Food Freedom Friday Edition 311 - Sleep & Keto

The foundations of good health are often touted to be diet, exercise and sleep. In reality, sleep may be the most critical pillar. A person can survive weeks without food, and years without exercise, but only days without sleep.

Insomnia is a sleep disorder characterized by trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or both. Another symptom of insomnia is feeling foggy and unrefreshed upon waking. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder with about one-third of adults reporting symptoms. There are different categories of insomnia. Issues falling asleep are called onset insomnia, while issues staying asleep are called maintenance insomnia.

Insomnia Causes

There are many factors impacting sleep and causing insomnia. These can include:

·       Consuming caffeine or other stimulants

·       Stress or trauma

·       A long list of medical conditions

·       Jet lag

·       Medications

·       Pain

·       Poor sleep hygiene

·       Lack of physical activity

·       Electrolyte imbalances.

Insomnia is also linked with many health conditions. These include sleep apnea, depression, anxiety, obesity, heart disease, and menopause. If you believe your insomnia is caused by a medical problem, talk to your doctor about the best course of action.

One night of sleep deprivation has been shown to significantly impair mental performance. Depending on the situation, a ketogenic or low/no carbohydrate diet may improve or impair sleep. There are, however, many aspects to getting or restoring optimal sleep.

Not sleeping well on keto and insomnia are common symptoms of keto flu.

People can encounter keto flu symptoms including headaches, low energy, cramps, and sleep disturbances when first transitioning to a keto lifestyle. These can sometimes persist, especially when it comes to insomnia.

 There may be multiple reasons for this including:

Lowering Carbohydrates

The goal of a ketogenic diet is to shift the body to utilizing more fat for energy, especially at low intensities and at rest. This fat comes from either dietary sources or from body fat.

Before going keto, most people rely on glucose (from carbs) for brain fuel. In the absence of ketones, glucose is the only available energy substrate for the brain. When lowering your carbohydrate intake, your body needs time to upregulate enzymes and pathways to utilize greater amounts of fat/ketones from circulation than it has previously. Glucose levels often fall, and your brain is low on fuel for a few days. This can cause a variety of symptoms, including insomnia.

Insomnia is also a symptom of sugar withdrawal. High-glycemic refined carbs have similar neurological effects as addictive drugs. When you remove them, you feel it.

Hydration

The keto diet has a diuretic effect. It causes increased fluid loss through urine as restricting carbohydrates suppresses the hormone insulin. With less insulin around, your kidneys retain less water. This can often result in waking frequently throughout the night to use the bathroom. All those breaks, unfortunately, increase the likelihood of insomnia. The more you wake up, the more likely you are to stay up and struggle falling asleep again. Waking up to urinating also impacts your sleep efficiency, or the percentage of the night you’re actually sleeping.

Electrolytes

Along with fluids, you also lose more electrolytes like sodium and potassium when lowering carbohydrates. This can be further exacerbated by the fact that many following ketogenic tend to undershoot dietary electrolyte intakes. They don’t consume enough salt for sodium or eat enough leafy greens for potassium and magnesium.

The resulting electrolyte deficiencies can cause sleep disturbances. Consider the following:

·       Being low on sodium boosts the release of norepinephrine, a stimulating hormone that can keep you up at night.

·       Lower intakes of potassium have been associated with greater daytime sleepiness.

·       Magnesium supplements show promise for treating insomnia.

Inadequate electrolytes are the number one cause of persistent keto flu symptoms – sleep issues and insomnia included.

Sleep Improvements & Diet

There are many potential sleep improvements from lowering your carbohydrate intake and following a ketogenic diet.

Blood-Sugar Control

Eating a high-carb diet means riding the blood-sugar roller coaster. As your blood sugar swings up and down, your energy and hunger swing along with it.  This is not optimal for sleep. If you have ever woken up hungry in the middle of the night, it was probably due to low blood sugar or hypoglycemia.

Being in ketosis, however, balances blood sugar swings as fat, as opposed to glucose, is used and energy is more consistently maintained. This translates into less midnight hunger. 

The connection between sleep and blood sugar runs even deeper. Lack of sleep, in fact, impairs the ability of insulin (your blood-sugar regulation hormone) to dispose of high blood glucose. The result is that sleep restriction can shift your metabolic health towards type 2 diabetes.

Practically, this means that sleep and ketosis intimately connected. If you are not sleeping well, you will not burn fat as efficiently. Furthermore, this suggests that a ketogenic diet and keeping blood sugar low and stable may have a protective effect against the metabolic derangement of sleep deprivation.

Improved Sleep Quality

Research has found that a ketogenic diet can increase and improve deep sleep more than a carbohydrate-rich eating plan. During deep sleep, tissues heal, new memories form, and cerebrospinal fluid floods the brain to clear out proteins (like amyloid beta) that have been linked to degenerative neurological conditions including Alzheimer’s.

However, this research further concluded that a ketogenic diet reduced REM sleep, the stage best known for dreaming and memory consolidation, compared to the control diet.

GABA and Glutamate

Gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps relax the mind. GABA supplementation has been shown to support insomnia patients in falling asleep faster and stay asleep longer.

A well-formulated ketogenic diet can be supportive in boosting your GABA levels naturally.

Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter that is directly opposed to GABA. High glutamate levels appear to be driving factors brain injury and seizures. This is relevant because  a ketogenic diet is both boosting GABA and/or reducing glutamate toxicity and has been shown to improve sleep quality in children with epilepsy. It is very possible that anyone following a ketogenic or low carbohydrate diet may experience similar benefit.

Weight Loss

Compared to the general population, obese people sleep less, wake up more, and feel less rested. Furthermore, obesity increases the risk of sleep apnea, a dangerous condition of nightime breathing obstruction. 

When obese people lose weight, sleep typically improves. A ketogenic diet may be very helpful in this situation as across numerous studies, the ketogenic diet has been shown to promote weight loss in obese and diabetic populations.

Preventing Insomnia On Keto

If you can’t sleep on keto, first examine what might be causing it.

·       Are you overly stressed?

·       Are you getting sufficient electrolytes?

·       Have you been drinking more caffeine?

·       Something else?

Once have reviewed potential causes, you may find some simple fixes. For instance, low electrolytes are a primary cause of keto flu symptoms, and is a really simple process to remedy: focus on consuming plenty of electrolyte-rich foods and supplement when necessary. It also means using plenty of salt (or drinking electrolyte water) for sodium. Often, this is more salt than you would think

You may also need a few days on keto to become fat-adapted. Consider using melatonin or GABA supplements if you find yourself struggling with the transition.

Beyond simply addressing your diet taking a holistic approach to better sleep can be extremely supportive in improving both sleep quantity and quality. Some easy to implement sleep hygiene tips that apply to almost everyone are:

·       Get about 30 minutes of sunlight early in the day to reset your circadian clock

·       Minimize blue light at night to maintain melatonin levels

·       Avoid stressful stimulation (like email) at night

·       Consider a meditation or yoga practice to manage stress. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve sleep quality.

·       Don’t drink caffeine in the afternoon, and consider switching to decaf options in the morning.

·       Eat a high-protein breakfast. It’s been shown to boost melatonin secretion at night when combined with proper light exposure.

·       Don’t eat late at night. It sends wake-up signals to your body.

·       Keep your room cool. Most experts recommend 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

·       Keep your room as dark as possible.

·       Be active every day. Increased physical activity is associated with a decreased risk of insomnia.

How following a ketogenic affects your sleep will depend on your unique situation. If you constantly wake up hungry and are not on a ketogenic diet or are just starting one, in time keto could help by stabilizing your blood sugar along with some sleep hygiene interventions you could be sleeping like a pro in no time. And if you want to lose weight for better sleep, keto could help with that too.