Sleepless in Rapid City: your diet may be keeping you up at night

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - A healthy diet is key to living a healthy lifestyle. Whether it’s low blood sugar or a high carb intake, the way you eat may be affecting your sleep, making it harder to stay healthy.

It is important to know how changing your diet might be the way you can get a full night’s sleep.

A midnight snack seems like a good idea, but the food you eat during the day may be the reason you are up in the middle of the night. Your diet may be the cause of those restless nights.

Whether it be from too much of one thing or the lack of another.

“There’s also a lot of nutrition factors that go into how you sleep, your quality of sleep and how well you feel in the morning, how rested you feel too. The three ones that I like to focus on with my clients to get good quality sleep are any micronutrients deficiencies, or maybe they aren’t getting enough vitamins and minerals in their diet, and then also how your hormones are playing a role in all that,” says dietitian, Jenny Kling.

Research shows that not getting enough B1 or thiamine in your diet can lead to restless sleep, but Kling does have some foods she recommends that can help.

“Thiamine is one of those vitamins that’s really important for your nervous system and it can be found in a lot of your protein foods, so like meat, fish, pork is actually a really good source of thiamine but it’s also in legumes, seeds, things like that. A lot of your more whole, nutrient-dense foods,” Kling says.

A lack of magnesium may also be leading to a lack of sleep, but there are also ways to increase your intake through avocados, pumpkin seeds, and leafy greens. It’s important to remember to eat foods that encourage your body to relax.

“Ensuring that you have an adequate amount of fiber, lean protein, fruits, and veggies, however, there have been some studies that show that tart cherry juice has been more beneficial, better to help with longer sleep as well,” concludes Alissa Towsley, a performance dietician.

Some foods that can decrease your ability to deep sleep are saturated fats, excess sugar, alcohol, and higher doses of caffeine. It’s recommended you slow down or stop the intake of these foods 6-8 hours before you try to go to sleep.