Do you have a light and not very restful sleep? Do you wake up often during the night? The fault could be your (bad) diet. According to a study by American scientists, eating little fiber and overdoing it with saturated fats and sugars affects the quality of your night's rest.
The research, conducted with data from 25 people of 35 years of average age and normal weight, indicates that in subjects who ingest more fiber, the stages of deep and restful sleep last longer. The opposite happens in those who take more saturated fat. Additionally, heavy sugar intake was found to be associated with a higher likelihood of repeated awakenings during the night.
Marie-Pierre St-Onge, lead author of the paper and a professor at the Institute for Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center, states that her experiment makes clear that "the type of diet influences sleep. A single day with a low fiber intake and excess fat could be enough to affect the rest parameters of that day ".
The research showed that participants in the experiment who ate nutritionist-prepared menus (low in fat and high in protein) reconciled the soil more easily (in 17 minutes) than those who chose their food, who took 29 on average.
According to St-Onge, "the finding of the influence of diet on how we sleep has great implications for health, given that the important role of sleep in chronic problems such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases has been confirmed."
