Junk Food Disrupts Deep Sleep & 14 Tips on Healthier Substitutions!

New Research!! ⤵️

👉👉 Even if you sleep the exact same number of hours, eating junk food during the day can affect the QUALITY of your sleep—making sleep more shallow and less restorative.

Let’s back up 🚙

Sleep consists of different stages with different functions. Deep sleep, for example, regulates hormonal release. Each sleep stage is also marked by specific electrical activity in the brain.

A brand new study in the journal Obesity looked at what happened to sleep quality when healthy young men ate nutritious meals vs. junk food.  Here’s what they found:

🔹 Participants slept the same number of hours, regardless of which diet they consumed.

🔹 They also spent the same amount of time in each of the sleep stages.

🔹 But slow-wave brain activity (a measurement of how restorative deep sleep is) was less in those who ate the junk food.

Even though both groups slept the exact same number of hours, eating junk food disrupted the quality of deep sleep—making it more shallow and less restorative.

This means that the junk food resulted in sleep that was less deep—similar to what happens with aging and insomnia.

Why should you care about restorative sleep?

Because it’s essential for…

💫 Graceful Aging

💃 Balanced Hormones

🔥 Healthy Metabolism

🧠 Brain Function, Mood, & More!

Although this study focused on healthy young men I think it’s safe to presume this data applies to all adults.

Here are 14 ideas on healthier junk food substitutes:

1.    Replace Candy Bars with Dark Chocolate or Chocolate-Covered Nuts. 

2.    Replace Potato Chips with Homemade Kale Chips. 

3.    Replace Sugary Drinks with Unsweetened Coconut Water, Kombucha or Flavored Sparkling Water

4.    Replace Ice Cream with Greek Yogurt or All-Fruit Popsicles

5.    Replace Cold Cereal with Steel Cut Oats or Muesli

6.    Replace Cookies with Fruit

7.    Replace French Fries with Baked or Roasted Root Vegetable Fries

8.    Replace Donuts with Power Balls or Fat Bombs

9.    Replace Cake with Black Bean Brownies or Almond/Coconut Flour Scones

10. Replace Milkshakes with Homemade Smoothies

11. Replace Chinese Take-Out with Homemade “Fake-Out”

12. Replace Traditional Burgers with Burger Bowl

13. Replace Fried Chicken Wings with Baked Chicken Wings

14. Replace Burritos with Burrito Bowl

Here’s to Healthier Choices!

Rachel Oppitz, ND

P.S. Let me know if you have other healthy substitution suggestions to add to this list!