Boost Sleep Quality by Eating More Fruits and Vegetables, Finnish Study Reveals

A healthy diet, regular exercise, and enough sleep are all critical for staying healthy.

A new study shows that nutrition, such as green foods, may affect sleep quality.

Boost Sleep Quality by Eating More Fruits and Vegetables — (Photo: Unsplash/ engin akyurt )

The Importance of Sleep

Sleep is essential for the body to fix itself and stay healthy. It helps with heart health, brain function, immune system response, and even DNA repair. It is suggested that adults get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night.

However, stress, poor diet, and a lack of physical activity are making insomnia and shorter sleep periods more widespread. These problems are connected to many health issues, like heart disease and learning troubles.

Finnish Study Links Fruit and Vegetable Intake to Better Sleep

A new study released in Frontiers in Nutrition by researchers from the University of Helsinki, the National Institute for Health and Welfare, and Turku University of Applied Sciences examines the link between eating fruits and vegetables and how long you sleep. The study used information from the National FinHealth 2017 Study, which had 5,043 adults who gave specific information about what they ate, how they slept, their chronotypes, and their natural preference for doing things in the morning or evening.

Eating more fruits and vegetables may help you sleep better. The study participants were divided into three groups based on how long they slept each night: short sleepers (less than 7 hours), normal sleepers (7-9 hours), and long sleepers (more than 9 hours).

People who got enough sleep ate more fruits and veggies than those who slept too little or too much. One big difference the study found was how much of some fruits and vegetables people ate.

People who get enough sleep eat more fruit and root veggies (like potatoes and cucumbers) than folks who don't get enough sleep. But people who slept a lot ate less fruit and green leafy vegetables.

In terms of different types of fruit, normal sleepers ate more berries and other fresh fruits than short sleepers. The only significant difference between normal and long sleepers was how many apples they ate.

What Does This Mean for Public Health?

These results show that not getting enough and too much sleep are linked to eating fewer fruits and vegetables. This could affect dietary guidelines and public health strategies.

According to the World Health Organization, at least 400 grams of fruits and vegetables should be eaten daily. The Nordic Council of Ministers says between 500 and 800 grams is better, with half of that amount coming from veggies.

However, many people don't follow these rules, even in Finland. The research also found that chronotypes didn't have much of an effect on the link between the amount of time spent sleeping and the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten.

This suggests that sleep patterns have a more significant effect on eating habits than the time of day a person is most busy. Targeted interventions should focus on getting people to eat more certain fruits and veggies, like fruit and green leafy vegetables, which were found to have the most vital links with sleep duration.

They also stress the need for more longitudinal studies to learn more about how these relationships work and their effects on public health in general.

Last, this study shows that eating more fruits and veggies might help you sleep better. In a balanced approach to health, watching what you eat can help you sleep better, improving your health. Eating more fruits and vegetables is an easy but effective way to improve your health and sleep quality if you have trouble sleeping.