5 Foods To Avoid Before Bed

8/20/2018

About The Author:
Lisa is a freelance writer from Raleigh, NC. When she isn't writing, you can find her practicing yoga or working on mastering a new recipe to try!

Sleep keeps your body healthy, your skin glowing, your mood up, and your productivity at its best. If you aren’t getting quality sleep, you’re probably spending your day yawning. But you don’t have to be.

You might think your sleep is an inevitable part of life - when you get tired, you just fall asleep, right? Nope! Even when your body is tired, your mind can keep you awake with its racing thoughts. As it turns out, most everything you do during the day plays a hand in how you sleep that night, even what you eat.

5 Foods To Avoid Before Bed

If you’ve ever laid in bed staring at the ceiling, begging your body to hit the off switch, you definitely don’t take your sleep for granted. There are a variety of things you can do to get a better night of sleep. Putting down your electronics, keeping your bedroom dark and cool, getting a mattress that meets your needs, and sticking to a wind down routine are a few simple ways to improve your sleep quality.

But if you are serious about better sleep, you should also consider skipping those tempting sweets and spicy snacks before bedtime. As enticing as a midnight snack may seem, they’re impacting your sleep more than you think.

Here are five foods to avoid before bed so you can sleep peacefully all night long:

1. Wine
This is as painful for me to write as it is for you to read, but yes, wine hurts your sleep. Not just wine, but alcohol in general. You may be thinking “I can’t sleep without a glass of red,” but alcohol inhibits your ability to achieve deep, rejuvenating sleep. Wine cravings are common before bed because it’s a muscle relaxant. Although, wine makes your body feel sleepy, drinking too much alcohol before bed has some not-so-enticing consequences.

First, alcohol keeps your body from getting that deep restorative sleep we all so desperately need. Even though alcohol causes your eyelids to droop, you don’t sleep well with alcohol in your system.

Second, when your entire body relaxes, so do your mouth muscles. When your throat, tongue and soft palate relax in this way it blocks your airways, making you snore and causing breathing difficulties.

Lastly, alcohol is a diuretic (aka it makes you go to the bathroom - a lot) and makes your urine more acidic. So you have to go more, and it hurts when you do. If that isn’t enough, alcohol also gives you the night sweats.

If you don’t want to make ceaseless trips to the bathroom, wake up sweating and snore all night, try trading your drink of choice for a cup of herbal tea.

2. Chocolate
At this point, you are probably thinking “first the wine, now the chocolate?!” But as a quick reminder, these are foods to avoid before bed, not forever! Similar to coffee, chocolate contains caffeine.

Caffeine is a stimulant very similar to adenosine, the hormone that keeps you awake during the day. When your body gets even the tiniest hit of caffeine, you are communicating to your body, “stay awake.”

If you wouldn’t down a pot of coffee before bedtime, you probably shouldn’t eat a bar of chocolate either. The good news is that white chocolate doesn’t contain caffeine. So if you can’t go on without that chocolate fix, go for white.

3. Hot Peppers
Spicy foods are a nightmare for quality sleep. The New York Times shared a study that showed foods including hot peppers can significantly increase your internal body temperature.

At night, your core body temperature is supposed to drop one to two degrees for you to fall asleep. Spicy foods have an inverse effect. When your body temp increases, you are less likely to fall and stay asleep. Not to mention, you become more susceptible to sweating and feeling dehydrated.

Spicy foods also have a tendency to upset your tummy, causing acid reflux and heartburn. Being uncomfortable is a major culprit of robbing sleep. To make matters worse, it’s an old wives tale that spicy foods give you nightmares. Better not risk it.

4. Pizza
Speaking of acid reflux, pizza is another nighttime no-no. Heavy carbs, copious amounts of fat, and acidic tomato sauce is the perfect combination for an upset stomach. Your stomach takes around three to four hours to clean itself up after a meal. Eating pizza right before bed leaves your tummy churning when you are trying to sleep.

A lethal bedtime combo!

5. Ice cream and sweets laden with sugar
Ice cream is basically made with two things: sugar and fat. If you’ve ever been to a kids birthday party, you know first hand the power of a bowl of sugar to keep your body buzzing. Eating too much sugar before bed can cause you to wake up throughout the night, which pulls you out of deep sleep leaving you even sleepier in the morning.

If you can push past the sugar-high and actually fall asleep, apparently you might just wake yourself back up in a nightmare! According to Fox News Health, “A recent study has shown that 7 out of 10 people who eat junk foods like candy bars before bed are more likely to be prone to nightmares.”

Although this list has been hard to hear, it’s not all bad news. There are some yummy nighttime snacks that can actually improve your sleep. Next time you’re yearning for a treat, opt for lavender or chamomile tea, peanut butter toast, or a handful of white chocolate chips, nuts, or cherries. Swapping wine and ice cream for tea and toast before bedtime might just save your sleep.

You May Also Like:

There's A Reason You're Always Yawning

What's Stopping You From Getting A Good Night's Rest?

The Hidden Dangers of Not Getting Enough Sleep

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