It’s a common event in offices and other workplaces around the world: About mid-afternoon, a slump comes over employees.
After eating a lunch packed with carbohydrates and fat, all they want to do is nap, not complete their assigned tasks.
The slump also might be because those same workers didn’t get enough sleep the night before — and that, again, is tied to their eating habits, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia recently reported that men who consume diets high in fat are more likely to feel sleepy during the day, to report sleep problems at night, and are also more likely to suffer from sleep apnea.
It becomes a vicious circle, according to the researchers.
“Poor sleep and feeling sleepy during the day means you have less energy, but this in turn is known to increase people’s cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods, which is then associated with poor sleep outcomes,” said study author and University of Adelaide PhD student Yingting Cao. “So the poor diet-and-sleep pattern can become a vicious cycle.”
“This has significant implications for alertness and concentration, which would be of particular concern to workers,” she added. “High fat intake was also strongly associated with sleep apnea.”
Photo courtesy FreeImages.com/Michael Lorenzo
The new study came out of the Men Androgen Inflammation Lifestyle Environment and Stress (MAILES), which collected data on more than 1,800 Australian men between the ages of 35 and 80 over the period of a year.
“After adjusting for other demographic and lifestyle factors, and chronic diseases, we found that those who consumed the highest fat intake were more likely to experience excessive daytime sleepiness,” said Cao.
The data analysis found that 41 percent of the men surveyed reported experiencing daytime sleepiness, while 47 percent had poor sleep quality at night.
About 54 percent had mild-to-moderate sleep apnea, and 25 percent had moderate-to-severe sleep apnea, which was assessed by a sleep study among those who did not have a previous diagnosis of sleep apnea.
“The simple message is a commonsense one, but we need more people to pay attention to it: We need to eat better; a good sleep the night before is best,” she concluded.
While the researchers did not specifically state what kind of fats the men were eating, it seems their diets were the typical diets so many consume, with large amounts of processed foods, which can be high in fat and carbs.
Other research has pointed out that a high fat diet that consists of healthy, clean foods — like avocados, coconut oils, grass-fed beef and grass-fed butters — can actually enhance a person’s health, giving them restful sleep and tons of energy during the day.
As in most things in the life, if what you put in is high quality, what you get out will be high quality.