Hi ,

Food can influence the quality of your sleep for sure. Did you measure your blood sugars? And if so, would you mind sharing them with us?

Here are some ways food can influence your sleep:

Having dinner just before you go to bed.
If you eat a big meal just before you go to bed, especially when your meal contains faster digestible carbs, the body reacts by putting out a lot of insulin to bring blood sugars down.

If the spike in blood sugar is high, the drop in blood sugar after the spike can be quite fast in some cases. This can lead to low blood sugars typically 3 hours later. If you are sleeping and your blood sugars get too low, your body will correct the low blood sugars by creating an adrenaline (or epinephrine as it is called in other parts of the world) surge. This will elevate blood sugars, but since adrenaline is activating, it can wake you up.

Being hungry before you go to sleep
Eating really early in the evening can wake you up in the middle of the night as well. Again, low blood sugar could be the cause. The body again tries to balance the blood sugars with a surge of adrenaline. In this case, you could try a little bedtime snack containing some carbohydrates and a little bit of fat. For example an apple with a little bit of almond butter.

The fats slow down the absorption of sugars, giving your blood a little bit of glucose during the night.

There are many other reasons why you might wake up at the night. Here are some others:
• Your body might struggle with creating melatonin. Possibly because of stimulating activities in the evening (perhaps you could check your sleep hygiene). 
• If a snack didn’t work and you feel your sleep hygiene is great, you can test if your body’s melatonin production is the problem. It’s simple to test. Just try melatonin supplementation for a few days. 300mcg to 1mg should be enough. If your sleep gets better, it might be a sign that your body struggles with melatonin production. 

Here are some tips to optimize melatonin production:• Melatonin is made from tryptophan. Having enough protein in your diet is important.
• Tryptophan becomes 5-HTP, then serotonin and finally melatonin. Tryptophan gets converted under the influence of vitamin D, omega 3 and vitamin B6 to melatonin. These nutrients are important as well.
• If stress or stressful thoughts keep you awake, you might have more success with calming adaptogenic herbs like Ashwaganda, Holy Basil or L-theanine. L-theanine is particularly helpful if you experience a racing mind before you go to bed, while the others influence your cortisol levels.

Are there any suggestions that resonate with you?

 I’d also like to add to Daniel’s reply. We’ve just newly released the course all about adrenal health, and this can also impact blood sugar throughout the day and night, and also affect sleep.

You can watch this video on how cortisol, our main stress hormone produced by the adrenals, affects other hormones in the body. Both high and low cortisol can affect blood sugar and sleep through different mechanisms.

-low cortisol status from chronic stress can lead to low fasting blood sugar in the mornings for example, since we need a spike of CAR (cortisol awakening response) upon rising to help put sugar into the blood and get us ready for the day

-high cortisol status at night (from stress, poor sleep hygiene as Daniel suggested above) will block melatonin production at night and disrupt sleep.

So stress can play a big role here too. Would you say that’s a factor in your case? And keep in mind that stress comes in different forms; mental/emotional, physical, and physiological (watch this video for more details).

Let us know.