It increases the deep sleep duration per night.
Herbal tea, soft music, extinguished telephone, advanced bedtime … Despite all your efforts to sleep better, nothing helps? The quality of sleep depends on many factors and it is difficult to check all the boxes. If it is important to follow the advice of professionals like going to bed and getting up at the same hours, eating light in the evening, avoiding exciting, sleeping in a fresh room … Other less known tracks can also make the difference. And when you have sleep disorders, you are ready to try everything, right?
In a new study published in the journal Sleep Health, researchers have highlighted “A new, natural and profitable approach to get better sleep” According to Dr Esra Tasali, co-author. And it happens on our plate. Observational studies have shown that better quality food is associated with better quality sleep. But scientists wanted to go further by examining how what we eat the day can influence the quality of sleep the following night.
They selected 34 participants in an average of 30 years. They observed their diet and sleep for several days, in their usual daily life. On arrival, they observed that those who had a larger diurnal consumption of fruits and vegetables, as part of a healthy diet, had less disturbances in sleep (less fragmentation) and therefore better sleep quality. Precisely, eating the equivalent of 5 cups of fruit and vegetables against 0 improves the quality of sleep by 16%. “16% is a very significant difference“said Dr Tasali on the English site independent, “It is remarkable that such a significant change could have been observed in less than 24 hours”. The food or rather the food group to favor to sleep well, so these are fruits and vegetables.
For researchers, fruits and vegetables could be good for sleep thanks to their complex carbohydrates, especially in fiber, their polyphenolic profile and their melatonin content. “Our results show for the first time a temporal link between a healthy diurnal food profile and better sleep quality the following night.” Other studies, wider and controlled, will be necessary to better understand the link between vegetable food and sleep, and to identify the mechanisms at stake.
