Eating Chilies Late at Night Leads to a Poor Night of Sleep |
Chili Wreaths (photo by Anna Kirsten Dickie, courtesy of morguefile.com)
There is a bit of folk wisdom that says if you eat a spicy meal just before retiring to bed your sleep will be punctuated with nightmares.
Anecdotal experience has given us no reason to believe in the nightmare scenario, but some Australian researchers have found that eating food spiced with chili sauce and mustard can lead to a fitful night of sleep. After a late night spicy meal, their subjects took longer to get to sleep and awakened from sleep more often.
The explanation? It may be that spicy foods cause a temporary rise in body temperature. Raised body temperatures have previously been seen to disrupt sleep.
If you’d like to read a New York Times article on the topic go to: The Claim: A Spicy Meal Before Bed Can Disrupt Sleep
