Eating just before sleeping — will it affect your sleep?
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The test
Our experiment has taken place at the Centre for Sleep Research at the University of South Australia.
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Results
The next morning …
How did they all sleep? Both our early eaters slept well but what about when it came to the late eaters?
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#1: "I tossed and turned a lot, it took me a little while to get to sleep. Obviously I slept a bit because it went a bit faster than I thought but yeah not very well at all. Normally I sleep like a little baby so it was a bit of a change last night."
#2: "I feel like I was tossing and turning all night and I've got to go to uni now so I'm probably not going to be performing at my best."
So, what part of the night's sleep did our late eaters miss out on?
There are five stages of sleep:
* Stage one: drowsiness
* Stage two: light sleep
* Stages three and four: deep sleep
* Stage five: REM
Deep sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself ready for another day. And that deep sleep is what our late eaters missed, especially in the early part of the night.
"They had a lot more awakenings and a lot more movement than the early eaters so they didn't actually get a lot of the deep sleep that is normally associated with the early hours of the night," says sleep technician Sarah Biggs.
The results of our test are no surprise to Professor Drew Dawson.
"This is what we would expect based on what we've seen in the literature before," he says.
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