Eating...How Does It Affect Sleeping? Hauser Diet Recommendations

I have been blessed with an uncanny ability to fall asleep in 3.2 seconds flat without light, noise, TV, radio, washing machine, cat, or husband sounds causing me not to be able to do so! I know, however, that this is not necessarily the case for everyone else. I personally feel it is because I have such a clear conscience, but that’s another story! HA HA.

What you eat may affect how you sleep. One of the keys to a restful night's sleep is to get your brain calmed rather than revved up. Each person responds differently to these foods based on their individual Diet Types. This article will provide you with some general tendencies, but please note that each person is different.

Some foods will typically contribute to restful sleep, while other foods may keep you awake. Sleeping ability in people like me are not as affected by the foods that I eat, compared to others who have a more difficult time sleeping.

Foods that may help you sleep are typically tryptophan-containing foods. Tryptophan is the amino acid that the body uses to make serotonin, the neurotransmitter that slows down nerve traffic so your brain isn't so busy working. Foods that keep you awake are foods that typically stimulate neurochemicals that stimulate the brain.

Tryptophan is a precursor of the sleep-inducing substances serotonin and melatonin. This means tryptophan is the raw material that the brain uses to build these relaxing neurotransmitters. Making more tryptophan available, either by eating foods that contain this substance or by seeing to it that more tryptophan gets to the brain, will help to make you sleepy. On the other hand, nutrients that make tryptophan less available can disturb sleep.

Eating carbohydrates with tryptophan-containing foods makes this calming amino acid more available to the brain. A high carbohydrate meal stimulates the release of insulin, which helps clear from the bloodstream those amino acids that compete with tryptophan, allowing more of this natural sleep-inducing amino acid to enter the brain and manufacture sleep-inducing substances, such as serotonin and melatonin. Eating a high-protein meal without accompanying carbohydrates may keep you awake, since protein-rich foods also contain the amino acid, tyrosine, which perks up the brain. For those of you who follow a Lion or Otter, this may be a bit more difficult.

It does, however, explain why many of our patients who type out to a Lion Diet Type™ and a Otter Diet Type™ have trouble staying awake if they consume high carbohydrate-containing meals. These types of people are much more sensitive to the sleep-producing effects of these foods.

NEXT: Tryptophan & tyrosine