Even if you sleep the exact same number of hours, eating junk food during the day can affect the QUALITY of your sleep—making sleep more shallow and less restorative.
Let’s back up.
Sleep consists of different stages with different functions. Deep sleep, for example, regulates hormonal release. Each sleep stage is also marked by specific electrical activity in the brain.
A brand new study in the journal Obesity looked at what happened to sleep quality (measured in a sleep laboratory) when healthy young men ate nutritious meals vs. junk food. Here’s what they found:
🔹 Participants slept the same number of hours, regardless of which diet they consumed.
🔹 They also spent the same amount of time in each of the sleep stages.
🔹 But slow-wave brain activity (a measurement of how restorative deep sleep is) was less in those who ate the junk food.
This means that the junk food resulted in sleep that was less deep—similar to what happens with aging and insomnia.
Why should you care about restorative sleep?
Because it’s essential for…
💫 Graceful Aging
💃 Balanced Hormones
🔥 Healthy Metabolism
🧠 Brain Function, Mood, & More!