Midnight Snacking Slows Your Brain

If eating a few hundred unnecessary calories is not reason enough to avoid midnight snacking, here’s another: the more you eat, the less alert is your brain. Why would want an alert brain when you’re trying to sleep? Because as counterintuitive as it seems, a clear brain with optimum concentration really does help us sleep. Futurity reports on research, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, for which 44 people were given unlimited access to food and drink during the day, but were allowed only four hours of sleep each night for three nights. On the fourth night, 20 people were given continued access to food and drinks, while the 24 others were allowed only to consume water from 10 p.m. until they went to sleep at 4 a.m. At 2 a.m. each night, all subjects in the experiment completed a variety of tests to measure their working memory, cognitive skills, sleepiness, stress level, and mood. Ready? The envelope please…..The researchers found that during the fourth night, those who fasted performed better on reaction time and attention lapses than subjects who had eaten during those late-night hours. Wait, there’s more. Those who ate showed significantly slower reaction times and more attention lapses on the fourth night of sleep restriction compared to the first three nights. Those who had fasted did not show a decline in performance.