A good night’s sleep is essential to provide the energy you need to get through each day, whether you are a student at school or working in corporate America. When you have difficulty sleeping, it can be tough to stay alert or even maintain a pleasant mood. Sleep is an essential component of good health and if you lose sleep consistently, you are at higher risk for a number of different ailments such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Kids with sleep issues may have undiagnosed ADHD. Your nightly food choices can make a difference in the type of sleep, if any, you get.
You may be guilty of consuming caffeine, a known stimulant, in order to get through your day. Caffeine can be found in chocolate, coffee, tea, energy drinks and sodas. If you drink a cup or two each morning, there is no real problem. However, if you notice that you drink several pots of coffee or drinking a six-pack of soda a day, it’s time to take notice, especially if these caffeine sessions are predominantly in the afternoon and evening hours.
Excessive amounts of caffeine can cause anxiety and make you feel jumpy. And when you drink it in the evening, it can cause problems with falling or staying asleep. It becomes a never-ending cycle of drinking caffeine to stay up when it is actually what keeps you from falling asleep at night. You then repeat the same process the next day.
One of the first food choices to help you sleep at night is to cut back or quit consuming caffeine all together. Withdrawal is no picnic as you can develop severe headaches, irritability, body aches and inattentiveness. However, you can do it gradually over time, such as mixing decaffeinated versions into your favorites, eventually increasing the decaffeinated versions more and more until you are no longer consuming caffeine.
Caffeine is not the only food choice to make in regards to achieving a good night’s sleep. There are a variety of other ways to tweak your nightly food choices for a good night’s sleep.
1. Reduce alcohol consumption. While alcohol is a depressant and can make you sleepy, drinking too much will actually create a rather restless night of sleep.
2. Choose foods with melatonin for the evening meal. There are a number of foods and herbs which contain traces of melatonin, a hormone which promotes sleep and helps set circadian rhythms. Oats, cherries, bananas, rice, barley and tomatoes are just a few examples of food choices that might help you ultimately sleep.
3. Bypass spicy foods or heavy meals at night. Any food that can cause indigestion and heartburn should be avoided at night time.
4. Eat a light snack before bedtime containing tryptophan, an amino acid which the body uses to make serotonin, a neurotransmitter that promotes sleep. Turkey, dairy products, beans, rice, edible seeds, and soy are all good choices to help you sleep.
5. Avoid fatty foods, especially at night. Excessive consumption of fats not only promotes weight gain, it also can cause sleep difficulties. Try to consume most of your fat intake earlier in the day, making sure to get plenty of monounsaturated fats, a good source of omega 3 fatty acids.
Sleep deprived people tend to gravitate toward caffeine and sugary, carb rich foods to get an energy boost, which in turn promotes weight gain. Therefore, making the right nightly food choices to help you sleep is so important.
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