Everyone has, at one time or another, sat on the couch in the middle of the night with their favorite snack food watching a movie.
It’s the ultimate comfort time. It is many people’s go-to when they can’t sleep.
However, it may surprise many to know that those comfort foods may be the very thing preventing them from sleeping.
Certain foods secretly have caffeine or other elements that inhibit sleep.
Chocolate
Chocolate is so delicious and can be comforting, except that it has a lot of caffeine.
Caffeine causes more rapid eye movement (REM) and that will leave you feeling tired the next day.
Eating chocolate has the same effect as drinking coffee! So you should treat it the same in your diet and only have it occasionally earlier in the day
Cheese
What could be wrong with cheese? It’s dairy, natural, and oh so good, right?
Cheese is one of the absolute worst foods you can eat before going to bed. That’s because cheese actually wakes you up.
As it turns out, cheese makes us more alert and that will make it difficult to sleep. Aged cheese has a lot of tyramine and amino acid that turns on our alert system.
Tyramine is linked to the adrenal gland releasing a “fight or flight” hormone that can keep you awake.
Ice Cream
Yes, the beloved late-night ice cream binges must stop if you want to sleep. Sugar is the culprit with this.
Processed sugar causes a spike in blood sugar levels, which eventually will cause a crash.
If that happens while you are asleep, your adrenal gland produces a ton of cortisol and you wake up.
Similar to cheese, your body experiences a sudden rush that is similar to the fight or flight response.
This can keep you awake throughout the night.
You can still eat these foods, just eat them earlier in the day so it won’t affect your sleep patterns.
Limited food at night will help you reduce weight too.
