I know you can’t believe everything you read on social media, but Oh, how we want to believe this viral message.
There is a recent Tik Tik post that is gaining traction for a possible solution for people having trouble falling asleep.
If you often wake up in the middle of the night and are not able to fall back asleep, this could work for you.
Scott Beyer, DC is a doctor of chiropractic and he is certified by the American Chiropractic Neurology Board.
He has hypothesized that two adrenal hormones may be behind waking up in the night and being unable to fall back asleep: cortisol and adrenaline.
The purpose of cortisol is to regulate blood sugar, but stress causes its release to be changed. The levels of cortisol should be rising while you are sleeping and peak in the morning. But according to Beyer, if you are under stress, your “cortisol rhythm becomes blunted and flat.”
Beyer said that this may cause adrenaline to be released while you are sleeping, and he said that adrenaline is a “huge central nervous system stimulant.”
So what is Beyer’s hack to getting more rest at night? Eat something close to bedtime and then again as soon as you wake up for a couple of weeks. He said this will “take a load off of the demand for blood sugar regulation, and over time, people can actually start sleeping soundly throughout the night.”
Don’t rush to the fridge quite yet. Dr. Andrew Varga, neuroscientist, and physician at Mount Sinai’s Integrative Sleep Center, said that he would not necessarily recommend Beyer’s solution. “That being said, I can’t specifically refute this hypothesis,” he added. “It’s an interesting idea, and I think it would have to be tested in a really rigorous way.”
“I think that there’s a couple of reasons why sleep doctors would ordinarily suggest that it’s not a great idea to eat too close to bedtime,” Varga continued.
He explained that eating close to bedtime may not allow food the proper time to digest. And there are several signals that the body responds to promote wakefulness, primarily light and food. While eating right after waking up in the morning makes sense to wake up the body, eating before bed can also make you more awake.
“Any time you ingest something, you’re essentially telling part of your body that now’s the time to be awake. It’s kind of a wake-promoting signal,” Varga said.
So I guess I’ll take the bag of animal crackers out of my nightstand.
