Chapter 1: What time should you stop eating before bed for better heart health?
You work hard to strike the right amount of intelligence and ignorance. The Last Show with David Cooper. Midnight Snackers, brace yourselves. There's new research that suggests your late night romantic relationship with your fridge might be messing with your heart. Turns out when you eat could matter almost as much as what you eat.
Wait, are you telling me that bedtime pizza is medically suspicious? I am here with someone to discuss just this. Her name is Jess Cording. She's a dietician, health coach, and author. Jess, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me.
I feel like eating before bed is something I don't do only because I brush my teeth. And after I do that midnight teeth brush, it's my natural food cutoff. But a lot of people do it. Is there anything wrong with it? Like, would health advice tell you to not snack before bed?
That is such a great question.
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Chapter 2: How does late-night eating affect your cardiovascular health?
And it's one that I get a lot in my work as an RD. And what I can say is the research does suggest that it's a good idea to limit that late night eating.
And what sort of thing is it all created equally? Like if I eat a bag of chocolate versus, I don't know, a handful of kale, is bed eating or midnight eating bad no matter what you eat or is different things hit you differently?
Love that question. And to be honest, I do believe that it does depend what you eat. There is still something there. But what the research suggests is that when we don't give ourselves enough time to digest before we lie down for the day, that's been shown to negatively impact cardiometabolic health.
Things related to our heart health, sleep quality, blood sugar regulation, that when we're eating too close to bedtime, no matter what it is, just that alone does seem to negatively impact health. But to your point, I think there's a huge difference between like an entire pizza versus like, you know, a little bit of salad or a bowl of cereal or something like that.
You know, when I was first thinking about this topic, I thought like maybe weight gain and things like that. I'm surprised to hear heart health can be affected by before bed eating. Say more about what's going on there. Maybe the mechanism or what do we think about that?
Sure. Well, you're not wrong about weight gain, first off. That can also impact heart health. But, you know, we're looking at things like blood pressure, blood sugar, which is more specific to, we're talking about the diabetes risk, for example, but it's all connected.
And then the brain health piece of the picture, like if our blood vessels to our heart are not in great shape due to lifestyle habits, that's going to negatively impact our brain function. So it's all connected. So that's why if you hear like cardio metabolic, it's not just about the heart. It's about our whole body system.
Got it. Now, what is the magic cutoff? Like what is the number of hours before bed that I should really limit my eating? If I'm going to have a big old dinner, how close to bedtime should that be?
I'm glad you phrased it that way because so often I'm asked, what time should you stop eating? And that is so variable because what if somebody works the night shift, right? And their bedtime is a totally different time of day.
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Chapter 3: What types of foods are better or worse for late-night snacking?
Or what if someone's going to bed really early or they don't get home until late? What I tend to recommend based on the literature is aiming for two to three hours of when you finish dinner to when you go to sleep.
Good. I'm happy with what I do. I'm not doing anything wrong because I do that. What is nocturnal dipping in blood pressure? And how does this relate to this whole topic?
Yeah. So what can happen is if your blood sugar drops overnight, that could be very disruptive to sleep. That's when you may find that you're waking up in the middle of the night, like really disoriented or hungry and needing a snack again. Yeah. But sometimes that's precipitated by a steep increase in blood sugar and then it drops pretty quickly.
So you're going to see that more often if you are eating, say, like really high sugar, high carbohydrate foods, maybe without enough protein, fat and or fiber to slow down that digestive process. So that is something to be aware of. That's why... having a balanced meal before, before bed is definitely recommended as opposed to like a giant bowl of pasta.
Well, let's talk about that giant bowl of pasta. So I have one at 1045. I crawl into bed at 11. Are there parts of my body that are kind of like staying awake to digest this food while the rest of me wants to rest?
So what you may find is maybe you've heard the term carb coma. So what initially happens is that there is an initial increase or your body in order to digest that carbohydrate in a healthy working pancreas, it will release insulin to make to help process that. That starch that's beginning to enter the bloodstream is carbohydrate.
Because what happens when we eat any kind of starch, pasta is an example, as we digest that food, the molecules, the starch molecules break down to smaller and smaller pieces and then enter our bloodstream as, you know, like glucose, fructose, for example. And then they go to all the cells that need it to do their jobs. And we need some. That's important.
But what happens initially as our body is trying to help with that process of getting the carbs to where they need to go in the body. It releases insulin, which also has the effect of increasing our body's absorption of amino acids.
And one that a lot of people have heard about is tryptophan, which is found in Thanksgiving turkey gets the most airtime, but you're going to find it in other animal proteins. You're going to find it in like oats, chickpeas, a few other foods. And that actually has been shown to help promote sleep. So what you may find is if you eat
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Chapter 4: How many hours before bed should you stop eating?
I'm secretly having you on the show to help me with my stress and anxiety for free. So thank you for that. Let's go through some of them. First of all, what motivated you to write this book?
Honestly, I needed it. I could not find a book out there that really spoke to me in terms of like something easy to digest that I could pick it up, get something out of it. And I really wanted to create that.
I don't even know where to begin. Are there classes of tips in the book?
So, yeah, the book is broken down into mind, body and spirit. I've taken a lot of heat for some of the spirit ones from people who just wanted like just the body or just the mindset. But I think all are really important when we're talking about how we manage our stress and anxiety.
I think so, too, at the risk of going on a tangent. One of my favorite books about like art making and the creative process is by a guy named Steven Pressfield. And I'm like pretty rational. I don't really believe in the spiritual stuff. And about a third of the book is spiritual. And I suspended my disbelief and I read it.
And while I don't believe in these big concepts, there's a lot to learn from them. So I'm on board. But let's start with the mind. What are some of the tips that I could look forward to if I read your book?
Yeah. So a lot of it has to do with just, you know, looking at, you know, what is stressing you out and acknowledging what you can and can't control. I think that's a huge piece of the picture and one I've had to definitely deal with. I have OCD. I didn't find that out till my 30s, but...
If I had known that about myself when I was much younger, I think it would have been easier to just look at like, okay, these are the things happening. What can I actually do something about? But also just to I think you have to really take stock and look at what's going on. And, you know, how is that affecting you? How's it showing up and let go what you can't control?
Interesting. So self-reflection, I suppose, is the grand overarching thing there. Are there any like quick and easy tips, like clickbaity kind of stuff?
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Chapter 5: What is nocturnal dipping in blood pressure and why is it important?
I'm thinking of like Google Calendar. Yeah. Side note, I don't actually control my own calendar. It's a whole thing, but we won't, my producer does. Not important, but like you're saying block off times for me on it?
Exactly. Yeah. Like literally like put your name, put David on your calendar or have your assistant put it on there. So that way that is your time. Even if it's like 10 minutes, it all, it still matters.
Okay, I'm going to do that starting today. Yeah, calendars stress me out. They're like this, I don't know. I feel like I'm falling off. You know those dreams you have when you're falling off the cliff and you're like hitting the ground? Do you ever have one of these, these falling dreams?
Mine are where I'm in a car that's falling off of a cliff backwards.
Even better.
So I feel you.
As time approaches the start date to events, that's kind of how I feel. Taking this in a bit of another direction, are there any other tips to having a healthy mind?
You know, this is going to sound really basic, but what we eat can play a really big part. The book has a whole section on specific foods and nutrients. But if nothing else, just having balanced meals, you will be shocked at what a difference that can make. Because when we're having a balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrates at our meals, that's supporting stable blood sugar.
And that is a key aspect of our mental well-being because when our blood sugar is regulated, everything else works better too.
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