Learn how different foods and drinks can affect the quality of your sleep

Many external factors can affect your sleep. Here, we will explore how different food and drinks can affect it.

Caffeine

Coffee and certain teas (like green tea or black tea) contain caffeine. Caffeine keeps you wakeful. But it may make you more alert for longer than you want. The half-life of caffeine is about 5 hours. If you drink a cup of espresso at 6 p.m., your body may still retain half a cup of caffeine even by 11 p.m. It becomes difficult to sleep. Coffee stays in our system for quite a long. If you want a better sleep, limit your caffeine intake in the afternoon. Avoid any in the evening.

Coffee Crash

While drinking coffee makes you feel alert, you may suddenly feel exhausted as the effect wears off. This dip in energy happens because coffee does not prevent tiredness but merely delays it. To understand this phenomenon, you must first understand what coffee does to your brain. When you are awake, a chemical called adenosine builds up in your head, making you more sleepy. Caffeine in coffee stops this effect by preventing adenosine from attaching to the brain’s receptors. But when the caffeine wears off, the adenosine that has been building up floods your brain in large amounts, causing you to feel exhausted. When this happens, you can either drink more coffee or rest. Remember, coffee merely delays your tiredness. Nothing can truly replace the alertness that comes from sleeping well at night.

Alcohol

In contrast to coffee, you may feel like drinking a glass of wine or two helps you fall asleep faster. In reality, alcohol does not truly help you sleep. It sedates you instead. Alcohol causes a sedating effect similar to that of anesthesia. It hinders your ability to dream (REM sleep), which helps with your emotional control, creativity, and memory consolidation. It can even make you forget the things you learned up to three days ago. Despite how it may feel, alcohol does not help you sleep. The opposite is true. So, avoid drinking alcohol before bed.

Creating Good Habits

Generally, sleep quality can be affected by your eating and drinking habits. The timing of when you eat and drink also matters. Doing so too close to bedtime can cause sleep problems. When you eat a large meal before you sleep, you may experience indigestion. In addition, drinking too much liquid before sleep may cause the need to urinate. Therefore, you should leave a few hours between your last meal and going to bed. Be aware of when you consume. Avoid consuming too much food or liquids late at night. You will be preventing unnecessary sleep disruptions.