Gobble, gobble! Turkey Day and Sleep

I know what you’re expecting–yet another post on the impact of tryptophan, that soporific chemical believed to induce the nap after our Thanksgiving binge. But no, dear reader, that isn’t where I’m taking us today. Plenty of others have done this topic plenty of justice.

Instead I want to take a minute to talk about how the timing of our meals impacts our sleep. “What?!” you ask. How on Earth could the timing of our meals have anything to do with sleep? 

Well, a recent study in Cell found that the timing of when we eat can trigger insulin to communicate with the other cells in our body that are responsible for our biorhythms, or body clock. You may have also heard it referred to as circadian rhythm.

Our circadian rhythm is a 24-hour biological cycle (even plants have circadian rhythms!) that are responsible for many of our daily rhythms, including our highest and lowest blood pressure, highest and lowest body temperature, when melatonin production starts and stops (thus the link to sleep), and when you have a bowel movement, just to name a few. 

From this study it seems that our body clock picks up on the timing of our meals from the release of insulin when we eat, which then tells other systems in our body to calibrate our circadian rhythm. This makes some intuitive sense: imagine if you ate your largest meal in the middle of the night. What do you think your body clock would think? That it’s time to be awake– because obviously if you’re ingesting nutrition you plan to be awake and need energy to use up those nutrients, and the body needs to digest all of that food. So yeah, the body thinks it’s daytime in that situation.

The takeaway? Yet another way you can strengthen your circadian rhythm and improve your sleep system is to regulate the timing of your meals. Try to eat at the same time every day, and regular meals throughout the day. As best you can, balance your nutrition out across the day rather than consuming a super-sized meal in one sitting. These smaller, more frequent meals will strengthen the body’s circadian rhythm. This then promotes sleep.

So, if you’re eating your Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon, say 2 or 3 o’clock, when normally you eat lunch around noon, no big deal. This shouldn’t throw you off too much. Just get back to your normal routine the day after (when you’re chomping down on that delish turkey and stuffing sandwich, yum!)

Have more questions? Reach out to me today and we can talk more about how to strengthen your sleep.