Why Intermittent Fasting Can Help With Better Sleep!

In the last few years, intermittent fasting (IF), a time-restricted eating pattern, has gained popularity as an effective dietary regime for weight loss.

In this article, let’s discuss how intermittent fasting can be helpful to induce better sleep.

Intermittent fasting is the process of restricting your eating window to a specified time period of the day and fasting for the remaining time during that entire day. This schedule of eating and fasting may vary depending on your schedule and goals you are trying to achieve.

For example, some prefer to follow the 16:8 plan, where they have to eat within eight hours of the window and fast for the rest of the 16 hours. Whereas, others may opt for a 5:2 fasting plan in which the calorie intake is restricted to 25% (i.e., a maximum of 500 calories per day) for two non-consecutive days and eat normally for the remaining five days of the week.

Intermittent fasting works by allowing your body to expand the time duration of fasting so that it can finish consuming energy from your last meal and can start burning the stored body fats. During this process, your body also starts to repair the cells on a molecular level and modify gene expression.

Following are some bodily changes that happen when you do intermittent fasting.

Several studies suggest that intermittent fasting is beneficial in the following ways.

Most people have the habit of eating every few hours from morning to night. This pattern of eating restricts your total time of fasting, and the body keeps working even when you are asleep. Thus, your body enters into fed-state metabolism and depends more on glucose for energy than on fat.

On the contrary, healthy sleep occurs only when your body shifts toward the burning of fat. Since your body is already in a glucose-dependent fed state, it is not ready for sleep. However, intermittent fasting induces natural fat-burning during sleep, which is more of a feasible solution than fed-state metabolism.

The benefits of intermittent fasting on sleep are prevalent soon within one week of practice. According to a study, it was found that the quality of sleep was radically improved within one week of intermittent fasting. The participants could sleep more restfully with enhanced sleep quality and better focus throughout the day.

It has also been seen that people who follow an intermittent fasting plan may experience REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep). It is a state in which your brain gets indulged in mental and emotional processing.

The most important signals used by your body to maintain a correct circadian rhythm are food and light. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of your brain responds to food and other circadian indications. Knowing your eating schedule and fasting window sends signals to your body to adjust the circadian rhythm.

Aligning intermittent fasting and sleep time has a tremendous effect on healthy circadian function, which eventually results in a night of better sleep.

Melatonin is a hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle. Melatonin levels usually go down during day time and increase gradually in the dark. It is at its peak when you sleep during the night.

On the contrary, when you go on a fasting state a few hours before your bedtime, it helps your body sleep effortlessly as your melatonin levels and body temperature experience their normal circadian rhythm.

When you are on an intermittent fasting plan, if you eat your meals at irregular intervals, it may disturb your sleep quality. This occurs because late-night eating may increase the body temperature. Heavy meals can trouble your digestion, leading to an upset stomach, which may hinder your sleep.

It is important to get enough sleep to get the maximum advantages of intermittent fasting. Because lack of sleep can lead to health problems like obesity and high blood sugar levels.

The following tips can help you keep up your energy levels and obtain the nutrients required when fasting.

While intermittent fasting focuses on when to eat only, focusing on the right food is equally important for maintaining better health and quality sleep.

When you are on an eating window, try including whole foods in your platter along with other healthy foods such as lean protein, low-fat dairy, lots of fiber, and healthy fats. Whole foods are densely nutritious and help you with chronic health issues such as insulin resistance.

Everyone is unique, and so is their lifestyle. There is no one-size-fits-all method. Thus, you have to experiment and figure out what type of intermittent fasting suits you the best. If it requires any modifications to better fit into your regime, never hesitate to make the required changes.

It might get even worst to sleep peacefully if you are too hungry because of the fasting schedule. When you crave food, your cortisol levels go up.

Cortisol is a stress hormone that may impair the quality of sleep. Having your last meal three hours before bed would allow you to have better digestion and help you enjoy your sleep. It would not leave you starving either.

To conclude, if you are facing insomnia and are willing to try some natural remedies, intermittent fasting can be a great choice. It is not only the best nondrug therapy for your sleep problems but also has several other health benefits.

With better sleep, intermittent fasting increases your energy levels and keeps you focused all throughout the day.

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