that if consumed too close to bedtime can keep you awake all night.
Dr St-Onge said: “In the end, bad sleep and poor diet can be a vicious cycle: Lack of sleep leads to poor dietary choices, which in turn causes low quality sleep.
“But we can interrupt this cycle and turn it around.
“Eating well throughout the day could produce sounder, more restful sleep — which, in turn, could contribute to making better food choices.”
Our sleeping habits can be affected by many factors, including genetics, lifestyle choices, and our mental and physical health.