Good nutrition not only ensures overall health but also improves sleep. A recent study revealed that better nutrition, specifically the inclusion of more fruits and veggies in the diet can help people achieve optimum sleep duration.
In the study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers examined how sleep duration affects fruit and vegetable consumption and vice-versa. They also investigated how individual chronotypes—whether someone is a morning person or a night owl—might influence dietary choices and sleep patterns.
The results indicate that decreased intake of certain fruits and vegetables was associated with long and short sleep duration. The researchers also noted that "deviation from normal sleep duration was associated with decreased fruit and vegetable consumption, suggesting the need for considering sleep patterns in dietary intervention."
For the study, researchers collected data from 5,043 adults who were part of the National FinHealth 2017 Study in Finland. Participants completed a comprehensive questionnaire that asked about their regular diet over the past 12 months. They also provided information on their sleep patterns, including their chronotype and how long they typically slept in a day. This data helped researchers analyze the connections between diet, sleep duration, and chronotype.
Based on the responses, there were three sleep duration categories: short sleepers with less than 7 hours a day, normal sleepers with seven to nine hours of daily sleep, and long sleepers with more than nine hours of sleep. There were 21% short sleepers, and 2.9% long sleepers while 76.1% had normal sleep duration.
There were 61.7% participants in the intermediate chronotype, while 22.4% in the morning group, and 15.9% in the evening chronotype.
The researchers noted that normal sleepers showed a higher intake of fruits and vegetables across all fruit and vegetable sub-groups compared to both short and long-sleepers.
However, they discovered that chronotypes have a minimal impact on the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and sleep duration.
"Targeted interventions focusing on [fruit and vegetable] sub-groups with pronounced associations, such as green leafy vegetables and fruit vegetables can lead to impactful behavior change. Additional research, particularly longitudinal studies, is needed to better understand these associations and their public health implications, especially in regions with similar population structures and dietary patterns to Finland," the researchers concluded.
