You may already know that eating too much junk—or even a pretty-standard Western-style diet—may be negatively influencing your mental, as well as your physical, health.
However, researcher Amelia McGuinness, from Deakin University’s ‘Food and Mood Centre’, has found that your diet also affects your sleep.
Not only is our sleep affected by our food, our food choices are also affected by how well we sleep. One study found that adolescents who sleep less than eight hours a night, eat more fat and consume more snacks and are therefore more prone to obesity and its consequences.
So, how many of us get 8 – 9 hours of quality sleep each night? And why do some of us sleep badly?
There are many reasons why sleep is a problem. Interestingly, electronic devices have been shown to impact the amount and quality of the sleep we enjoy. If you have two or more screens (such as a TV, phone, ipad or computer) in your bedroom, you might be sharing your sleep space with anti-sleep devices.
Stuff on screens can tempt us to stay up later, can cause us to take longer to go to sleep, can cause disturbed sleep and contribute to less sleep overall.
Mmmm…. So why don’t we just eat a healthy diet, turn off the gadgets earlier and set ourselves up for a great night’s sleep?
Factors such as the food available and what it costs, as well as the preferences that we develop over time, have been found in other research to also be significant. Knowing what good food choices look like is also important.
Want to know more? Check out: www.foodandmoodcentre.com.au/
