Dietary Habits That Can Improve Your Sleep

If you want to improve your sleep, a great place to start is with your diet!

Are you sick of spending your nights tossing and turning? If so, the first thing you should do is to turn to your doctor. You may have a sleep disorder, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), that can make it impossible to get a good night’s sleep without treatment. If you do have OSA, you may find the solution in our used CPAP and BIPAP machines. Another great place to start in addressing your sleep problems is with your diet. In our latest blog, we’ve been going over the connection between diet and sleep. We’ve touched on how sleep deprivation can ruin your diet, how diet affects sleep and the worst foods to eat before bedtime. Today, we will finish up this blog series with these dietary habits that can improve your sleep every night;

#1. Beware of fad diets.

Fad diets are almost never a good idea for either your waistline or your sleep quality. Most fad diets, including South Beach and Atkins, involve denying your body of one or more of the macronutrients it needs to stay healthy. Macronutrients include protein, carbohydrates and fats, and you need a good balance of all of them for optimal health. When you cut down on the calories or nutrients your body needs, it makes it difficult to get to sleep.

#2. Avoid going to bed on a full stomach.

Working long hours often leads to late-night meals and going to sleep on a full stomach. When you eat a big meal, regardless of whether you eat it at dinnertime or 11 p.m., it provides your body with a burst of energy that can keep you up at night if you eat too much too close to bedtime. Try to eat earlier, and if you find that working late is leading to late-night meals, pack something to eat at work.

#3. Don’t go to bed hungry.

If you don’t eat enough calories during the day, it makes you much more likely to indulge in snacks in the middle of the night, which can disrupt your sleep in a number of ways. Even if you’re trying to diet in order to lose weight, it’s essential to eat enough during the day. Not only does eating the proper amount of calories help you keep your metabolism working properly, it also helps you sleep better at night, which, believe it or not, can actually make it easier to eat a healthier diet.

#4. Pay close attention to what you eat.

Diets that are high in fiber and low in saturated fat are connected to deeper, more restorative sleep, so ensure that you are getting plenty of fiber and reducing your consumption of saturated fat as much as possible. Variety is also important in your diet, and people who get between seven and eight hours of sleep every night tend to eat diets with more variety.

There are many areas of your lifestyle that can affect sleep, but luckily, a few lifestyle changes can go a long way in improving both the quality and quantity of your sleep. If you have been suffering from OSA, shop with us to find an affordable treatment option.