What you eat throughout the day can hugely impact the quality of sleep you get once you hop into bed. Now, experts have advised that the so-called ‘BRAT diet’ could well offer the recipe for a night of pleasant dreams
Getting a good night’s sleep is crucial for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, ensuring your brain and body are able to keep pace with the demands of the day. Unfortunately, drifting off can sometimes be far easier said than done, especially when the weather warms up a bit and you’re left with no idea what to do with your duvet.
Sleep quality can, of course, be affected by a number of factors, including environment, stress, and what you’ve been eating and drinking that day. Now, managing your stress levels can be a little more complicated, but keeping track of your food could help you feel a little bit more in control, and you don’t necessarily have to be a gourmet chef to have deliciously sweet dreams.
In fact, experts swear by following the so-called ‘BRAT diet’ in order to enjoy the best possible rest – and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Charli XCX’s album of summer 2024.
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As per advice shared by UK-based sleep specialists Land of Beds, the reason you could be struggling to get any decent shut-eye could be due to a high-carbohydrate diet, which includes food such as white rice, bread, potatoes and pasta..
These dishes may well be disrupting your body’s natural sleep cycle without you even realising it, by reducing melatonin levels – an important hormone for sleep -and delaying your body’s internal clock, in a way that makes it harder to both fall asleep and stay asleep.
Land of Beds gurus have also warned that high-carb dinners, or eating shortly before bedtime – could lead to you waking up frequently at night, while reducing slow-wave sleep, the deep stage of rest which is absolutely vital when it comes to physical recovery and immune support.
As many of us know all too well, a poor night’s sleep can have far more wide-reaching effects than simply feeling groggy all day. The knock-on effects of waking up feeling less than refreshed can impact your appetite, metabolism, and weight management, making it far trickier to keep up your fitness routine.
Not getting enough sleep is known to boost a person’s cravings for sugar and processed foods. Frustratingly, as a result of this, sleep is affected yet again, creating a grim cycle that can feel impossible to break out of. But how do you get back into a more beneficial routine?
According to this team of experts, lighter, sleep-supportive meals are more suitable for the evening, especially those which fit in with the BRAT diet, which includes easily digestible foods such as bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. Gentle on the stomach, cooking yourself a BRAT-worthy evening meal means you likely won’t be awoken by any disruptive digestive issues.
To supplement this, foods which are naturally high in magnesium and tryptophan, including marmite, canned tuna, nuts, Greek yoghurt, avocado and tofu, can also support production of melatonin, helping to get your body into a relaxed state before bed.
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
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