Junk food consumption could negatively impact the quality of deep sleep: Research

Researchers at Uppsala University have examined how junk food affects sleep in a new study. In random order, healthy volunteers ate one unhealthy diet and one healthier one. The participants\’ deep sleep quality decreased after the unhealthy diet, compared with those following the healthier diet. The results of the study were published in the journal Obesity. Several epidemiological studies have found that what we eat affects the way we sleep. However, little research has looked into how nutrition directly affects sleep. One method is to have the same individual consume various diets in a random order.

“Poor diet and poor sleep both increase the risk of several public health conditions. Because what we eat is so important to our health, we thought it would be interesting to investigate whether some of the health effects of different diets might involve changing in our sleep In this context, there has so far been a lack of so-called intervention studies, studies designed to allow us to isolate the mechanistic effect of different diets on sleep,\” said Jonathan Cedernaes, physician and associate professor of medical cell biology at the University of Uppsala.

Previous epidemiological studies have shown that diets with higher sugar content, for example, are linked to poorer sleep. Yet sleep is an interaction of several physiological states, as Cedernaes explains:

\”For example, deep sleep can be influenced by what we eat. But no study has previously investigated what happens if we consume an unhealthy diet and then compared that to sleep quality after that same person ate a healthy diet. This which is exciting in this The context is that sleep is very dynamic. Our sleep consists of different phases with different functions, such as deep sleep which regulates hormone release, for example. In addition, each sleep phase is characterized by different types of electrical activity in the brain.This regulates aspects such as restful sleep and differs in different regions of the brain.But the depth or integrity of sleep stages can also be negatively affected by factors such as insomnia and aging. Previously, it has not been studied whether similar changes in our sleep patterns can occur after exposure to different diets.\”

Each study session involved several days of monitoring in a sleep laboratory. Therefore, only 15 individuals were included in the study. A total of 15 healthy young people of normal weight participated in two sessions. Participants were first screened for aspects such as their sleep habits, which had to be normal and within the recommended range (an average of seven to nine hours of sleep per night).

In random order, participants were given both a healthier and less healthy diet. The two diets contained the same number of calories, adjusted to each individual\’s daily requirement. Among other things, the unhealthier diet contained higher sugar and saturated fat content and more processed foods. The meals of each diet had to be eaten at individually adapted times, which were matched to the two dietary conditions. Each diet was consumed for one week, while the participants\’ sleep, activity and meal plans were tracked individually.

After each diet, the participants were tested in a sleep laboratory. There, they were first allowed to get a normal night\’s sleep, while their brain activity was measured to track their sleep. The participants were then kept awake in the sleep laboratory before they could catch up on sleep. Again their sleep was recorded.

“What we saw was that the participants slept for the same amount of time when they consumed the two diets. This was the case both while following the diets and after switching to another identical diet. Also, during the two diets, participants spent equal amounts of time in different stages of sleep. But we were particularly interested in studying the properties of their deep sleep. Specifically, we looked at slow-wave activity, a measure that may reflect how restorative sleep is. deep is. Intriguingly, we saw that deep sleep showed less slow-wave activity when participants ate junk food, compared to consuming healthier food. This effect also lasted for a second night, once we passed the participants on an identical diet. Essentially, the unhealthy diet led to less deep sleep. Of note, similar changes in sleep patterns occur with aging and in conditions such as insomnia. It can be hypothesized, from a sleep perspective, that greater importance should potentially be attached to diet under such conditions,\” explained Cedernaes.

Researchers don\’t currently know how long the sleep effects of the unhealthier diet might last. The study didn\’t investigate whether more shallow deep sleep might alter functions that are regulated by deep sleep, for example.

\”It would also be interesting to conduct functional tests, for example to see whether memory function can be influenced. This is regulated to a large extent by sleep. And it would be just as interesting to understand how long the observed effects last. At the moment, we do not know which substances in the diet unhealthy diets have worsened the depth of deep sleep. As in our case, unhealthy diets often contain both higher proportions of saturated fats and sugars and a lower proportion of dietary fiber. It would be interesting to investigate whether there is a particular molecular factor playing a greater role. Our dietary intervention was also quite brief, and both the sugar and fat contents could have been higher. It is possible that an even more unhealthy diet would have had more pronounced effects on sleep,\” noted Cedernaes.

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