Need A Better Sleep? Start With A Better Diet…

We all know how important a quality sleep and diet are to our health and day to day lives. This two play a very key part in our general well-being. So it’s no news that a deficiency in either of them can have a very devastating effect on our health.

Sleep in particular is very much under looked, with not too many understanding the importance of a quality sleep. When we sleep we allow our body and mind to recharge, leaving us refreshed and alert when we wake up.

A lack of quality sleep can cause some serious problems to the body, ranging from, High blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure to stroke. So yes, you need to keep an eye on that sleep cycle of yours. While there are a lot of factors that can affect a quality sleep, our diet is most often the under looked part.

Yes, what you eat affects how you sleep. So how does our diet affect our sleep?

HOW OUR DIETS AFFECTS OUR SLEEP

Our diets play a key role in most of our day to day activities (if not all). A good diet has a variety of benefit, from strengthening bones, boosting immunity, supporting muscles, the benefits of a good diet are numerous. So there are several reasons we should monitor our nutrition, because it has a hand in literally almost everything we do, including how we sleep.

It has been scientifically proven that a good diet can augment the quality of our sleep, helping us have a nice long sleep.

Whereas, it has been shown that a bad diet routine can negatively impact our sleep.

In fact, it has been shown that what we eat plays a vital key in how we sleep.

Researchers found that eating less fiber, more saturated fat and more sugar throughout the day is linked with less restorative sleep. Yes, foods like, cookies, cakes, white bread, sweets, affect our sleep negatively.

It has also been shown that high carbohydrate meals like rice, bagels, low-fat milk, also impairs the quality of our sleep, it’s also known to increase the number of awakening at night and reduce the amount and quality of sleep.

An unhealthy diet that contributes to excess body weight may also cause or worsen a sleep disorder.

So how do we incorporate the perfect diet to improve the quality of our sleep?

HOW TO USE A GOOD DIET TO GET A BETTER SLEEP

There have been several studies carried out to find out what sort of diet can impact our sleep positively.

It has been proven that Mediterranean diet, which is loosely defined as a diet high in plant foods, like, vegetables, fruits, almonds, legumes and seeds, as well as fish, olive oil and diary, has been known to improve sleep quality.

It is also known that dietary approaches that balance macro nutrients and ensure adequate vitamins and minerals also help to improve sleep quality.

Likewise it is advised to limit the intake of alcohol at night, as it can interfere with your sleep cycles, decreasing the overall quality of your sleep, as it is known to affect your body’s natural production of melatonin, which is also known as the “sleep hormone”.

Rather than having a bottle of alcohol, it is advised to enjoy a glass of cherry tart juice instead before bed. Tart cherries are a natural source of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.

In addition to what we eat, when we eat them should also be monitored by us. For example, the timing of meals can influence sleep. Eating too late at night has been shown to throw off sleep and cause indigestion, affecting the quality and quantity of sleep you get.

It is advised to eat maximum 3 hours before going to bed, this allows some digestion to occur and gives time for the content of your stomach to move into your small intestines.

Avoiding eating a large amount of food before bedtime has also been shown to improve the quality and quantity of sleep.

CONCLUSION

A quality sleep is very important to the body and mind, as it helps in allowing the body and mind to recharge after a long day. There are several factors that can affect the quality and quantity of our sleep, one of which is our diet.

Our diet can make or break our sleep routine, which is why it is important to keep an eye on what we eat, because after all, it plays a part in nearly all our day to day activities. So it is important to improve both the quality of our nutrition and our sleep, because after all “Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great”.