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4 Ways Sugar Ruins Your Sleep - Health - Nairaland

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4 Ways Sugar Ruins Your Sleep by Y4all: 9:34am On Mar 04, 2022
It is a known fact that the excessive intake of sugar is very detrimental to our health and wellbeing. As a necessary evil, we use sugar in one form or another in virtually all that we eat. This situation is even made worst in the amount of sugar that is available in our diet today. Therefore, apart from the potential health hazards associated with the excessive intake of sugar which can lead to weight gain, causes tooth decay, and increases the risk of diabetes, it also has another profound effect being that it messes with your sleep, and in such a way that your sleeplessness will leave you with a craving for more sugar.
This could be a bit difficult to phantom but this is how sugar ruins your sleep, These are 4 main pathways:

Sugar increases stress hormones
Consuming sugar in excess, especially before sleep time can have a terrible effect on your blood sugar level. Here’s how it works, when you consume this sugar, you feel full of energy and often sleep off in no time. However, when your blood sugar crashes, your body uses the stress hormone cortisol to balance your blood sugar... So when you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't go back to sleep, this could be because your blood sugar has crashed and your body is pumping out cortisol... and it's pretty hard to sleep when your stress hormones are sky-high.

Sugar raises your pancreas
Having too much sugar at night can be detrimental to our health. When you eat sugar, your blood sugar levels rise and your pancreas releases insulin, which helps the sugar to be taken back into the cells, giving them fuel to run on. This means eating sugar late at night overstimulates you. It gives you energy and makes you ready for activity, but that is not what we’re trying to do at night. Sugar uses up a lot of magnesium, which you need for sleep.

Sugar stimulates appetite and cravings
Eating sugar activates the brain’s reward circuitry and a complex web of hormones related to hunger and metabolism. In response to sugar, the brain releases dopamine, a hormone that delivers powerful feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. The more sugar we eat, the less sensitive our brains become to that dopamine rush. We need to produce more dopamine in order to experience the same feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. And that translates into a need to eat more sugar. The dopamine-activated reward pathways in the brain that are affected by sugar are the same ones affected by alcohol, drugs, and other potentially addictive behaviors like gambling and sex.

Sugar increases inflammation
A systematic review from 2018 reported that several studies have linked consuming more sugar with chronic inflammation. And inflammation, in turn, can also undermine healthy sleep. Inflammation comes with so-called cytokines, chemical messengers that regulate sleep. When cytokines are elevated, there is a higher likelihood of sleep issues and insomnia. What’s more, inflammation can cause pain and stiffness in the body that can make it hard to fall asleep and to sleep soundly. Inflammation is also accompanied by the stress hormone cortisol.

In conclusion, it is recommended that we eat well throughout the day, starting with plenty of protein for breakfast, to counteract fluctuating blood-sugar levels. The less you rely on sugar and caffeine to prop you up through the day, the more you are able to go into healthy sleep patterns at night.
Healthy eating, exercise, and an evening wind-down produce good sleep, and the vicious circle turns virtuous. Sleep well.

Source:www.wincofoam.com

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