Did you know there’s a connection between what you eat and how you sleep?
Do you track your food, or are you mindful of how much you’re eating in a day? Have you ever noticed how your sleep is when you’re dieting/cutting or intentionally eating low carb?
Did you know that decreasing your carb intake and or having less carbs in the evening can adversely impact sleep?
Did you know that having a carb rich, low protein, low to moderate fat snack before bed can in fact help you to fall asleep, STAY asleep, AND have BETTER sleep overall?
*GASP* are we telling you to not only eat before bed, but to eat CARBS before bed??!! What is this, mind control and witchcraft?
No, this is not magic. This is science.
When you consume carbs your insulin levels rise.
This is a GOOD thing- despite all the scary stuff about carbs and insulin. Rising insulin levels decrease the amount of amino acids in your blood stream… except for tryptophan.
Tryptophan is well known in foods like turkey and milk (it is the amino acid used to make serotonin… which is used to make melatonin… which is part of sleeping).
When you eat carbs and all the other levels of amino acids in your blood go down, tryptophan doesn’t have to compete to get across the blood brain barrier into your brain.
The “blood brain barrier” is a protection mechanism to help keep out nasty things like viruses etc. It works to keep all the bad stuff out, which means there’s also a limit on how much of the good stuff can get in at any one time.
Tryptophan has to compete with all the other stuff that the brain needs as well. So by eating carbs and decreasing the competition, you set your brain up to get what it needs when it needs it… like the ability to make the hormones it needs for sleep!
Do you struggle with your sleep? Have you tried the carb snack before bed? How did it go?