I Was Wrong About Why Carbs at Dinner Help You Sleep

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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini-Mikkipedia on a Monday, and if you've ever heard me say that carbohydrate at night with dinner helps calm the nervous system and therefore you're able to sleep better, I'm wrong.

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I'm not wrong on the clinical outcome of eating carbs at dinner, but I am wrong on the mechanism.

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And I have said this several times on this podcast, on other podcasts, I've written it probably at least like 30 times on Instagram over the last year.

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When someone tells me that they are wired at night and I say, hey, have some carbohydrate at dinner, it calms the nervous system down.

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I suppose it's a shorthand way of saying what I say.

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I never really sat down and sort of had a look at the science behind it.

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It just matched what I was seeing and it made for a pretty good explanation.

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And it wasn't just me saying it. There are loads of people out there.

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And I'm not saying that it's wrong to say it, but I do think that the mechanism I've been implying, it just doesn't hold up.

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So you could argue that mechanism doesn't really matter that much because the advice attached to it is fine.

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And whilst I don't 100% trust it.

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Disagree with that, I still don't think that that's right, because when you give someone a mechanism, they don't just follow your advice.

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They may extend it and apply it to situations that you weren't even thinking about.

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And a mechanism that isn't real may, best case scenario, just be completely useless, but worst case could create harm.

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Not in this situation, probably for most people, but in other situations.

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And so to be complete about it, I thought that I would do a dive into it.

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So, the potential mechanism behind what I was describing, you eat carbohydrate at night with dinner, insulin goes up, insulin clears the branched chain amino acids out of the bloodstream and into muscle.

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Tryptophan, another amino acid, is then left with less competition at the blood brain barrier, so more of it gets to the brain and tryptophan converts to serotonin and some serotonin becomes melatonin.

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So you feel better.

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Feel calm and you sleep.

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And at every step of the way that I've just described, that's a real biochemical step, which is why intuitively you would think that that would make sense.

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And if I say I'm not the only one saying it, like I remember listening to a Huberman podcast about it too.

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Listening to Huberman talk about how starchy carbohydrate helps promote sleep by boosting serotonin and that many people on low-carb diets struggle with sleep due to insufficiency.

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And if I say I'm not the only one saying it, like I remember listening to a Huberman podcast about how starchy carbohydrate helps promote sleep by boosting serotonin and that many people on low-carb diets struggle with sleep due to insufficiency.

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And if I say I'm not the only one saying it, like I remember listening to a Huberman podcast about how starchy carbohydrate helps promote sleep by boosting serotonin and that many people on low-carb diets struggle with sleep due to insufficiency.

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And it sort of is in line with the idea that fasting and low-carb states induce alertness while carbohydrate-rich foods enhance calmness and sleepiness.

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So, you know, all of this is sort of interlinked.

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However, the problem is in the dose.

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David Benton and his group at Swansea went through this properly, actually.

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And their conclusion came out different from what I was anticipating.

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The tryptophan effect only happens when carbohydrate intake is high enough and protein intake is low enough that tryptophan wins the competition.

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So no normal meal that I would advocate really would do that.

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If you add any meaningful protein to a meal, the effect will disappear.

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And the amount of melatonin you generate downstream is nowhere near a dose that would influence sleep.

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I mean, if you're sitting down to a delicious meal that Dad and I used to have when I was a teenager,

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that was, you know, pasta with a tomato-based sauce, basically just coating the pasta, nothing more,

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and then garlic bread on the side, you'd probably be fine because there was zero protein.

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Well, pasta and bread have some protein, but you get the drift.

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A whole lot more carbohydrate than there is protein.

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Nowadays, I'm not telling many people to do that.

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So the whole mechanism behind it doesn't actually stand up under that sort of scientific scrutiny.

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And in fact, Benton's team also ran a meta-analysis.

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of polysomography studies, which are sleep studies, looking at the brain during sleep.

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Lower carbohydrate intake was associated with more slow-wave sleep,

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less rapid eye movement, and a shorter time to fall asleep.

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Not only is that the opposite direction to what I was telling you,

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but I will say that others have said something similar.

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Not many people, but Zach Bitter is one that stands out to me as being a proponent for a low-carb diet.

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He noted that a higher carbohydrate intake impacted negatively,

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on his sleep, and this was reversed when he became low-carbohydrate back in the day.

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So that's super interesting.

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There have been other studies looking at carbohydrate around sort of bedtime.

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And here's one in younger people.

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21 elite female athletes was randomized, double-blinded.

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It was a crossover study, and they had four different conditions.

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Three nights in each.

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They provided the participants with either 40 grams of alpha-lactoalbumin,

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which is the whey protein.

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The whey fraction highest in tryptophan, often one that is sold for sleep specifically.

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You had 40 grams of casein, that slow-release protein that's often recommended.

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40 grams of carbohydrate, or a non-caloric placebo.

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And these were taken two hours after the last meal, about 30 minutes before bed.

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And sleep and recovery were tracked objectively.

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And they found, well, absolutely nothing.

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There was no difference in total sleep time,

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no difference in sleep onset latency,

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no difference in subjective sleep quality,

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no difference in resting heart rate,

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and no difference in heart rate variability.

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The same group also put continuous glucose monitors on the participants

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and found no difference in overnight glucose between the protein, the carbohydrate, and the placebo.

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So that's super interesting, eh?

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A head-to-head. Carbohydrate before bed did not beat protein,

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and neither of them beat nothing at all.

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Although clinically what I will also say is I hear other practitioners swear

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by giving pre-sleep protein to help with sleep.

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So clinically speaking as well, we've got carbohydrate before sleep appears to help,

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and protein before sleep appears to help.

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And I've got a reason for why this might be the case, but I'll get to that in a minute.

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But what I will actually say though is the pre-sleep protein literature,

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since we're talking about that in the previous study,

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that is super interesting and all of that work,

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Luke Van Luke's group, Tromelin, Snyder's, it's muscle protein synthesis research.

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So that research from those groups was never about sleep,

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and protein before bed absolutely does what it says on the overnight muscle protein synthetic response.

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So I'm certainly not arguing that it's absolutely useless,

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but if we're thinking about sleep, if we look at a study particularly testing that theory,

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it's no different to carbohydrate and no different to having nothing.

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So this gets me to why do we keep seeing that it works?

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And I'm not imagining it.

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And if you've been told to do it and you've noted that it's helped,

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then you're not imagining that either.

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And I put it down to a couple of things, if you like.

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And the case study that's useful enough to sort of use,

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and this is what I see often, is that I will have an active woman

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who is improving body composition,

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in a calorie deficit,

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therefore she's not eating as much as she otherwise would,

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she may be training quite a lot,

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and she's sleeping very poorly.

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She's waking at two in the morning.

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So I tell her to put some potato back into dinner.

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And within a fortnight or two weeks,

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she tells me she's sleeping through and she feels way less wired.

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So there you go.

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Doesn't that just prove that it calms the nervous system?

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The thing is though, is that whilst it helps improve cleanliness,

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clinically with the people that I see,

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the study that I was referring to before,

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where it appeared to do absolutely nothing,

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that was in a group of people who were adequately fed.

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And they're already eating enough calories.

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So any additional calories at dinner or after dinner

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isn't going to make much difference.

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In clinic and in my fat loss groups,

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I'm talking to a calorie restricted group.

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So I think that's where the difference lies.

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She just eats more.

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There is more total energy in that day.

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And I've chosen to use carbohydrate.

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And the thing that actually drives that wired,

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under-slept, high-strung presentation

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is that she's now got more calories,

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particularly if she's training.

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And I do want to mention that as well, right?

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Because there's an energy deficit

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and there's low energy availability.

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And they are actually two different things.

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They're often conflated.

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So, and Luke's work established

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that below 30 kilocalories per kilogram of fat-free mass,

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after you subtract the cost of exercise,

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this is when the reproductive axis starts getting suppressed.

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And above it, it's largely fine.

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So a woman can be in a modest deficit

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and actually be completely fine,

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you know, fairly active and completely fine.

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And another woman in the exact same deficit,

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eating the same food,

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but she may be training double the amount of the other person,

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she can be well enough.

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She can be well under that threshold

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for low energy availability.

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And to be fair with that 30 kilocalories per kilogram

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of fat-free mass,

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that isn't an established number across the board

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that everyone agrees with,

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but it does give you an indication.

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Like when you do dive a little bit deeper into it,

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a deficit from a training perspective,

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not a food perspective,

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it can really impact the HPA axis.

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And so that deficit plus the training load

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could well be the issue.

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And there is something about cortisol as well.

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And I will just note that the cortisol data is pretty messy.

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And I've talked about this before.

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People talk about elevated cortisol

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and higher cortisol, et cetera.

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So anything I say about cortisol,

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do take with a grain of salt

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because measuring it is pretty difficult

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and there's a lot of critique around it.

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However, I will say that, you know,

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there has been a meta-analysis by Nakamura

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who separated the severity

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of a deficit and found that if you fast,

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then cortisol rises quite strongly

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and that low calorie and even very low calorie diets

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don't particularly raise it significantly.

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And in fact, the effect fades over several weeks.

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So, you know, a sensible deficit

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that with someone who does in fact have fat to lose

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probably isn't going to wreck you particularly.

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But if you're noticing that wide effect

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and you add something to your plan,

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and typically I say carbohydrate,

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it is going to make that meal more complete

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because protein is often covered in the meals

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that I advocate for fat loss.

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And, you know, if you look around the board,

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most people are suggesting a higher protein diet with fiber

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and moderating your carbohydrate.

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So if you're wired,

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it makes sense to add in more carbohydrate

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rather than up the protein.

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Of course, if you do add in protein,

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that's likely to have a similar impact

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on your ability to sleep,

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which really sort of speaks to the fact

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of the difference in calories there,

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which for the most part actually isn't a lot.

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The other thing I think is worth noting

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is that, you know, food stops being a threat,

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if you like.

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So a lot of people, particularly dieting women,

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are afraid to add carbohydrate in,

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well, one, in general because carbs make you fat,

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and two, because we shouldn't eat carbs at night.

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I mean, these are the two perpetuating myths

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that are out there around carbohydrate.

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Now, I'm not suggesting that carbohydrate

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can be eaten freely with no considerations at all.

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I mean, I think you probably know that as well.

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But if you have a fear around eating carbohydrate,

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then that is just going to heighten that sort of anxiety,

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and you sort of need evidence

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that you're not going to be negatively impacted

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if you include it in your evening meal.

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And there is, of course, a body of literature

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around cognitive dietary restraint,

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which this is not about how much you eat,

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how much you actually eat.

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It's that ongoing mental effort of trying not to eat,

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the monitoring, the negotiating,

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that low-grade vigilance.

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And Bedford did a study, actually.

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The research group followed 123 healthy young women

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for two years and looked at something functional

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rather than just a hormone.

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So the woman with the higher restraint

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had more menstrual cycles

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with subclinical ovulatory disturbances,

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56% of cycles versus 34%.

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And physical activity, general stress,

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BMI and energy intake

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did not explain the difference.

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It was the higher restraint that explained the difference

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between that disturbed ovulatory cycle.

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And so that is, you know,

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a pretty real physiological consequence

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attached to how much mental effort

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a woman is putting into not eating,

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independent of how much she's actually eating.

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And 123 people is by no means

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a small study in nutrition.

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And again, there is other studies

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such as Judy McLean's group.

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They actually looked at 24-hour urinary cortisol

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in women with high versus low restraint scores.

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And the high restraint women had higher cortisol,

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same age, same BMI, same energy intake,

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same food, different cortisol.

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That was replicated again by Rideout

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in postmenopausal women aged 49 to 75,

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which may, you, if you're listening to this,

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you may well be falling

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into that category.

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So while I will still be mindful

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of what that cortisol data can or cannot tell us,

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the fact that that dietary restraint

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is the only difference found

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in the difference in cortisol output

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between these two groups,

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I just think that's worth noting.

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What I will just say around that cortisol thing,

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because I've talked about it before,

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but I will just remind you,

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it is pretty difficult to measure.

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Within-person variability is enormous.

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One study using mass spectrometry

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sampled 20 people six times a day across five days

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and found that within subject variation

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of roughly 30 to 57%,

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depending on time of day.

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So that's pretty big, right?

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And reliability of the individual measures are worse.

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So a meta-analysis found that cortisol awakening response,

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which is one of the most commonly sold to you,

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and look, it's one that I've suggested,

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you know, some clients run as part of a Dutch test as well.

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It has a test-retest reliability too poor

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to use for individual differences at all.

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And this study is pretty sobering.

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So Elberson's group took 140 people,

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collected nine saliva samples a day for six days,

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then put them through five actual hormonal challenge tests

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to see what the saliva curves were tracking,

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and only the afternoon decline

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mapped onto real regulatory biology.

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So morning levels and the awakening response

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largely did not.

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What I will just say is that a one-off cortisol test

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really will tell you nothing about yourself.

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I don't think that that necessarily sinks the studies

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that I've just described though.

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So the studies compared groups of women

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and mostly used 24-hour urinary collections

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rather than single-spot samples.

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So that's worth noting.

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Noise that swamps one person's measurement

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averages out across a group of 60 or 100.

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So you do get that root level data,

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which is quite useful for looking at directions and trends,

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but it does mean you can't take your own cortisol result

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and conclude anything from it,

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particularly not one point in time.

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So all of that said,

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what does that really mean

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in terms of what I might tell a client

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or what you should do particularly, et cetera?

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So I guess the first thing is,

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is that, you know,

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macronutrients at bedtime

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aren't really going to have a sedative effect.

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The head-to-head trial says the macronutrient

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in that last thing before bed

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is not the liver,

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it's not the carbohydrate,

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and it isn't the protein.

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And if you are in an energy deficit,

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then it's probably just the calories.

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If you're training hard

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and then you're eating like you're not training,

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that's probably the problem.

16:43.280 --> 16:45.280
So that's point number two.

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And it will show up as sleep

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long before it shows up in the scales.

16:49.280 --> 16:53.280
So a small portion of carbohydrate to a plate

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that is already taken care of with regards to protein

16:56.280 --> 16:59.280
makes sense in terms of adding back in those calories.

16:59.280 --> 17:01.280
And that will also do service

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to your muscle glycogen stores as well.

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Three, if your protein is low

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and you're in a calorie deficit,

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then probably you'll need to add some protein in

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for muscle retention,

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which matters obviously through midlife,

17:14.280 --> 17:16.280
because it is a calorie deficit.

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And if you have a low protein intake overall,

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then muscle loss will be accelerated.

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So if your protein isn't accounted for,

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I'd probably choose protein to put in

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rather than carbohydrate.

17:27.280 --> 17:28.280
And, you know,

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if you have this sort of longstanding fear

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of carbohydrate at night

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because you're worried that it will make you fat

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because that is what you've heard on the internet,

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and I still see this like on the daily on Facebook,

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then I would just say, you know,

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evidence builds confidence.

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Add back that carbohydrate

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and just note how you feel

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and note how you sleep.

17:49.280 --> 17:51.280
This is particularly true

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if you're in a calorie deficit.

17:53.280 --> 17:56.280
And I'd be very surprised if it had a negative impact

17:56.280 --> 17:57.280
and for anything it could be helpful.

17:57.280 --> 18:00.280
So that's sort of the take home of it

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is that the wired but tired feeling that you feel,

18:04.280 --> 18:07.280
particularly in a calorie deficit when you're training,

18:07.280 --> 18:10.280
is largely due to the calorie deficit itself

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and not an absence of any particular nutrient.

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But if carbohydrate is the thing that we've been restricting

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and quite often it is

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because we look at those energy nutrients,

18:20.280 --> 18:22.280
then pop the carbs in in the evening meal.

18:22.280 --> 18:25.280
And that will, I've seen it happen,

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help you wind up,

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wind down and probably sleep better, right?

18:29.280 --> 18:32.280
And if for whatever reason you're restricting protein,

18:32.280 --> 18:34.280
make that the move that you make.

18:34.280 --> 18:36.280
Add in some protein.

18:36.280 --> 18:38.280
So hopefully that clears things up.

18:38.280 --> 18:39.280
Not sure if I did,

18:39.280 --> 18:41.280
but thanks for listening as always.

18:41.280 --> 18:43.280
You can find me over on Instagram,

18:43.280 --> 18:44.280
ThreadsNX,

18:44.280 --> 18:45.280
at Mikki Williden,

18:45.280 --> 18:46.280
Facebook,

18:46.280 --> 18:48.280
at Mikki Williden Nutrition,

18:48.280 --> 18:49.280
or head to my website,

18:49.280 --> 18:51.280
mikkiwilliden.com

18:51.280 --> 18:53.280
and book a one-on-one call with me.

18:53.280 --> 18:54.280
All right, guys.

18:54.280 --> 18:55.280
You have the best week.

18:55.280 --> 18:56.280
See you later.

18:57.280 --> 18:58.280
Thank you.

18:58.280 --> 18:59.280
See you later.

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Bye.

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Bye.

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.

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