Using alcohol as a sleep aid and eating late dinners are two situations that give experts a headache.
But what exactly does “late” mean?
An early dinner is not always realistic. Sometimes you have to book dinner after 9pm because you work until the afternoon and probably need time not only to get ready but also to get to the restaurant.
Usually the idea of a dinner at 6:00 PM is completely unattainable. And what about countries where dinner is usually served after 9:00 PM, like France, Spain or Greece?
Why Experts Recommend Having an Early Dinner
People have different ideas about what “late” means. But sleep experts define “late” in relation to bedtime.
“Ideally, there should be three hours between the time you eat and the time you go to bed,” says Dr. Catherine Darley, founder of the Institute for Naturopathic Sleep Medicine. That means if you go to bed at 10 p.m., dinner after 7 p.m. is considered late.
There are many different reasons why experts recommend eating dinner early in the evening. “Everyone is different, but in general, eating a heavy meal before bed can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. This is because it forces your body to digest when it should be resting,” says Dr. Hana Patel, of Time4Sleep.
Patel explained that when your body is working hard to digest dinner while you’re trying to sleep, it can cause some discomfort. This, she said, disrupts the hormones that regulate your sleep-wake cycle.
In the short term, this can lead to gastroesophageal reflux. In the long term, it can lead to inflammation and increase the risk of obesity.
Darley added to this, saying that late dinners disrupt the body’s circadian rhythm, which is a 24-hour cycle that is part of the body’s internal clock. “Since eating is a waking activity, eating late food sends a signal to the body that it needs to be awake,” he said, explaining how a late-night meal can keep some people awake at night.
Is there a solution?
It’s true that eating dinner after 9 p.m. is a problem. It’s the norm in some cultures, but according to neuroscientist Daniel Barone Barone, who spoke to HuffPost, it’s important to look at the lifestyles of those cultures as a whole and not just focus on when dinner is eaten. For example, he said they may go to bed later and wake up later than is considered normal in, say, the United States. That means there can be an additional three hours between dinner and bedtime, allowing food to digest before the body tries to sleep.
Barone said night owls may also eat lighter meals at night (which are easier to digest) instead of the large portions that are the norm in the U.S. That’s certainly true in Mediterranean cultures, where lunch is longer than dinner, according to Elena Paravantes, a registered dietitian who lives in the U.S. and Greece.
If eating an early dinner isn’t an option—due to your work schedule or otherwise—and you’re worried that eating late might affect your sleep, Barone says you should try making lunch your main meal of the day and eating a lighter dinner.