You may be wondering: how does food affect sleep? Eating too early before bed can cause heartburn and acid reflux. Indigestion often occurs from eating too much, eating too quickly, or eating high-fat foods. Try to give your body enough time to fully digest your food before going to sleep. It can help to eat smaller meals and stick to foods that are digested more quickly.
The digestive process begins with ingestion. When you consume food, your teeth physically break it down into smaller pieces. Your salivary glands are activated and saliva is released to moisten and lubricate the food.
This is where the fun begins. Your swallowing begins and moves the food from your mouth into your esophagus. Contractions of a muscle called peristalsis transport the food through this tube to another, more familiar muscle, the stomach.
Your stomach churns your food and mixes it with naturally produced body chemicals. Stomach juices, acidic fluids and enzymes break down your food at the molecular level, turning it into a creamy paste called chyme.
At the bottom of your stomach is a small gate called the pyloric sphincter, which controls the entry of chyme into your intestine.
At the beginning of your small intestine, fluids lubricate the chyme and neutralize its acidity. Enzymes further break down the chyme and digest the proteins, fatty acids and carbohydrates present. These smaller molecules can then be absorbed by the body into the bloodstream.
After all the useful substances, such as vitamins, minerals and nutrients, have been absorbed from the food, watery, indigestible components of the food remain. These components are passed in the large intestine.
The large intestine then extracts water and electrolytes from the indigestible food. And then send it further down the pipe. Which sends a response to your body to go to the toilet.
You shouldn't eat heavy meals before bed, but if you must eat right before bed, there are some foods you may want to avoid.
The foods that take the longest to digest are bacon, beef, lamb, whole milk cheese and nuts. On average, it takes your body about 4 hours to digest these foods.
The digestive process still takes place even when you sleep. This means that our digestive fluids and the acids in our stomach are active. So when you go to sleep after eating, these acids and food push against the bottom of your esophagus, putting you at risk for heartburn, acid reflux and indigestion.
If you decide to eat before bed, you'll want to eat foods that are quick and easy to digest to reduce the risk of these problems: such as eggs, seafood, vegetables and fruits.
This infographic shows the time it takes for different foods to leave the stomach. This does not represent the full digestive cycle (which often lasts between 24 and 72 hours;here is more information about it). Like almost everything health-related, these times will vary considerably depending on age, gender, the unique capabilities of your digestive tract, and a host of other factors. The data sources for this graph come from fitness websites and not peer-reviewed scientific journals, so take this with a grain of salt (which takes about 13.6 minutes to digest…).
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