Stop having late dinners, and the routine will make you more alert

Can’t sleep? Eat less to curb insomnia

Stop having late dinners, and the routine will make you more alert, says a new study. David F Dinges, PhD and director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry and chief of the division of Sleep and Chronobiology, says, “Adults consume about 500 additional calories during late-night hours when they are sleep-restricted.”

Working with 44 participants between the ages of 21 and 50, the researchers gave them unlimited, “free-range” access to food and beverages during the day, but capped their sleep at just four hours for three nights. Moreover, at 2am each day, the researchers assessed the participants’ working memory, cognitive skills, sleepiness, stress levels and moods.

On the fourth night, 24 participants were given access to nothing, but water between 10pm and 4am, while the remaining 20 continued the original regime. Participants who had fasted performed better on the tests than those who had been given unlimited food. Meanwhile, the free-rangers showed attention lapses and slow reaction times.

The study will be presented at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC, in Seattle, USA. The same research team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, had conducted another study in 2013, and concluded that those who go to bed late, and suffer from chronic sleep deprivation, eat more than others and gain weight easily. “Short sleep duration is a significant risk factor for weight gain and obesity, particularly in African Americans and men,” says Dr Namni Goel, the senior author of the study. Dr Goel and her associates concluded that individuals reduce their calorie intake to compensate for the reduced morning resting metabolism that is the result of sleep deprivation.

This research suggests that reducing the number of calories consumed can help prevent weight gain and obesity in Caucasians, and African-Americans.