🔋How a Simple Tweak Could Reduce Nighttime Awakenings by 16% (ATP#34)

I’ve struggled with insomnia for years. After quitting my stressful university job in September, I finally started sleeping well again instead of waking up at 3 a.m. Good sleep feels amazing, and it’s essential for your physical and mental health.

It’s widely known that sleep influences almost any function you can think of, from attention to emotion regulation to your brain’s waste clearance system (covered last week), and a lot more.

A lesser-known relationship exists between sleep and appetite regulation: Healthy sleep helps you regulate your appetite, whereas disrupted sleep can lead to weight gain because it messes with your hormones.

But how does it work the other way around? Does your food also influence your sleep?

A new study suggests it does.

About the study

34 young healthy adults (28 men and 6 women, average age 28 years) participated in this study and tracked their food and beverage intake over several days. They also wore wrist actigraphs that tracked their sleep each night.

From the actigraphy data, the researchers calculated a “sleep fragmentation index”, which refers to the number of awakenings per night. In other words, this index captures sleep disturbances, with higher values indicating more sleep fragmentation and worse sleep quality.

What they found

The authors reported that a higher intake of fruit and vegetables was associated with a lower sleep fragmentation index the following night. In numerical terms, they report that an increase from 0 to 5 cups of fruits and veggies reduced the sleep fragmentation index by 16%. That’s impressive!

said Esra Tasali, one of the lead authors and director of the Sleep Center at the University of Chicago.

Regarding the potential mechanisms behind the findings, the authors discuss that the complex carbohydrates in fruit and veggies might indirectly stimulate melatonin production and help people sleep better. They also discuss other components of fruit and veggies, such as polyphenols, that could aid sleep.

Even though the study cannot establish a causal link between fruit/veggie consumption and sleep quality, the timing is compelling: food intake from a single day predicted sleep quality that same night, and sleep was measured objectively rather than self-reported.

Another reason to eat your veggies every day!

Wrapping up

While we have substantial evidence on how sleep deprivation disrupts appetite control, less is known about how nutrition shapes sleep.

This study offers early but encouraging evidence that what you eat could influence how well you sleep that same night. Hopefully, future studies will help clarify if there’s indeed a causal link and, if so, the mechanisms behind it.

What else I’ve been up to:

This article on Medium has been getting a lot of traction! It explains 10 strategies I use to stay focused in a world built for distraction. I’m linking it below (contains a friend link at the beginning so you can read it for free if you’re not a Medium member)!

That’s it for today!

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Until next time!

Best wishes,

Patricia (Dr. Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com.