This content originally appeared on On a regular basis Health. Republished with permission.
Medically Reviewed by Kayli Anderson, RDN of American College of Lifestyle Medicine
If you happen to’ve ever tossed and turned in bed after a spicy meal gave you reflux or some deep-fried food gave you gas, you realize that your food decisions can mess together with your sleep in some very direct ways.
But is there enough scientific evidence for doctors to make recommendations about what to eat to advertise good sleep?
“There’s some credible research on the market that has checked out various foods in relation to sleep,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, an associate professor of dietary medicine on the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Latest York City, whose research focuses on the connection between sleep, weight loss program, and cardiometabolic disease.
Together with some specific foods, there’s also evidence that certain diets or eating patterns might also help promote higher sleep.
Are Certain Foods Good for Sleep?
For instance, there’s data showing that each kiwis and tart cherries are linked to sleep improvements.
Individuals who, for 4 weeks, ate two kiwis roughly one hour before bed fell asleep 14 minutes faster and slept 40 minutes longer than individuals who didn’t eat any kiwis, in line with a study from Taiwan. One other study, this one from the UK, found individuals who drank 8 ounces of tart cherry juice twice a day — half-hour after waking up, and in addition half-hour before dinner — slept longer and more “efficiently” than individuals who drank a placebo cherry drink.
What could explain the sleep advantages of those foods? Dr. St-Onge says each kiwi and tart cherries contain melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced by the body that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycles. It’s also present in some foods (and in supplements).
Increasing melatonin levels at certain times of the day by means of eating melatonin-rich foods could have a helpful effect on sleep, St-Onge says — though she’s quick so as to add that more research is required. (Neither of the studies assessed whether people’s melatonin levels actually modified after eating the kiwis or drinking the tart cherry juice.)
So do you have to replenish on kiwis and tart cherry juice in the event you’re having trouble sleeping? There’s probably no harm in trying these out, but at this point, sleep experts aren’t recommending them to patients. Still, the research is useful since it lends support to the concept melatonin-rich foods might increase melatonin within the body — and improve sleep consequently.
A few of St-Onge’s own research has found evidence that other melatonin-containing foods might also promote sleep. These include various varieties of dairy foods — including milk from cows who were milked at nighttime, when the melatonin content of their milk could also be elevated. But again, she says more research is required to iron out with certainty how eating melatonin-rich foods can affect sleep, she says.
That said, there are other, clearer associations between weight loss program and sleep.
Are Certain Diets Higher for Sleep?
Research has found links between a Mediterranean-style weight loss program and improved sleep. In a single study, the upper an individual scored on a test designed to measure their adherence to the Mediterranean weight loss program, the greater their overall sleep quality was.
As you almost certainly know by now, a Mediterranean weight loss program is loosely defined as one high in plant foods, like vegetables, fruits, legumes, and seeds, in addition to fish, whole grains, olive oil, and dairy, and low intakes of alcohol. It also tends to eschew beef and refined carbohydrates.
St-Onge has also conducted research on the Mediterranean weight loss program and sleep. In a single study, she and her fellow researchers analyzed weight loss program and sleep data collected from greater than 2,000 individuals. “We found greater adherence to Mediterranean weight loss program was related to reduced risk of short sleep and insomnia symptoms,” she says.
The study was observational, meaning it simply searched for associations between weight loss program and sleep. It cannot say whether switching to a Mediterranean weight loss program would result in sleep improvements. But St-Onge says some elements of the Mediterranean weight loss program may account for its links to improved sleep. She says this weight loss program tends to pack numerous fiber and low amounts of sugar. In accordance with her, the information showed that “higher fiber consumption is related to more deep sleep and fewer light sleep, and consuming less sugar is related to fewer arousals at night.”
Again, she says more research is required to tease out just how these weight loss program elements may fit to bolster sleep quality. But of all of the diets on the market, the Mediterranean weight loss program is arguably the one most consistently linked with positive health outcomes and low rates of disease. And since we all know a poor weight loss program can dysregulate the human body in ways in which result in obesity, diabetes, and other health issues — all of which have also been linked in various ways to poor sleep — it is sensible that a healthy weight loss program may help promote good sleep.
How Poor Sleep Can Change Your Eating Habits
Plenty of studies have linked poor sleep with increased cravings for junk foods. For instance, one study found that cutting women’s sleep time by 33 percent increased their hunger, food cravings, and portion sizes while eating the following day.
One other study, using brain scans, found that individuals deprived of sleep for one full day showed reduced activity within the parts of the brain that regulate appetite and self-control. At the identical time, other parts of the brain were more lively, and this appeared to result in greater “food desirability,” the authors of that study wrote.
“We all know thoroughly that poor sleep affects food preferences,” St-Onge says, from research demonstrating that this happens once we observe people’s behavior under restricted sleep situations, to research the brain activity of sleep-deprived people.
St-Onge has also conducted work on this area. In one in every of her studies, she and her fellow researchers explain how the parts of the brain that help control hunger and willpower were more lively after an evening of fine sleep, while the reward centers of the brain that reply to food we discover pleasurable were more lively after a poor night of sleep. And food decisions were affected by sleep, too. When people were deprived of sleep, she says: “They ate more fat and saturated fat, they usually found these foods more pleasurable.” In other words, the brain appears to be more liable to food-based temptations when fatigued.
She points out that other research has linked an absence of sleep to higher intakes of fat (in line with a study from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition) and carbohydrates (in line with a study from the journal Sleep) — and that it’s possible some hunger-related hormones rise or fall consequently of poor sleep, which could help explain these effects.
So, what to make of all this? Clearly, there are ties between what an individual eats and the way they sleep. And St-Onge says this relationship likely works in each directions — meaning sleep affects an individual’s food decisions, and an individual’s food decisions affect sleep. But as of today, it’s difficult to say just what (or how) an individual should eat to enhance their sleep.
“I feel this field is in its infancy at this point,” St-Onge says. Adhering to a healthy, plant-rich weight loss program looks like a superb technique to bolster your sleep quality. But there are still a variety of unknowns with regards to the specifics.