The Effects Of Exercise, Carbohydrates, Saturated Fat, Protein, Fiber & Micronutrients On Sleep!

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, welcome to a premium podcast episode, baby. Been a while since we've done one of these. Sipping on my coffee. I'm actually a little bit sleep deprived and this special premium podcast episode is actually about sleep. So how do you like that? Anyways, I recently read one of the best three part series on sleep that I've ever seen. It was in Alan Argon's research review and it went into macronutrients and sleep, meal timing, composition, micronutrients and sleep and exercise, exercise intensity and exercise, volume and sleep. And I just wanted to give you a few quick tips from that. If you like these quick tips coming out on the premium channel, then either here or in the inner circle, I'll keep pushing them out. But I wanted to throw a few of these your way. And I'm also going to be getting the author on a podcast soon on a big podcast. But I want to give you my premium subscriber because I love you so much, the bullet points. Okay, this is from Alan Argon's research review. You ready? First of all, consuming carbohydrates four hours before bed definitely enhances deep sleep cycles. While being in a state of ketosis, going into bed does not. Hence my recommendation to have more carbs with your evening meal. Consumption of excessively large meal right before bed does not enhance sleep cycles. So while you should consume carbohydrates with your meal, it shouldn't be to excess with any of the calories in that meal. Higher protein intake. If you have an energy deficit, if you're, if you're calorically depleted because you're trying to fast or lose weight, then including protein, especially with dinner and higher amounts could help you sleep better, especially if you're in your caloric deficit. A high carbohydrate diet can shorten wake times, meaning how, how long it is that you wake during the night. Yep, I'm gonna sip coffee this whole time, so shoot me. What? What does that mean? It means again, include some carbohydrates with dinner. If you're waking up all the time during the night, for crying out loud. And it appears even like higher glycemic is, is even better. I mean, you can do like bread and, and, you know, rice and things like that with dinner. So, I mean, it's from healthy sources. Keep your saturated fat intake low to moderate with dinner, meaning too much saturated fat. We all know this meat sweats, right? You wake up, you know you're sweating because you had that marbly steak. Keep saturated fat intake low to moderate. Consume adequate fiber. Amazingly, that has an impact on sleep. So have your roasted vegetables or your salad with dinner. And total fat intake should be kept moderated at dinner and, and later on into the evening. And again, this totally agrees with my own concept that I follow, which is more fats, moderated protein, lower carbohydrates or no carbohydrates all day long than carbohydrates at the end of the day. Adequate omega 3 fatty acids and regular consumption of fatty fish appears to enhance sleep cycles. And then finally, or I'm sorry, not finally, but next we get into part two. Okay, so those are the biggies. Have some, have some carbohydrates and consume adequate fiber. Don't eat too much saturated fat with dinner. Don't get confused here. I'm not saying saturated fat is bad. I'm just saying with dinner, it might interrupt sleep. Then get lots of omega 3 fatty acids. Also, we learned that vitamin D deficiency is very common. And so chronic factors for very low vitamin D levels would be like dark skin tone or limited natural sunlight exposure, chronic steroid use, even intestinal malabsorption issues, and that affects sleep. So use of like a vitamin D tanning lamp or consumption of vitamin D supplements appears to be something that may help in that case. In addition, we know that melatonin production can be increased by higher protein intake. And so that would specifically be a higher protein intake of amino acids that contain, for example, things that help you to form tryptophan and serotonin. So it turns out that having enough blood levels of amino acids could be very helpful as well. And then finally, micronutrients, valerian, nitric oxide and magnesium were the three most studied. Who knew nitric oxide? That's an interesting one. Okay, and then with regards to exercise. Exercise promotes sleep. No surprises there. But we also know that exercise can shift your circadian rhythm. Excuse me, into it. I was like a half burp, half sip of coffee, limited on, on, on sleep because of jet lag. Exercise in the morning can help out quite A bit, uh, as can strategic napping during the day. Uh, we all know that. Um, and a few other things. Early morning exercise at an aerobic rate seems to help sleep later on at night, wake up. Facet state exercise 20 to 30 minutes, not just for fat loss, good for sleep. Afternoon intense exercise, again, something that I've preached for a long time. I was very happy, I was patting myself on the back that this stuff agreed with a lot of the things I preach. Afternoon exercise that's harder can improve sleep as long as it's done about four hours before bedtime. Okay. High intensity exercise needs to be done. Well actually the research goes back and forth, but it's three to four hours. Right? So if you're, if you are doing a hard exercise session, you would want to finish that up by 7pm if you're going to go to bed at 10pm and then interestingly, another thing that they found was that if you are sleepy and you're sleep deprived, that long duration exercise can actually alleviate that. And so actually doing some chronic cardio when you're sleep deprived could actually help to wake you up a little bit. And then short bouts of exercise every two hours over a sleep deprived day also appears to increase alertness and cognitive performance. Let's say you can't get to the gym, you're sleep deprived, you're at work, even just stopping every hour or so and doing some burpees appears to be something that helps. As can exercising in well lit conditions. All right, exercising in well lit conditions. So big picture, here we go. Have carbohydrates with dinner. Eat a lot of omega 3 fatty acids, don't do too many saturated fats with dinner, and include vegetables with dinner. Get your vitamin D levels analyzed. If you're low on sleep and get exposure to vitamin D, preferably from sunlight, look into valerian, magnesium and nitric oxide as useful micronutrients for sleep aid. Do an easy exercise session in the morning, do a hard exercise session in the afternoon, but finish it within three hours before bedtime, preferably in a well lit condition. And then finally, if you're sleep deprived, doing either short, little intense bouts of exercise during the day, like 10 minutes or less, or doing some form of like longer chronic cardio, you know, like going for a long walk could actually be beneficial. So there you have it. As a premium subscriber, you get access to all this knowledge and so much more. Go through the archives, archives, archives. There's lots of them. PDFs, videos, never before seen audios that only premium subscribers get. So check it out. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.