Improve Diet & Exercise – Revitalised Healthcare

Improve Your Diet & Exercise

Your diet and the amount you exercise directly affects your sleep.

Why is this important?

Because what you eat and when you eat makes a difference.

It's a proven fact that what you eat & drink, when you eat and drink, and how much (or lack) of exercise has a direct correlation to your sleep outcomes.

So what are some tips and tricks to help you begin to simplify your diet so you can help sleep?

Diet Tips to improve sleep include:

You should decrease:

1. Decrease caffeine intake (especially after midday) as it takes a long time (12 hrs) for your body to metabolise caffeine.
2. Decrease or eliminate alcohol - if you have it, try to not have it too close to bedtime.
3. Decrease high sugar food and sugary drinks before bed. Sugar fuels the brain!
4. Don't have “heavy” meals before bed. It takes your body a long time to metabolise fatty meals.

You should increase:

1. High quality fish oils. They’re known to improve sleep scores.
2. Foods higher in magnesium - there are a number of foods that do this or you can supplement magnesium orally or via skin application.
3. Foods high in antioxidants such as kiwifruit & tart cherries.

While all of these things are known to improve sleep, it’s all in moderation and in balance. For example, you can’t just go and consume a huge amount of magnesium or fish oils on a daily basis. It has to be consistent, and even then, you still need to make sure your bed time routine and environment is adequate.

The Amount & When You Exercise Affects Your Sleep

Exercise Tips to improve sleep include:

1. Do ANY exercise. Anything is better than nothing! It uses up energy stores of "ATP" (Adenosine Tri Phosphate, part of your energy system), and you need higher levels of the resultant "Adenosine" to improve sleep drive.
2. The more exercise you do though (especially cardio) the more inflammation you create, and the harder it is to sleep.
3. Exercise in the morning or during the day, not close to bed time. It's a stimulant at night.

It’s pretty much as simple as that.