5 Nutrients to Eat for Better Sleep—and How to Incorporate Them Into Your Diet
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I reached out to three sleep experts who noted that diet’s influence on quality shut-eye is as much about what youdon’teat and drink as what you do. Read on to learn about five foods that could negatively impact your sleep.
What I Did For One Week For Better Sleep
Caffeine
Alcohol
“Many people drink alcohol because they think it will help them sleep,” says Frank Scheer, Ph.D., a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But while it may help them fall asleep faster, the quality of sleep is going to be lower.” The problem is that once the booze wears off, it has the opposite of a sedative effect—disrupting your sleep later in the night and cutting the amount of REM time you get (the stage linked to learning, memory and mood). “Alcohol almost completely obliterates stages 3 and 4 of sleep, which are tied to immune and cognitive function,” says Breus. And the more cocktails you have, the worse it gets. His advice: Stick to one or two drinks max and stop drinking three hours before bedtime.
This Is the #1 Food for Better Sleep, According to a Dietitian
Sugar
Saturated Fat
The same clinical trial that fingered sugar as an enemy of sleep also found that participants who ate diets highest in sat fat spent less time in slow-wave sleep—the “restore and recover” type. St-Onge says inflammation could be at least one of the reasons here, as well.
Inflammation Might Be The Reason You Can’t Sleep—Here’s What to Do About It
Spicy Foods
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