Professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge

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88 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 24 Jun

Professor Marie-Pierre St-Onge’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Food Chain · What to eat for a better night's sleep · 24 Jun 2026 podcast

The restaurant is flooded.

We've seen in multiple research now that individuals who have better dietary quality have a lower risk of developing sleep difficulties later in their life.

And so, yes, there's a definite association between what you eat during the day and how you sleep at night.

There have been multiple population-based studies that look at dietary patterns over long periods of time in large cohorts, showing that healthier dietary patterns are associated with better sleep and unhealthy dietary patterns are associated with worse sleep outcomes.

There have been also smaller scale studies where we see exactly or we measure exactly in the lab

what people are eating, and then get very detailed assessments of their sleep using sleep testing like polysomnography, where we get to measure their deep sleep.

So there have been those studies as well showing that there are certainly different nutrients that influence sleep.

So there have been studies showing that what you eat can influence your melatonin levels that regulates your sleep wake patterns.

There's also alterations in the gut microbiome.

that lead to changes in inflammatory markers that are related to sleep and sleep onset, sleep propensity and sleep maintenance.

So those types of studies show us a physiological mechanism by which dietary intakes can influence sleep.

So this has been answered in multiple types of studies.

Like I mentioned, in the population-based studies, we have information about large-scale patterns.

So diets that look more like a Mediterranean pattern, higher in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lower in animal-based foods, lower in sugar.

When we talk about nutrients, diets that are higher in fiber, which we find in fruits and vegetables and whole grains,

And lower unsaturated fats, which we find in more plant-based types of foods, are associated with more deep sleep at night.

And we also had a publication that came out just recently showing that young adults who eat more fruits and vegetables have less arousals at night.

Right.

So fruits and vegetables contain what we know as phytomelatonin, so plant-based source of melatonin that could contribute to your own melatonin levels.

They have nutrients that can help you produce your own levels of melatonin.

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