ST. PAUL, Minn., July 22 (UPI) — A top U.S. nutrition researcher is translating her expertise on the connections between diet, better sleep and heart health from the pages of dry academic journals into a colorful mass-market cookbook.
Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, along with recipe expert Kat Craddock, have chronicled dozens of recipes and lay out a 28-day meal plan designed for better sleep health in Eat Better, Sleep Better, published by Simon & Schuster earlier this year.
St-Onge in recent years has published studies exploring various angles of the connection between what we eat and how we sleep — a field that remains poorly understood even as doctors have named lack of proper sleep as one the top risk factors for heart disease.
Her work has mainly centered on examining the relationship between sleep, weight management and cardiometabolic disease risk. She has also performed well-received research on “functional foods,” or foods that offer health benefits, and on how ingredients affect weight management and cardiovascular disease risk prevention.
Now with Eat Better, Sleep Better, she and Craddock have produced an elegant, 288-page cookbook packed with 75 recipes meant to give users an opportunity to shape their diets around foods that promote better sleep.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it prioritizes protein sources that are rich in tryptophan, the amino acid that serves as the building block for the sleep-regulating hormones melatonin and serotonin. Tryptophan, of course, is found in turkey and is famous for producing drowsiness after a full Thanksgiving Day dinner.
But the book goes well beyond that, highlighting several other ingredients tied to healthier sleep, such as omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in salmon; complex carbohydrates found in oats and buckwheat; and spices like ginger and turmeric.
For example, the book’s recipe for savory lamb stew notes that lamb is exceptionally high in tryptophan and is also an excellent source of several essential nutrients, including zinc and vitamin B6, “two of the four essential nutrients involved in the body’s production of serotonin and melatonin.”
Similarly, the recipe for chia pudding identifies tiny chia seeds as “a sleep-supporting superfood,” not only rich in protein and tryptophanm but also in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, magnesium, fiber, complex carbohydrates, vitamin B6 and zinc.
St-Onge told UPI one of her main goals with Eat Better, Sleep Better is to translate her scientific research on sleep into a more popular format at at time when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 40% of U.S. adults are getting insufficient sleep.
“We do all this work and always publish it just in scientific journals, and my book agent said, ‘But the public wants to know, too, it should be something that’s available for them as well,’ and I thought, he kind of has a point,” she said. “We need to disseminate the work that we do, the findings that we have.
“Especially in this day and age when the work that we do is funded entirely from taxpayer dollars or donor dollars, if we’re talking about the American Heart Association, and it’s really a return on their investment — the knowledge that we can impart to them.”
St-Onge said she also finds that nutritionists sometimes have a misconception about the ability of people to translate esoteric facts about micronutrients into real-world diets, especially if it means changing those diets.
“If you’re saying eat more plant protein or eat more fiber, they’ll ask, ‘Where can I find fiber and plant protein?’ And I’ll say, well, buckwheat is a great grain. ‘Buckwheat? What’s that? And how I am going to put it to use in my own diet?’
“I thought it was wonderful that I able to get paired with Kat, my co-author, who is in the food world and the recipe development world, and talking more about the application of nutrition in real life. I like recipes, and I also like to cook, but I’ve never been trained in recipe development or anything like that. So it was nice to be able to be part of that process.”
Craddock would develop the recipes and send them to St-Onge, who would then try them at home and offer some additional suggestions.
One of the reasons there’s a need for a sleep-centered cookbook is because it’s not just what’s eaten before bedtime that affects the quality of sleep, but rather what’s consumed throughout the whole day, and over even longer periods, that counts in the body’s ability to make melatonin.
“We’re saying sleep is complicated, it’s not just about what happens at night, it’s about what happens during the day,” she said.
In the background of it all is the risk that poor sleep poses to heart health.
The American Heart Association in 2022 added sleep to its list of “Life’s Essential 8,” the eight top markers for improving and maintaining cardiovascular health, calling proper sleep “vital to your heart and brain health.”
That assessment is shared by Dr. Kin M. Yuen, spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a sleep medicine specialist at UCSF Health in San Francisco.
“A balanced diet with a healthy amount of lean protein, carbohydrates, including fruits and vegetables, starches and healthy fats, along with nuts and seeds — for those without allergies — is the most optimal” for healthy sleep, she told UPI in an emailed statement.
Generally, she added, sleep specialists support their nutritionist and cardiology colleagues in advocating for a diet that may include plant based protein, leafy greens and lean animal proteins, such as chicken, fish and seafood, depending on the individual’s sensitivity and tolerance.
Yuen said it’s also important for people with sensitivities or intolerances to specific substances to avoid or limit those food groups, as they may disturb or fragment sleep.
“Therefore, those with lactose intolerance may have better sleep by ingesting fewer dairy products or using lactose-free dairy only,” she said. “For those with diagnosed celiac disease or gluten sensitivities, sleep may be improved without gluten in their diet, which may cause bloating, stomach upset or nausea, and sometimes weight loss.”
Ultimately, she cautioned, no one diet plan works for everyone.
“Individual differences and allergic tendencies may limit the intake of a particular food group. Viral, bacterial illness and antibiotic use may make a regular diet not feasible,” Yuen warned.
Nevertheless, “good sleep and healthy diets go very well together,” she concluded. “Adequate exercise also ensures sleep quality is optimized. Adequate daytime sunlight and devoting enough time to sleep will help ensure that the quality of sleep is optimal.”
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