Meditations and Learnings

Meditations and Learnings

Sleep & Diet

Impact of Sleep on Diet

  1. Sleep curtailment negatively impacts hunger and appetite regulation, leading to increased calorie intake the following day.
  2. Sleep curtailment negatively impacts glycaemic control (impaired glucose tolerance and insulin secretion).
  3. Sleep curtailment impairs fat oxidation.
  4. Sleep curtailment has deleterious effects on body composition, with proportionally greater lean body mass and less fat mass loss during weight loss.
  5. Later chronotypes tend toward lower diet quality, later evening energy intake, and increased risk for metabolic disease (with these effects being independent of sleep duration).
  6. Both sleep timing and duration have strong influences on diet and related health outcomes. This relationship is a complex interaction of physiological, genetic, environmental, and behavioural factors.

Impact of Diet on Sleep

  1. One cannot make definitive recommendations regarding the role of dietary proteins or varying ratios of carbohydrate to fat in the diet as strategies to influence sleep quality.
  2. Long-term energy restriction may result in impaired sleep.
  3. Although suggestive evidence exists for the roles of specific foods or isolated supplemental nutrients to enhance sleep, the strength of the evidence is weak.
  4. At this time, the evidence for improving sleep favours consideration of sleep hygiene over any specific dietary interventions.