Can’t sleep at night? It’s not just that cup of coffee but overall diet that may be keeping you up

You probably already know that how you eat before bed affects your sleep. Maybe you’ve found yourself still lying awake at 2 am after enjoying a cup of coffee with dessert. But did you know that your eating choices throughout the day may also affect your sleep at night?

In fact, more and more evidence shows that overall dietary patterns can affect sleep quality and contribute to insomnia.

I am a nutritional epidemiologist, and I’m trained to look at diets at the population level and how they affect health.

In the US, a large percentage of the population suffers from poor sleep quality and sleep disorders like insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the upper airway becomes blocked and breathing stops during sleep. At the same time, most Americans eat far too much fatty and processed food, too little fiber and too few fruits and vegetables.

Although it is difficult to determine whether these two trends are causally linked to one another, more and more research points to linkages between sleep and diet and offers hints at the biological underpinnings of these relationships.

Diet and sleep quality

My colleagues and I wanted to get a deeper understanding of the possible link between sleep and diet in Americans who are 18 and older. So we analysed whether people who follow the government’s Dietary...

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