Four

Food and Drink Tips

A healthy diet impacts on everything from our weight and mood to our energy quotient and our risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer. But what’s less well known is that what we eat and drink can also sabotage — or support — our slumber. Fueling our bodies with the right food and drink will provide our brains with the nutrients they need to produce neurotransmitters that help maintain healthy sleep cycles.

Some foods can keep us awake, too, while others may have sleep-inducing properties. Plus, when and how much you eat can also affect how easy, or not, it may be to nod off.

Follow these food and drink tricks to ensure that what you feed yourself helps you get your forty winks — and then some.

95 ✦ Impose a caffeine curfew

Caffeine peps you up by blocking the effects of adenosine, a brain chemical thought to be involved in promoting sleep. The effects can take eight hours to fully wear off, so a cup of coffee in the late afternoon could interfere with falling asleep that night. Set yourself a coffee caffeine curfew of about 2:00 pm to ensure it’s all out of your system by the time you hit the sack.

Don’t forget the other caffeine culprits: tea, colas, energy drinks, and some cold and flu remedies also contain it. Even chocolate contains a small amount of the stuff (the darker the chocolate, the more caffeine). Alas, chocolate’s probably not the best midnight snack . . .

96 ✦ Steer clear of too much spice

A spicy meal before bed can give you indigestion, another cause of difficulty sleeping. Research has also shown that capsaicin, the active chemical that gives chile peppers their spicy heat, can trigger the process by which cells convert energy into heat (thermogenesis) and so increase your body temperature — yet another thing that can interfere with your ability to drop off.

A study from the University of Tasmania clearly showed this effect.1 Volunteers were served Tabasco sauce and mustard with their evening meal. Their body temperature rose, and they took longer to fall asleep than usual, had less slow-wave, deep sleep, and spent more time awake than normal.

So if you’re intending to indulge in a spicy meal, you might want to eat it at lunchtime — or at least a few hours before bed so everything can cool off.

97 ✦ Go easy on greasy foods

We all know that eating too many high-fat foods can increase our risk of heart disease, obesity, and certain cancers. But fatty foods can also disrupt your sleep. A study published in 2016 in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that consuming a lot of saturated fats during the day was associated with lighter, less restorative sleep and more waking up during the night.2

Try limiting “bad” fats like those in processed meats, pastries, cakes, and cookies and instead choose foods containing “good” heart-healthy unsaturated fats — like nuts, seeds, avocados, and oils such as olive and sunflower.

Other ways to cut back on saturated fat? Remove all the visible fat from meat and the skin from poultry, swap to reduced-fat or skim milk; and boil, steam or grill foods rather than roasting or frying them in butter, lard or coconut oil.

98 ✦ Shun too much sugar

A high-sugar diet can deprive you of sweet dreams, according to research, because the spikes and crashes in your blood sugar that you get after eating sweet foods can cause restlessness and disturb your sleep.3

One sugary culprit you should definitely cut back on? Sugar-sweetened caffeinated sodas. A study published in Sleep Health found that adults who slept for less than five hours a night consumed 21 percent more sugar-sweetened drinks than those who got seven to eight hours.4 Interestingly, it was suggested that not only could such drinks account for impaired sleep, but also being short on sleep could make you crave more of the same.

Whatever the case, refined sugar is not good for your body, so as well as cutting back on it in all its obvious forms — candy, chocolates, desserts — look at replacing simple carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, and rice with their whole-grain equivalents.

99 ✦ Eat early

Eating too late at night will make it difficult not only to fall asleep, but to stay asleep, too. As we know, our core body temperature must fall for us to drop off. But eating makes it rise, as blood is directed toward our digestive system — our core. So aim to stop eating a few hours before bed.

You may want to consider adopting a time-restricted-eating (TRE) pattern, which just means you eat only during a certain time window, usually between six and twelve hours. One study found that people who followed a ten-hour TRE program — say between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm — enjoyed better sleep.5

100 ✦ Eat and drink adaptogens

Adaptogens are compounds found in plants that are believed to help your body adapt to pressure and tension, possibly by regulating the release of stress hormones. They’ve been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries to help relieve anxiety. Some studies of foods and herbs from the adaptogen family, such as ginger and ashwagandha root, have confirmed their stress-busting abilities.6

Other foods in the family include nettles, licorice, moringa, turmeric, and maca. Look for herbal teas with these ingredients for a soothing sip before lights-out, or any time when stress threatens to take over.

101✦ Plenty of fruit and veggies

As the foundation of a healthy, balanced diet, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and some cancers — and could help you get just the right amount of sleep, too.

A cross-sectional study using data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey and published in the journal BMJ Open found that “medium sleepers,” who slept for seven to eight hours a night — the amount of sleep that those who enjoy better overall health generally get — ate 24 grams more fruit and veggies than “short sleepers,” who managed fewer than seven hours a night and ate 28 grams more than “long sleepers,” who slept more than eight hours a night.7 Research has shown a correlation between long sleeping and an increased mortality risk.

Figures indicate that at least two-thirds of us aren’t eating the recommended five a day. To up your intake and get the optimum seven to eight hours of sleep a night, too, try starting as you mean to go on: make a habit of adding some fruit to your breakfast cereal, oatmeal, or yogurt. Then ensure you have some sort of salad in your sandwiches for lunch and have vegetable side dishes with dinner. Snack on carrot, celery, and pepper sticks through the day.

A heart-healthy Mediterranean diet has also been linked to good sleep. So eat like a Greek and fuel up with plenty of plant foods such as vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts; replace butter with olive oil; and rein in the red meat.

102 ✦ Don’t pass on prebiotics

Prebiotics are a form of dietary fiber — found in foods like artichokes, raw garlic, leeks, and onions — that feed and contribute to the number of friendly probiotic bacteria in our gut.

But prebiotics are not only good for your tummy. Research has found that there’s a chance they could improve your sleep as well as protect you from insomnia following a stressful event.8 The study, performed on rats, found that those fed on a prebiotic diet spent more time in peaceful and restorative non-rapid-eye-movement sleep than those on a non-prebiotic diet. Also, after being exposed to a stressor, the rats on the prebiotic diet spent more time in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, the type that’s thought to help protect you from stress. The researchers noted that although earlier studies had suggested stress can alter gut bacteria in a way that interferes with sleep, the rats on the prebiotic diet appeared to be protected from these changes.

It’s unclear exactly what role prebiotics can have on human sleep — but eating healthy sources of prebiotic fiber can’t hurt.

103 ✦ Fuel up with fiber!

We should all be eating 30 grams of dietary fiber daily to help keep our digestion systems healthy. And it now seems that eating enough fiber could also help us fall asleep more easily — and get a better kind of shut-eye, too.9 Researchers from Columbia University put a number of adults on healthy controlled diets for four days, monitoring their sleep. For the fifth and sixth days, the recruits could eat what they wanted. In the event, the ones who ate a low-fiber diet on those last two days took longer to drift off to dreamland and had less deep sleep, too.

You can up your fiber intake by eating beans, lentils, brown rice, whole-grain breakfast cereals, whole-wheat pasta, and fruit and vegetables like apples, berries, celery, and broccoli.

104 ✦ Abstain from alcohol

That nightcap may help you to nod off, but you’ll pay for it with a disturbed sleep. A review of scientific studies on the effects of alcohol found that while it acts as a sedative, helping you fall asleep faster and sleep deeply for the first half of the night, those benefits are offset by more disrupted sleep in the second half.10

Alcohol is broken down fairly quickly by the body and so the sedative effect wears off within hours, and you’re left with a mini withdrawal or rebound effect, causing wakefulness or restlessness. You’re also more likely to snore and sweat after drinking, or to have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Cheers to that — not!

105 ✦ Go nuts for walnuts

You’d do well to snack on walnuts in the early evening. They contain their own source of melatonin, the University of Texas found, and eating them increases the amount of the hormone in your blood.11

Munch on them alone, or sprinkle on a salad or bowl of cereal.

106 ✦ Pep up your potassium levels

If you wake during the night, you may want to ponder on whether you’re getting enough potassium in your diet.

The University of California, San Diego, found that potassium supplements helped individuals who normally consumed a low-potassium diet sleep more, and with fewer awakenings in the night.12 Potassium can help reduce your blood pressure, regulate your heartbeat, and is good for muscle and bone strength, too.

You should be able to get enough from a healthy diet — good sources are baked sweet or white potatoes, bananas, white beans, avocados, and tomatoes.

107 ✦ Herbal help

The herbal remedy valerian has been used as a traditional medicine for sedation and sleep in many cultures. Various studies have indicated that people who take it have an 80 percent chance of reporting improved sleep compared with patients taking a placebo.13 Evidence suggests it helps stop the breakdown of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a neurotransmitter that promotes relaxation, in the brain.

It’s best to try all sorts of lifestyle measures before you take valerian, though, and do check with your doctor that it’s safe for you and that it won’t affect the action of any other medicines you’re taking.

You could also try valerian tea, available widely.

108 ✦ Take in more tryptophan

It seems that eating foods containing tryptophan can also improve sleep.14 It’s an amino acid that’s transformed into serotonin, then converted into melatonin in the body. Foods high in tryptophan include milk, poultry, and eggs.

But here’s the catch: These foods contain other amino acids that compete with tryptophan to get absorbed across the blood–brain barrier. Evidence suggests, though, that combining a tryptophan-rich food with some carbohydrate can mitigate this, because the insulin that’s released as a result of consuming the carbs helps decrease the amounts of these other amino acids in the blood.15 With less competition, it’s easier for tryptophan to cross the blood–brain barrier.

A good suppertime snack a few hours before bedtime, therefore, might be some low-sugar whole-grain cereal with milk.

109 ✦ Go cherry-picking

An article published in the American Journal of Therapeutics suggests that sipping cherry juice could help you sleep better.16 In this small study, adults aged fifty-plus with chronic insomnia who drank two daily glasses of Montmorency tart cherry juice for two weeks (one in the morning and the other in the evening) slept on average eighty-four minutes longer and had better sleep than when they drank a placebo made to look and taste like cherry juice (but without its polyphenols) for another two weeks.

The combination of melatonin, the amino acid tryptophan, and the red-pigment proanthocyanidins in the cherries may well contribute to achieving a good night’s sleep.

Cheers to cherries!

110 ✦ Eat two kiwis

Kiwi fruit aren’t just bursting with vitamin C and fiber; they could also be a superfood for sleep. Scientists at Taiwan’s Taipei Medical University gave some poor sleepers two kiwis to eat an hour before bedtime for four weeks, and the results were pretty sweet!17

The study participants fell asleep more quickly and slept longer and more soundly. It could be the super-high folate and antioxidant content of the fruits that aid sleep. Low levels of both are associated with insomnia — and low levels of folate are also associated with restless legs syndrome.

111 ✦ Go green

If you’re looking for an alternative to coffee to drink during the day, go for green tea. It contains the amino acid theanine, which possesses anti-stress effects.

Make sure you go for a low-caffeine or decaffeinated green tea, though. Caffeine suppresses the anti-stress effect and, of course, too much caffeine consumed in the daytime can keep you awake at night. A couple of Japanese studies have found that drinking low-caffeine green tea during the day not only lowered stress but improved the participants’ quality of sleep.18

112 ✦ Eat more magnesium

The mineral magnesium is important for maintaining a healthy amount of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) in the body; as we mentioned earlier, GABA is a neurotransmitter that promotes relaxation.

Magnesium deficiency is associated with anxiety and stress. One study found that upping magnesium intake led to falling asleep faster, with better sleep throughout the night.19 Magnesium is also thought to help with the symptoms of restless legs syndrome.

Good sources of magnesium are dark leafy greens, seeds and nuts, fish, and whole grains such as whole-wheat bread and brown rice. Try a brown rice pilaf with spinach, cashews, and almonds for dinner, perhaps.

113 ✦ Sip some passionflower tea

A warm drink before bed can be calming, but you may want to swap your cocoa or hot chocolate for some passionflower tea instead. An Australian university study found that people with mild sleeping difficulties who drank it for seven days slept significantly better than when they drank a placebo tea made from parsley.20

You can buy passionflower teabags, or dried passionflower to brew your own cup, from most health-food shops.

114 ✦ Oily fish is good for you

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that eating fatty fish such as salmon can have a positive impact on your sleep.21 Oily fish is high in vitamin D and essential omega-3 fatty acids, and is also thought to play a role in protecting against heart disease. Health guidelines suggest we should eat at least two portions of fish each week, at least one of which should be salmon, mackerel, sardines, or trout.

So don’t be a fish out of water and forgo fatty fish. Try swapping your usual chicken, pork, or beef for salmon, or flake some smoked mackerel over a salad.

Because oily fish can contain pollutants, though, we should eat no more than four portions a week (or two if you’re planning a pregnancy, are pregnant, or are breastfeeding).