Eating This Type Of Food Before Bed Can Make Sleep More Efficient, According To New Research On Nurses

Performed by researchers in South Korea, this study investigated the effects of different bedtime meals on the sleep quality of 128 nurses working the nighttime shift.

The researchers measured sleep quality via self-reported sleep scores (using a tool called the Verran and Snyder-Halpern Sleep Scale) and objective data collected by an accelerometer. Participants also reported exactly what they ate and when on the nights they were working. 

If you're scratching your head reading the results above, you're not alone! This goes against what many of us have been taught—that we shouldn't eat right before bed. We've seen a lot of past research that late-night eating is bad for our metabolism and that we should avoid certain foods before bed. For example, this study published in 2017 showed us that timing meals later in the night can cause weight gain and impair fat metabolism. 

So…what gives? It may be that late-night eating is harmful to metabolic health in some ways but benefits sleep in others. This is also an extremely preliminary study done on night shift workers, so it's possible the results don't apply to everyone. In other words, the results of this study shouldn't spark us to start eating a giant meal before bed every night. 

A new study shows that eating a high-protein meal before bed improved sleep quality in nurses working a night shift. And while we shouldn't take these results as an excuse to late-night snack all we want, we can incorporate more protein into our evenings in honor of our ZZZ's.