Spice up your nights
If you want to sleep better, eat chillies. Not only will you sleep more deeply, but you will feel more alert the next day. Andrew Davies of the University of Tasmania in Launceston and his team placed 25 people on a diet containing 30 grams of chopped chilli a day for four weeks. On average, the volunteers went to bed 2 hours later and slept for 20 minutes less than in the previous four weeks, when their diet had been chilli-free. But they were also less active in their sleep and seemed to sleep more deeply, Davies told the Australasian Sleep Association conference held last week in Surfers Paradise, Queensland. The participants also reported feeling more alert the next day and were more physically active. The researchers have yet to pinpoint which ingredients in chilli are responsible.
Sweet dreams
Meals with a low glycaemic index (GI) might help stave off diabetes, but they won鈥檛 help you nod off. Men who ate a meal with a relatively high GI rating of 109 about 4 hours before bed took an average of 9 minutes to fall asleep. Those who ate a meal with a low GI rating of 50 took 17 minutes 30 seconds, Ahmad Afaghi of Sydney University told the conference. High-GI meals raise blood sugar levels, leading to a higher blood concentration of tryptophan, an amino acid that induces sleep.
Talk about REM
Talking on a cellphone before bed could affect how you sleep, according to a preliminary study presented in Surfers Paradise. Sarah Loughran of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne left a GSM phone transmitting beside the right hemisphere of participants鈥� brains for half an hour before they went to sleep. They showed more alpha-wave activity in the first period of non-REM sleep, and started REM sleep about 17 minutes sooner, than on nights they were not exposed to the phones. Loughran thinks electromagnetic radiation is the cause, but it鈥檚 not yet clear whether this could have harmful effects.
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