How could regulating food throughout the day help with sleep at night?
If you have been reading what I have been writing, you should know by now that everything is interconnected in Nature. The factors that lead to good sleep are no exception.
Hunger and sleep
One key of your body’s regulation is the hormone ghrelin, which was only discovered in the 1990’s. It is responsible for your hunger on-switch while the hormone leptin is responsible for turning hunger off.
Rising ghrelin hormone levels turn on your appetite, making your stomach start growling, so the similarity of ghrelin/growlin’ is an easy way to remember its name.
Eating in relationship to the ups and downs of the release of ghrelin allows us to keep stress levels lower throughout the day to be able to sleep at night.
Eating responses to ghrelin
Ghrelin release is related to the time of morning sunlight. At first light, an hour or so before dawn, the hormone ghrelin will begin to be released. First light could be from 4 am to 6 or 7 am, depending on the season and the latitude where you live.
Pat yourself on the back if you do eat early, by 8 am or so, because then you will have put the ghrelin gremlin to rest, and activated hunger’s off signal, leptin. You can hormonally be in the rest and digest phase, parasympathetic activity, and your body is happy and healthy.
However, if you, like most people, do not eat early, then the hormone ghrelin continues to rise. Typically, around 9:30 – 10:30 am, it reaches a threshold at which you cannot resist eating because you are really hungry. This is when workers who skipped breakfast will grab that coffee and pastry to tide them over.
What is happening in your gut and hormonal systems regulating hunger is that it has been calling for you to eat for five hours now, and nothing has happened, so it perceives there is a famine.
Famine is a stress to the body, so it releases a huge spike of stress hormones to cope. It releases epinephrine and norepinephrine to signal your brain to stop doing whatever you’re doing and focus on getting some food.
You may even think or say, “I’m starving!” because it really feels that way as response to your hormonal signals. You don’t feel that way with normal hunger.
Body responses to stress
In such a stressed state, it is hard for you to make a healthy decision. In your rush to obey the overwhelming signals, you most likely will choose foods that create a drug-like response to this hunger emergency, like simple sugars and processed foods without fiber.
Eating anything turns off the hormones ghrelin, epinephrine and norepinephrine, so for the moment you feel good. You can relax. The famine emergency is over; you survived.
However, in doing this, because of the spike in blood sugar and having to clear the stress hormones, brain fog kicks in and you’re starting to get grumpy, a little overwhelmed by work, and frustrated.
Once you eat, ghrelin turns off momentarily, but then starts up again. Around noon, about 8 hours after first light, ghrelin peaks again to start the drive to eat. If you don’t eat by 1:30 – 2:30 in the afternoon, you go through the same stress process. Again, if you come home and are eating dinner late at 8:30 to 10, you have missed the calling of ghrelin peaks during your whole day and turned on stress cascades instead.
What is worse than afternoon grumpiness is that because of the norepinephrine/epinephrine stress spikes from high ghrelin from not eating, you’re activating famine or starvation metabolism.
When you are stressed because you consume those calories late in the morning, it is more likely that they are deposited as fat in the liver. Yes, those calories from what you ate are stored as fat in your liver, which results in fatty liver.
This results in poor sleep quality and sexual dysfunction. It drives insulin resistance and chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Obesity
Ask anyone who is obese – that is 40, 50, 100, or more pounds overweight – when they first eat. Most likely you will hear it is delayed to about 9:30 -10:30 am. They eat a huge meal, and then by 1 or 2 pm, they’re eating again because of their stress patterns.
The phenomenon of American obesity might be just this – a whole day of eating missing the call of ghrelin. If breakfast is at 9:30 to 10:30am, lunch is delayed until 2:30pm, and dinner 8:30 to 10, each of those meals are now happening on the tail end of a ghrelin spike resulting in a stress hormone response.
Each of those meals can pack on pounds as they are now stored as fat rather than mobilized as fuel. Your body does not know it is getting fuel because it is stored in the liver as fat, which causes the stress of thinking there is a famine while there is calorie overload.
This stress overflows to all systems.
Stress and Your Nervous System
You have a hard time getting any rest when your hormones are continually signaling that there is a famine emergency. This includes sleep.
If you have been losing sleep, then a way to recover is to match your eating pattern with your ghrelin release pattern. By doing so, you can regenerate. The most restorative sleep happens when you have had fewer stress surges during the day.
When you are low stress, in this restorative sleep stem cells get activated, tissue is repaired, and your brain processes your day. If you can maximize this restorative sleep you will improve your health. On the way to recovery, with more time spent in stage 4 sleep, you will be dreaming less.
Other factors
Ghrelin is programmed to peak around 4 am, 10 -11am, and 5 – 6pm, all set by first light. If you don’t eat in concert with this pattern, it can disrupt your sense of fullness and satisfaction, leading you to overeat.
But the eating response to ghrelin release can also be mismatched if foods take too long to transit through the gut. In general, plant-based meals transit faster and highly processed and high-protein foods take longer to move through the gut.
Healthy eating times reduce stress
In contrast to this scenario of delayed meals, stress and poor sleep, there is another way to go through your day. If you woke up in the morning at first light, did some self-care like meditating, gentle stretching, and breathing exercises, then moved into an early morning breakfast, you would immediately suppress ghrelin before that epinephrine and norepinephrine spike.
Hard to wake up that early? Set an alarm and at least get up, stretch, and drink some water to start the process. The more often you wake up early, the more often you can go to bed early.
Not hungry? Eat some nuts, seeds, or fruit. It only takes 80 calories to respond to the ghrelin and head off the stress hormone cascade later. Be gentle.
Ta-da! Instant peace and a clearer mind to work through the morning. No urge to go to Starbucks for the drug-like high.
What is more, the way in which you metabolize those breakfast calories is radically different than the high-calorie drink or pastry. You can utilize what you ate for building the body’s reserves.
You build glycogen to be stored in your liver and muscles. Then when exercising or when needed for the brain, glycogen can be broken down into blood sugar and used. No stress, no emergency response because the reserves are there. This is a natural process of eating, then storing for future use, then using the stores, which does not promote inflammation.
When you time your eating with ghrelin peaking to reduce stress hormones, you set yourself up for success in sleeping at night.
What about fasting?
Grazing has its place in moderating physiological stress on the system.
Intermittent Fasting has its place in reversing insulin resistance, and beginning to turn around chronic diseases.
Longer term fasting also has its place.
Since ghrelin is what drives you to eat, if you don’t eat for a full 24 hours, ghrelin responds by turning off permanently. No more appetite induced by ghrelin.
It will not turn on again until you restart calorie intake. This is part of the body’s programing to give you rest from the hormonal triggers in times of famine. It also allows you to comfortably do a 3, 5, or 7 day – or more – fast.
Both grazing and fasting can be tailored to address your health issues. Variety is a key to life and health and enjoyment.
Grazing
During a day when you eat often to lower your ghrelin release, you can improve your leptin release, which allows you to feel full quicker during a meal. In that way, you realize you have had enough to eat and don’t overeat.
In addition, you have not set off any stress hormones from your eating pattern. That is not to say you were not stressed from your response to circumstances, but at least you did not produce physiological stress.
This sets you up to finish eating early so that you can go to sleep closer to the cycle of the sun. If you can get to sleep at 9 or 10 pm, then you will awaken at 5 or 6 am to be able to respond to that first-light ghrelin release.
Here is a sample grazing schedule. Find what hours and foods suit you.
- Start your day with a glass of water with lemon, lime, or Apple Cider Vinegar and a pinch of sea salt
- 7 AM – Breakfast (plant-based for faster transit time)
- 9 AM – Small snack of fruit or vegetables
- 11 AM – Another small snack, perhaps olives, nut butter on veggies
- 12:30 PM – Lunch
- 2 PM – Small snack of seeds or nuts
- 4 PM – Tea time! (herbal or mushroom) Instead of biscuits, try avocado toast
- 6 PM – Dinner
One more thing
How you eat is just as important as what and when you eat. Create an experience that induces relaxation and digestion. Reduce stress at your meal or snack.
- create a beautiful atmosphere (Avoid eating in the car or at your desk.)
- notice where your food came from, give gratitude
- take time to chew
- eat seasonally
It’s up to you
How can you establish your eating patterns so that you reduce your physiological stress and sleep better?
