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Eating This Type Of Food Before Bed Can Make Sleep More Efficient, According To Research On Nurses

Gretchen Lidicker, M.S.
Author:
September 15, 2024
Gretchen Lidicker, M.S.
mbg Health Contributor
By Gretchen Lidicker, M.S.
mbg Health Contributor
Gretchen Lidicker earned her master’s degree in physiology with a focus on alternative medicine from Georgetown University. She is the author of “CBD Oil Everyday Secrets” and “Magnesium Everyday Secrets.”
Woman eating
Image by mapodile / iStock
September 15, 2024

The statistics don't lie: So many of us struggle to get to sleep and stay asleep, and between 10% and 30%1 of adults in the U.S. have insomnia. 

Even if you don't have a diagnosed sleep disorder, it wouldn't hurt to know more tips and tricks for optimizing your sleep since it's so closely tied to energy levels and productivity. That's why one study2 on the value of eating protein before bed is worth knowing about.

The protein-sleep connection

Performed by researchers in South Korea, this study investigated the effects of different bedtime meals on the sleep quality of 128 nurses working the nighttime shift.

The researchers measured sleep quality via self-reported sleep scores (using a tool called the Verran and Snyder-Halpern Sleep Scale) and objective data collected by an accelerometer. Participants also reported exactly what they ate and when on the nights they were working. 

So, what did the results show? Eating closer to bedtime was actually associated with longer total sleep time and improved sleep quality in this cohort.

Other results showed that higher-calorie meals were also associated with better subjective sleep quality and that the more protein the meal contained, the more efficiently the participant slept, according to the accelerometer.

Should we eat before bed? 

If you're scratching your head reading the results above, you're not alone! This goes against what many of us have been taught—that we shouldn't eat right before bed.

We've seen a lot of past research that late-night eating is bad for our metabolism and that we should avoid certain foods before bed. For example, this study published in 2017 showed us that timing meals later in the night can cause weight gain and impair fat metabolism. 

So…what gives? It may be that late-night eating is harmful to metabolic health in some ways but benefits sleep in others. This is also an extremely preliminary study done on night shift workers, so it's possible the results don't apply to everyone.

In other words, the results of this study shouldn't spark us to start eating a giant meal before bed every night. 

That said, we can apply some of the lessons from this study to our daily life by incorporating plenty of protein into our last meal of the day—whenever we consume it. 

Healthy, protein-rich meals to support sleep

The takeaway

A study shows that eating a high-protein meal before bed improved sleep quality in nurses working a night shift. And while we shouldn't take these results as an excuse to late-night snack all we want, we can incorporate more protein into our evenings in honor of our ZZZ's. 

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