How Eating a Salad Can Help You Sleep

How Eating a Salad Can Help You Sleep

If you’re having trouble sleeping, you might want to take a look at what you eat.

It’s common knowledge that drinking coffee or other caffeinated beverages during the day can cause difficulties for people when trying to get to some shuteye, but a new study is saying that the kind of food we intake matters, too.

According to an article on sciencedaily.com, people who eat more saturated fat and sugar, and not that much fiber, have more disruptive sleep than those who have a diet with more veggies and fruits.

“Our main finding was that diet quality influenced sleep quality,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, leader of the study that was published in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. “It was most surprising that a single day of greater fat intake and lower fiber could influence sleep parameters.”

Prof. St-Onge is an assistant professor in the department of medicine and Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, N.Y.

In the study, she saw that, not only did participants who ate diets higher in saturated fats and sugar have lighter sleep, but when compared to participants who ate a controlled diet provided by a nutritionist which was lower in fat and higher in protein and fiber, these participants took almost twice as long to fall asleep in the first place.

The moral of the story? The next time you can’t seem to get any rest, try grabbing a salad with grilled chicken instead of digging into that ice cream at the back of the freezer.

Your body and mind just might thank you.

Photo credit: Sunny Forest/Shutterstock

 

 

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