The Effects Of Exercise, Carbohydrates, Saturated Fat, Protein, Fiber & Micronutrients On Sleep!

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition. Voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Ben Greenfield (1:02)

Hey, welcome to a premium podcast episode, baby. Been a while since we've done one of these. Sipping on my coffee. I'm actually a little bit sleep deprived, and this special premium podcast episode is actually about sleep. So how do you like that?

Anyways, I recently read one of the best three-part series on sleep that I've ever seen. It was in Alan Argon's research review. And it was, it went into macronutrients in sleep, meal timing, composition, macronutrients in sleep, and exercise, exercise intensity, and exercise volume in sleep. And I just wanted to give you a few quick tips from that. If you like these quick tips coming out on the premium channel, then either here or in the inner circle, I'll keep pushing them out. But I wanted to throw a few of these your way. And I'm also going to be getting the author on a podcast soon, on a big podcast. But I want to give you, my premium subscriber, because I love you so much, the bullet points. Okay, this is from Alan Argon's Research Review. You ready? First of all, consuming carbohydrates four hours before bed definitely enhances deep sleep cycles, while being in a state of ketosis going into bed does not. Hence my recommendation to have more carbs with your evening meal. Consumption of excessively large meal right before bed does not enhance sleep cycles. So while you should consume carbohydrates with your meal, it shouldn't be too excess with any of the calories in that meal. Higher protein intake if you have an energy deficit, if you're calorically depleted because you're trying to fast or lose weight, then including protein, especially with dinner, and higher amounts could help you sleep better, especially if you're in your caloric deficit.

A high carbohydrate diet can shorten wake times, meaning how long it is that you wake during the night.

Yep, I'm going to sip coffee this whole time, so shoot me.

What does that mean? It means, again, include some carbohydrates with dinner if you're waking up all the time during the night for crying out loud. And it appears even higher glycemic is even better. You can do bread and rice and things like that with dinner. So it means from healthy sources.

Keep your saturated fat intake low to moderate with dinner, meaning too much saturated fat. We all know this. Meat sweats, right? You wake up, you're sweating because you had that marbly steak. Keep saturated fat intake low to moderate. Consume adequate fiber. Amazingly, that has an impact on sleep, so have your roasted vegetables or your salad with dinner.

And total fat intake should be kept moderated at dinner and later on into the evening. And again, this totally agrees with my own concept that I follow, which is more fats, moderated protein, lower carbohydrates, or no carbohydrates all day long than carbohydrates at the end of the day.

Adequate omega-3 fatty acids and regular consumption of fatty fish appears to enhance sleep cycles. And then finally, or I'm sorry, not finally, but next we get into part two. Okay, so those are the biggies. Have some carbohydrates and consume adequate fiber. Don't eat too much saturated fat with dinner. Don't get confused. I'm not saying saturated fat is bad. I'm just saying with dinner, it might interrupt sleep. Then get lots of omega-3 fatty acids.

Also, we learn that vitamin D deficiency is very common.

And so chronic factors for very low vitamin D levels would be like dark skin tone or limited natural sunlight exposure, chronic steroid use, even intestinal malabsorption issues. And that affects sleep. So use of like a vitamin D tanning lamp or consumption of vitamin D supplements appears to be something that may help in that case.

In addition, we know that melatonin production can be increased by higher protein intake. And so that would specifically be a higher protein intake of amino acids that contain, for example, things that help you to form tryptophan and serotonin. So it turns out that having enough blood levels of amino acids could be very helpful as well. And then finally micronutrients, valerian, nitric oxide, and magnesium were the three most studied. Who knew nitric oxide? That's an interesting one. Okay, and then with regards to exercise, exercise promotes sleep. No surprises there, but we also know that exercise can shift your circadian rhythm, excuse me, into a half burp, half sip of coffee.