Health

Foods you should eat at least 3-4 hours before bedtime

Published

5 years ago

September 13, 2021

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It is a well-established fact that every human being should eat 3 square meals in a day. These foods are known as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Although all these foods are important, it is often essential that we make our menus nutritious and beneficial to our bodies.

Most times people tend to eat light foods like tea, coffee, bread and so on for breakfast and tend to eat heavier foods for dinner which is not quite advisable because, when we eat breakfast, it helps fuel the body for all kinds of activities taking place during the day, however the same cannot be said for dinner because most times after we finish eating we go to sleep.

We do not give adequate consideration to when and what you eat for dinner, you might end up damaging or hurting your digestive system which will eventually make us feel weak and weary the next day. Added to that you might also experience weight gain, heart disease, obesity, acid reflux, and so on if you eat late at night.

Having light food for dinner should be a habit you should adopt especially for people who come back late at night because eating heavy food at night can lead to a series of health issues like heartburn, indigestion, and so on. But for those who come back a bit early, you can eat easy foods provided you still have at least 3-4 hours to stay awake before going to bed.

One reason why we need to avoid eating late hours of the night is that many of the foods we eat are very high in calories that could easily lead to unwanted or unhealthy weight gain since they would take a longer time to digest and would only accumulate in our bodies as we sleep. Others can cause health problems like acid reflux, which could cause difficulty in swallowing, lumps in the throat, heartburn, coughing, laryngitis, and dental erosion. Examples of foods that can make you have acid reflux if you eat them less than 3 hours before going t bed include

1. Alcohol

2. Chocolate

3. Caffeinated Drinks

4. Hot Spice

While some foods cause acid reflux, most of the foods we eat in Nigeria are rich in starch and sugar content. A continuous intake of these foods late at night will cause a spike in blood sugar levels which would inevitably lead to overworking the pancreas. Note that if we eat these foods at least 3 to 4 hours before bed, their effect will be greatly reduced. Such foods include;