A Study Suggests These 3 Diet Changes May Improve Sleep

Your eating habits may affect how well you sleep.

A study in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Sleep Medicine found that lower fiber intake, along with higher amounts of saturated fat and sugar, was linked to less restorative sleep.

The results indicate that more fiber may be associated with longer periods of deep, slow-wave sleep, the most restorative sleep stage. Higher fat intake was tied to less slow-wave sleep, while more sugar was connected to more sleep interruptions.

Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an assistant professor in the department of medicine and the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center, told Inc. that the research showed sleep varied depending on what participants ate each day.

“When we provided participants a controlled, well-balanced diet, they fell asleep quicker and had more deep sleep than when they self-selected their dietary intakes two days later,” St-Onge said. “In other studies in which we have daytime intakes matched to nighttime sleep, we also find that dietary intakes during the day are associated with sleep at night.”

What the study found

The study looked at 26 adults, including 13 women and 13 men, all of whom were a healthy weight. The average participant was 35 years old.

For the research, participants spent five nights in a sleep lab and had nine hours in bed each night. On average, they slept for seven hours and 35 minutes.