About two years ago, I stopped sleeping. Since then, I can count on one hand the number of nights I’ve been able to both fall asleep at a reasonable hour and stay asleep through the night. I’ve tried everything: aromatherapy, cutting out caffeine and alcohol, even sleeping pills. But the only thing I’ve really found to work is modifying my diet to include foods that promote restful sleep and exclude insomnia triggers. Though what you eat for breakfast may not seem like an obvious culprit when you’re trying to determine the causes of sleeplessness, the amount and quality of our nightly rest are directly related to the foods we eat all day.
The Food-Sleep Connection
What does diet have to do with sleep? Quite a lot, actually. There are two chemicals in the brain that signal to our bodies when it’s time to go to sleep: seratonin and melatonin. The former shuts down the nervous system so our brains can rest, while the latter regulates circadian rhythms and causes drowsiness. Tryptophan, an amino acid, is the raw material the body uses to produce these two sleep hormones. And as with all proteins, the best source of tryptophan is food. For your daily dose of “vitamin T,” munch on dairy and soy products, lean meats, seafood, whole grains, legumes, eggs, and seeds.
There’s a bit more to inducing sleep with food than just eating a tryptophan-rich diet, though. You also have to make sure the amino acid is available to the brain. High-glycemic foods, carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion, have gotten a bad rap from diet gurus, but they serve an important purpose in promoting restful sleep. High-carb meals stimulate the production of insulin, which helps rid the blood of amino acids that compete with tryptophan and prevent it from reaching the brain. Calcium also helps the brain turn tryptophan into melatonin. Conversely, eating too much protein at meals, especially in the evening, causes us to ingest too many other amino acids, such as tyrosine, which keeps us alert.
Don’t Dine After Nine
A good rule of thumb to follow when eating for sleep is protein in the morning, carbs at night. But that doesn’t mean you should go overboard on the pasta around 10 p.m. Eating a large meal too close to bedtime, especially one with a high fat content, will have your digestive system working overtime and keep you from falling asleep. Also, eating a purely carbohydrate meal late at night will launch you on the blood-sugar roller coaster and cause your body to release stress hormones that will keep you awake. When you eat is just as important as, if not more important than, what you eat, so heed the old adage “don’t dine after nine.”
