Hacking Sleep Cycles With Your Diet

MICROLUXEbeauty Magazine

Volume V - The First Monthly Issue

Sleeping is just as essential to the human body as breathing or eating, so don’t cheat yourself out of a much-needed slumber with bad eating habits. Studies show that how you sleep is directly tied to the foods that you eat (in addition to many other factors). Making certain food decisions throughout your day can be the difference between that deep slumber, and endless, restless nights. Here are a couple of tips to make conscious food-sleep decisions:

We’ll start with the most obvious — pay attention to how much caffeine you consume (and when you consume it). If you’re an avid coffee drinker and you’re having trouble sleeping, it’s time to cut back. A good rule of thumb is to nix any caffeine intake after noon. Caffeine can stay in your bloodstream for 6 hours! But if you’re not having trouble falling asleep, you can improve the quality of your sleep by limiting how much and when you drink caffeine throughout the day.

This fall, double down on your pumpkin intake. “Pumpkin seed powder is the new warm glass of milk, packing a potent punch of the amino acid tryptophan,” says Dr. Natasha Turner, New York Times bestselling author of The SuperCharged Hormone Diet. Two hormones that are essential for sleep are produced by tryptophan: serotonin, which influences your sleep and mood, and melatonin, which is heavily involved in your sleep-wake cycle. Switch your warm glass of milk at bedtime for a pinch of pumpkin powder atop a small bowl of greek yogurt or a handful of pumpkin seeds.

Portion control is important for many reasons, but it’s good to switch it up throughout the day. For breakfast, eat like a Queen. For dinner… well not a peasant, but you get where I’m going with this. As you would imagine, the more food you eat, the longer it takes to digest. Eating a larger dinner is taxing and distracting for your body making it harder to relax and fall asleep. However, if you don’t feel like big dinners affect your ability to fall asleep, then there’s no need to change your habits. But if you’re looking for ways to improve the quality of your sleep, take a deeper look into the timing and size of your meals!

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