Junk food diet may disrupt sleep by altering brain activity

Consuming a eating regimen that’s excessive in fats and sugar might scale back sleep high quality by messing with the mind’s electrical exercise throughout deep sleep.

Once we fall asleep, our mind’s electrical exercise slows down. The upper-frequency brainwaves that dominate whereas we’re awake, referred to as beta waves, are steadily changed by lower-frequency ones referred to as delta waves.

The deepest, most restorative stage of sleep – referred to as slow-wave sleep – has the very best proportion of delta waves. It usually happens within the first half of the evening and permits the physique to restore itself and consolidate reminiscences.

Jonathan Cedernaes at Uppsala College in Sweden and his colleagues examined the consequences of a Western-style high-fat, high-sugar eating regimen on slow-wave sleep in 15 males with a median age of 23.

The lads have been randomly assigned to eat a high-fat, high-sugar eating regimen or a low-fat, low-sugar eating regimen for one week. They then slept for one evening in a laboratory sporting an electroencephalography (EEG) cap to file their mind’s electrical exercise. After a break of a number of weeks, they switched to the opposite eating regimen and repeated the laboratory sleep research.

The individuals have been supplied with all their meals and needed to eat them at set occasions. The high-fat, high-sugar eating regimen included meals like sweetened granola, pizza and chocolate, whereas the …

low-fat, low-sugar eating regimen contained meals like unsweetened muesli, salmon and greens. The 2 diets have been matched for energy.

Every man usually slept for a similar size of time on the 2 diets and felt their sleep high quality was the identical.

Nonetheless, the EEG recordings confirmed that the high-fat, high-sugar eating regimen disrupted slow-wave sleep by lowering the proportion of delta waves and growing beta waves, suggesting it was much less restful. This occurred in 11 out of the 14 males for whom full outcomes have been collected.

The impact could also be as a result of sugar and fats activate mind pathways that enhance how awake folks really feel, however extra work is required to unravel the mechanisms, says Cedernaes. He additionally hopes to repeat the research to search out out if the change additionally happens in ladies.

We don’t know the long-term influence of disrupting slow-wave sleep on this manner, however we do know that poor diets usually result in worse well being, which can partly be defined by their impact on sleep high quality, he says.

The quantity of slow-wave sleep that we get naturally declines with age, so consuming a nutritious diet could also be significantly essential in older age to guard towards additional losses in sleep high quality, says Cedernaes.