Sleep Problems May Be Caused By Fatty Food

The Benefits of Sleep

When you think about your daily activities, you often think about working, spending time with family, eating out and enjoying leisure activities. Yet maybe you do not realize that you are also doing one activity that occupies one third of your time: sleeping. For many people, sleep is viewed as downtime that occurs when the body shuts itself off and rests. They may even think that cutting off sleep may be insignificant, as there are other more important things that they should do in their lives. However, studies have shown that adequate sleep can make a person healthy.

Even when you sleep, your body is still active. During sleep, the brain is still working hard to analyze thoughts, create memories and learn new things. This is why the body needs enough sleep. Without enough sleep, you cannot focus well and cannot respond quickly. You can also be prone to mood problems and irritability. Lack of sleep can also increase your chances of getting heart disease, diabetes, obesity and infections.

Men who regularly eat diets high in fats are more likely to be sleepy during the day, often experience sleep problems at night, and are more likely to suffer from sleep apnea, new research reveals.

High Fat Diet Creates Sleep Problems

Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found out that men who eat diets excessive in fat usually tend to be sleepy throughout the day, to have sleep issues at night, and are also more prone to have sleep apnea. This is the result of study Men Androgen Inflammation Lifestyle Environment and Stress (MAILES) study which was looking at how fatty diets and sleep are related. This study was performed by the University of Adelaide’s Population Research and Outcome Studies unit in the School of Medicine and the Freemasons Foundation Centre for Men’s Health.

The outcomes were based on data from more than 1800 Australian men who were aged 35 to 80, including their eating habits within one year. The results of this study were published in the journal Nutrients. One of the researchers remarked, “After adjusting for other demographic and lifestyle factors, and chronic diseases, we found that those who consumed the highest fat intake were more likely to experience excessive daytime sleepiness. This has significant implications for alertness and concentration, which would be of particular concern to workers. High fat intake was also strongly associated with sleep apnea

About 54% had moderate-to-moderate sleep apnea, and around 25% had average-to-severe sleep apnea, which used to be assessed through a sleep study among people who didn’t have an earlier diagnosis of sleep apnea. The researcher added, “Poor sleep and feeling sleepy during the day means you have less energy, but this in turn is known to increase people’s cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods, which is then associated with poor sleep outcomes. So the poor diet-and-sleep pattern can become a vicious cycle.”

She added further, “The simple message is a commonsense one, but we need more people to pay attention to it: we need to eat better; a good sleep the night before is best. We hope our work could help to inform future intervention studies, enabling people to achieve healthy weight loss while also improving their quality of sleep”. The researchers remarked that good sleep is mainly not considered in research investigating the results of varying diets on weight reduction.

To know more about medical diagnosis and prevention methods, feel free to browse our other articles on this site.