Sleep Better with a Low-Fat Diet

A high fat diet will not only affect your weight and your risk for heart disease, research suggests that it can interfere with how well you sleep.

A Brazilian research team led by Cibele Crispim analyzed the link between sleep quality and diet and found that the more fat you consumed during the day, the less likely you are to get a good night’s sleep.

Sleep Symptoms Of A High-Fat Diet:

• Frequently waking up in the middle of the night and increased tossing and turning.
• Abnormal breathing while you’re trying to sleep.
• Less time spent in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep each night.

Obviously, a night spent waking up several times and tossing and turning won’t leave you feeling rested and energized the next morning. One of the easiest ways to get a better night sleep might be to take a look at what you’re having for dinner.

The research suggested that when you eat poorly can have an impact on your nightly sleep patterns. When each daily meal was analyzed independently, the study found that a high-fat evening meal was enough to cause a restless night of sleep, even if you ate healthy earlier in the day.

The findings of this study were presented at SLEEP 2008, an annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.