Does Sugar Keep You Up at Night?
In a recent article about Chamomile tea and sleep, I received an interesting comment about sugar. In response to my claim that decaf tea could still keep you up if it’s full of sugar, commenter Jeremy said that sugar doesn’t keep you up at all.
Jeremy is right. I fell victim to one of the most persistent and pervasive myths that surround both food and sleep: that sugar gives you energy, makes you hyper, or keeps you up.
Not true. Sugar adds calories to your tea, but does not have a significant effect on energy levels or sleep.
In fact, sugar might even help sleep, rather than hinder.
From Your Spoon to Your Blood
Let’s start at the beginning. Sugar, be it white, brown, cane, beet, or even another sweetener like honey, is digested and turned into glucose in the bloodstream.
Glucose is indeed the energy molecule – and it’s available in an easily accessible form in sugar. But glucose does not correspond with long-term energy and wakefulness. Potato, rice, or bread is also converted to glucose in the blood – and there’s hardly a big concern that a baked potato will keep you up at night.
These starchy foods might even have an even more pronounced effect on blood glucose levels than sugar itself. There is no unique chemical properties of sugar that make it special with regards to wakefulness and sleep, compared to any other source of glucose.
Sugar Science Trumps Sugar Myth
Perhaps the most common misunderstanding has to do with kids and sugar. Many parents, and those exposed to their rampaging children, blame sugar for hyperactivity.
Nope. For at least 30 years, researchers have known that sugar does not cause a hyperactive spike in energy in children. Double-blind tests are conclusive – if the kids are hyper, the reason isn’t sugar. The cause can vary, but it’s most likely a combination of confirmation bias, and the fact that the times that kids get sugary treats (birthdays, Christmas, holidays) are already cranking the kids up to max.
Don’t think that sugar affects you any differently just because you’re not a hyper kid, either. One study compared light physical activity vs sugar consumption to see which was more stimulating. A brisk walk wins every time. The sugar-eaters reported a slight initial boost in energy levels. However, this was followed shortly by a significant crash and an increase in sleepiness.
These results are repeated in an experiment comparing sugary drinks, aspartame-sweetened drinks, and plain water. The sippers that had sugar in their drink reported sleepiness half-an-hour after consumption – not alertness.
So here we are – sugar does not wake you up and won’t keep you up. But that’s only half the story.
Can Sugar Help You Sleep?
In previous articles, we’ve looked at a few chemicals to do with sleep, primarily adenosine and how it relates to coffee and sleep. But, with the human body being the complex interplay of hormones and glands that it is, there’s more than just one chemical that works to regulate sleep.
Orexin, also known as hypocretin, is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain. It works to regulate arousal, wakefulness, and appetite. Orexin is a key factor in sleep and wakefulness. To drive home the importance of orexin, sufferers of the most common form of narcolepsy are missing just this hormone.
The relationship between orexin and sleep basically breaks down to this:
- High orexin: Wakefulness
- Low orexin: Sleepiness
And that’s where sugar comes in. Studies indicate that large amounts of glucose in the bloodstream are enough to suppress the activity of orexin neurons in the brain. And we know that consuming sugar is a sure way to dump glucose into your bloodstream. With the orexin activity slowed or stopped thanks to sugar, sleepiness follows.
Sweet Dreams
I had warned in a previous article that your evening decaf tea shouldn’t have any sugar in it. This was not true.
If you want to add a spoon of sugar to your chamomile, go for it. It may be that the sugar actually helps you fall asleep faster than otherwise.
But this means that the same is true in the morning. If you have a hard time getting going after breakfast, you may want to cut out your sugary drinks, cereals, and other sweet snacks. It may seem counter-intuitive, thanks to the ingrained sugar myth. But sugar is not a stimulant food – it is a sleepy food.
photo credit: Pay No Mind via photopin cc
I usually eat a lot of sweets, and recently followed my doctor’s advice to stop eating sugar cold turkey and expect that the cravings would go away after about 2 weeks. I did that, and I noticed that I was getting tired a lot earlier than I usually do–which for me is a good thing. I have always been a total night owl, and now I think it is because of my sugar intake. The same thing happens with my husband. I take medicine to help me fall asleep at night, and was still on this medicine while being off sugar (which I have sadly started to eat again), but I think I will try a non-sugar diet again and then try going to sleep without the meds!
A disclaimer though – a lot of my sugar intake is or contains chocolate. So it could be more the caffeine than the sugar itself that made the difference.
Last night, after tea, I indulged in 4 Macarons. I knew I shouldn’t as last time I had any, I didn’t sleep for hours. I convinced myself it was just a coincidence but forward to 5am this morning and I’m still trying to get to sleep. I normally don’t have sugar in anything and normally sleep 7-8 hours every night with no problems dropping off. Ok that was an excessive sugar intake but I agree with Colin that perhaps the subject is more complex than implied. I can only go on my own experience.
I have found that eating a piece of cream pie before bedtime, LETS ME SLEEP ALL NIGHT……..
I often woke during the night……….now I sleep soundly!!
If i take sugar between 4pm and later it definitely keeps me up, i only get around 5 hours and feel awful next day for lack of sleep, personally sugar 110 percent before bed time disrupts my sleep, also know cases of others who suffered terrible sleep, i recommended to them to not take sugar or caffeine after 4, and they all had good night sleep, in my experience sugar or caffeine taken closer to bed time will affect sleep also eating late same effect.
I have suffered with insomnia for years, I was a personal trainer & bodybuilder I eat just to build muscle chicken rice & broccoli, type meals. I’m now close to living a vegan lifestyle.
The only thing that puts me to sleep is sugar, I’ve been checked and they say I’m not diabetic (I don’t totally believe them) but there isn’t much I can do.
If I eat organic whole foods all day and night my insomnia becomes unbearable, if I eat a big tub of ice cream or when I use to eat meat a takeaway, I will fall asleep straight away and sleep really well.
Sugar it seems is the only thing that works but I obviously don’t want to be eating it in the forms of ice cream and what not. I’ve seen people say this is written by people paid by food companies, that type of stuff really does go on and more than you think but I for one can say sugar does put me to sleep, but I’m so annoyed as I don’t want to consume anything outside of whole food form, I have no idea why I hope to find another way of falling asleep
I’ve heard it said that sugar does not keep you up at night, but my own personal experience is that it seems to do so. If I have so much as a ginger ale at dinner, the sweetness seems to leave me alert and even jittery in bed five hours later. Or is it the large coffee I had 12 hours earlier? I don’t know, but I try to avoid these things as I grow older and my sleep time and sleep quality seem to diminish.
I’m reading this at 3am because I can’t sleep. Having been an insomniac for many years I discovered fairly recently that it’s caused by sugar. I’m not diabetic but have had hypo’s for years. My diet is now totally devoid of any sugar (other than that that is in food naturally) 99% of the time. Last night I ate a fruit yogurt without realising it had added sugar and this is the result – I likely won’t sleep a wink tonight.
When I totally avoid sugar I sleep like a log and the hypo’s that plagued me for years have gone.
Research and science may say thay sugar doesn’t keep you awake but for me it definitely does.
I can agree with Ms. Jenny…I have been an insomniac for the past 25 or better years and always wondered why it was my fate. Turns out it wasn’t, but this lifestyle “the American (pipe) dream” I was holding onto was the source of my problems..Since I have let go of the “American (pipe) Dream” I have began gardening my own fruits and veggies and turning to a more natural lifestyle in multiples of ways I can happily say that my sleepless night number markedly less. I had never noticed the very subtle effects of the “American” diet until I decided to try more natural. I can definitively tell you the people in charge of our food supply are not there for our comfort…They produce food stuffs to make money…Bottom line…And the more money they can make without having to put out top dollar for production equates to more money in their pockets. It’s all very basic dog-psychology…I am not condoning or condemning…Just stating bare facts. Here recently I have been seeing the advertisements stating that high-fructose corn syrup is safe for consumption in moderation…CHECK YOUR LABELS…It’s in moderation alright…In ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING you buy and consume. Therefore in a regular day you are actually getting mega-dosed with the stuff…Talk about a sugar high. I still have troubles sleeping from time to time, but I have found that it usually runs congruent with not living and/or eating correctly. There are a multitude of factors that we take in stride every day and think nothing about because we are inundated with them non-stop as our lifestyles continue to run for the BBFM (Bigger, Better, Faster, More). however when you finally make your own personal exit from “The Rat-Race” you will feel it too…I guarantee it! But remember, you are still a nature-based organism and all the natural laws still apply (like inertia)…So it may take a few days of living naturally before your body can actually gear down leave the automatic buttons for the machines. You want to feel truly better…Make the change…the world will continue to exist with or without you…I promise! And you will reap the greatest benefits by just letting it go and do it’s own thing. Far better to take a holiday in seclusion than an extended nap in the dirt before your time!
It could be confirmation bias?
I cant just keep this short…… What about corn syrup. (99%) of america is this garbage maby your myth is talkin about that not REAL SUGER… thoughts please
I completely agree. Every time I have a lot of sugar in one day, say a full packet of sweets, I will not sleep at all and this isn’t a one time thing, every time I have ate a bag of sweet in one day, I never get any sleep. This article is completely false
I one hundred percent agree. This has been my experience exactly. Sugar keeps me awake at night. I think articles like this are funded by the sugar industry. So much of what we read is funded by big business interests and the research done by “biostitutes” which they hire and pay to produce studies to prove anything that would be in their interest.
The bottom line here is that everyone reacts differently to sugar or anything else.
Myself, at sixty eight I am pretty aware of how my body responds to things. Sugar…I may fall asleep, but within an hour will be wide eyed and be awake for hours. Same with caffeine and any over the counter PM sleep medication.
There are probably some children that might not be affected by sugar. But anyone who has had a child get hyped up on it would disagree.
Anyone can find “scientific information” to plead there case. To state that these are unequivocal facts is bogus.
This article really needs more thorough research. I wouldn’t exactly down an energy drink or coffee as a means of helping me sleep at night. It’s not exactly healthy. The feeling of fatigue and sleepiness after the consumption of sugar is called a bloody sugar crash. Sure, you could get your night’s sleep, but only after putting your body through hyperglycemia. Your body then has to pump out more insulin to regulate and balance the influx of high glucose. What happens when this happens repeatedly? Many things could happen, like insulin resistance, uh, you know a symptom of a form of diabetes? It’s like saying mouthwash has antiseptic properties, but I wouldn’t splash some on an open wound to clean the cut. You seek healthy and direct alternatives. You wanna sleep well? Don’t eat like crap all the timr and get regular exercise.
I drink bedtime tea nightly and have had not troubles sleeping (actually sleeping very well) until about 5 days ago. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then realized that I have been sweetening the bedtime tea with sugar because I ran out if Splenda. My husband has also had trouble sleeping, so I am thinking it is the sugar. I am definitely going to the store today for more Splenda to test this! We do have other things going on that could possibly be to blame, but I am betting it’s the sugar.
Really I don’t think u know what you are talking about
sugar in coffee/tea /liquor keeps me awake for hours.
Caffeine drinks without sugar don’t keep me awake.
I
I CAN have coffee and go back to bed, have a soda no sleep in sight regardless of the time of day
Actually I think your just so everyone e who writes articles or a paid sponsored writer since nowhere are ANY MEDICAL DEGREES ARE CT ED
So PLEASE QUIT GIVING PEOPLE UNRESEARCHED ADVICE!!!!!!!!!
People aren’t usually stupid. No one goes to the internet and expects god. So do you think that because it doesn’t work for you that it must be crap? I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed that everybody is different with what affects them. I got to this post as I was curious why most of my life when I can’t sleep I need sugar, only a small choc or glass of cordial, then I fall asleep strait away. Whereas, there is no way I can drink coffee after hours as the caffeine will keep me going all night, but some people are different. It’s just called advice or opinions. We all know that unless research/studies are refernced in an article that it is just opinion.
Well I too agree here… I too need sugar to sleep…anything sweet…candy…chocolate… Ice cream… At night makes sleep like baby…probably I am different
I agree, I need sugar in my system to sleep.
I’ve gone on diets where I cut sugar out of my diet completely and each and every time I have waken in the wee hours of the morning and cannot go back to sleep. I add sugar to my diet and sleep like a baby!
Do we really need an eff-ing medical degree to tell what gets results for us? The medical degree…in my experience only serves to confuse someone with the thinking of others…You really want to get results… PAY ATTENTION to YOUR OWN BODY! When has science ever trumped nature across the board…That is why it is always the “science behind” something…Cause it is always “behind” and trying to play catch up with nature who has been doing this stuff for a couple of millennia just fine by its-self. Man always thinks he can twist the rules to suit him…let’s see you cheat death for that long!
good god. science states facts through multiple observations. anecdotal evidence is not empirical.
I too have a question… I am an insomniac who is prescribed Ambian, I refuse to take it anymore because of the crazy side effects it had on me and I am also pregnant… The only way I am able to sleep, is to eat “junk food” (chocolate bars, bags of candy, chips, cookies, cake, ect… And also ill drink 1-2 cans of Pepsi or Mtn Dew , and this is an every night occurance. As soon as I eat & drink all of it, I fall asleep almost immediately. I have a very high/fast metabolism, and have tested negative for diabetes… What do you think could be causing this need for a “sugar induced coma”
I know this was written 2 years ago, but I’m very similar to you, this sounds weird but it’s true, the better my diet is (whole foods fruit & veg, beans lentils, seeds and nuts) the more my insomnia worsens.
If I eat perfectly all day then had a tub of ice cream or some unhealthy takeaway I fall asleep right away and sleep for 8-11 hours, I’ll feel very groggy when I wake but I shake that off after a couple hours.
If I eat perfectly all day without rubbish at night, I’ll be in bed for 2-5 hours trying to get to sleep, then wake up after 4 hours, won’t be able to get back to sleep, then I’ll be like a zombie after about 4 or more hours and I’ll need to go back to sleep, but by this time it will be 9 or 10am lol what a life !!
Interesting. I love snacking on sweets and I can definitely say that my excessive intake of these snacks (once I started living in my boarding house during the weekdays) has greatly affected my sleep patterns (I get drowsy during the day, which never used to happen in my high school days).
I have a question, though. What would be a good low-carb diet for optimal ‘energy usage and distribution’? I come from a country where rice is a staple food. I’m used to eating a cup of rice once or twice a day, which is already less than average.
Thanks for sharing this!
Lisha-
Tl;dr: Eat as much rice as you want, it wont cause that drowsiness, but definitely avoid the excessive (simple****) sugar intake, which you get from foods with “sugary” taste.
Actually, carbohydrates are not *the* “issue.” Mentioned in this article, orexin’s activity is suppressed by spikes in blood sugar levels. However, blood sugar levels are affected very differently by different kinds of food.
So first off, the food you eat- it is not used (needed) that day, or even usually the next day. We have much more than enough high-energy compounds stored in our cells & organs to keep us going for SEVERAL days, let alone a few hours. Any physiological effect you feel from variation in daily intake is purely caused by your brain, as it wants you to keep eating regardless of if you need it now or later. Though your body can go without eating one day, your brain WILL punish how you feel that day, and make you agitated, upset, and anxious. So keep eating regardless.
Now as for those different kinds of food, and the variation you feel from them. When you eat anything, its useful parts/chemicals will end up in your blood, and shuttled to the cells that specifically need them. (They signal for them, and adjust what their extra-cellular side “looks like” to the body and chemicals passing through it) This is the case for sugar, and is why the statistic of “blood-sugar” or in fancy terms, “glycemic index,” is important. The sugar available in the blood is the sugar available to your cells that are actually doing stuff. So to simplify numbers into general concepts, let’s suppose there are three levels of blood-sugar: High, medium, and low. Now to point out an important distinction, the “sugar” of blood-sugar is GLUCOSE, the simplest* of carbohydrates. All carbohydrates must be made into glucose so that they have an influence in the blood. However, all carbohydrates you may ingest (rice being one of them******) are NOT necessarily glucose. They may be complex, polysaccharides of glucose & fructose, instead of just straight up glucose. To get to glucose, the starch* in rice, and any other carb that does not taste “sweet,” must be broken down in your gut, and only THEN, absorbed into the blood. This is not an instantaneous process in the body, while simple absorption of glucose IS a simple, and thus quick, process.
Without having eaten anything, your blood sugar is on the low side. Upon eating something that contains carbohydrates, it goes up proportionally, to how much glucose has been absorbed by your gut lining, and into the blood. Two scenarios:
1) Drink soda. (All simple sugars): The liquid passes from your stomach into your small intestine pretty quickly, and within half of an hour, all the glucose in that soda is now in your blood. All 200~ calories of it. Your blood sugar level thus spikes to a level of “high”, and throws off your levels of arousal because of hyper-stimulation of orexin, which inhibits your wakefulness.
2) Eat the calorie equivalent of rice. 200 calories. (All complex carbohydrates): The potato bits you’ve chewed and passed off into your stomach take ~1 hour in your stomach, until they are sufficiently broken down by your stomach’s churning, and the acid it secretes. Then, the potato mush passes into your small intestine. The complex, long chains of sugars in starch* still have yet to be fully broken down, and your body will take a few more hours to break the long chains into single units, into glucose. Glucose molecule by glucose molecule, over the period of ~3 hours, is isolated by various enzymes in your gut, and then those available molecules are absorbed into the blood. This is gradual, and the uptake of glucose is smooth, and your blood sugar is only raised to medium, without any spike, as all the glucose molecules in starch are not immediately AVAILABLE, as they are when they are in the form of simple sugar. (Like in candy, soda, anything that tastes super sugary- us humans have a sharp ability to detect simple sugars, so if it tastes simple, it is).
This is a simplified version of what happens, but I hope the basic scheme of it all gives you reason to fear candy, not to fear rice. However! Veggies & meats are MUCH better than carbs in terms of NUTRITION, because they have caloric substances just as carbs have, but their substances contain more than just carbs, as they have vitamins, healthy fats (which function as vitamins/ cell’s tools, more than they do caloric fats), and a lot of other stuff our cell’s would like more of.
To sum up, simple carbohydrates, ie sugar, is essentially useless to us, and causes some problems (not severe, but still) for how our body works. Complex carbs are a much more stable* fuel source, so eat those if you want to avoid the uneasiness/discomfort you get from sugars. And further, veggies, nuts, and meats – if you want to be your utmost healthiest – give you a lot more per calorie than do carbohydrates. Both have calories, but we are NOT lacking in calories in our society today at ALL, so when possible, grab as much of those vitamins & useful nutrients as you can by eating alternatives to carbohydrates. Especially if you’re doing physical activity, for which afterwards you need to actually build new cells, and so need new components.
Hope I gave you what you were looking for!
I’ve seen people get angry when they hear that sugar doesn’t make kids hyper. It’s unfortunate how territorial people can be about evidence that imposes on previously held beliefs.
Thanks for the post.
My personal experience is sugar (and chocolate) both spikes my energy levels, and then crashes me. And keeps me tired/unfocused for rest of the day. If I take it with caffeine there is a multiplier effect.
Now, when I have a low-carb diet I sleep really well, and wake rested. If I have high carb evening, especially with sugar, then I wake up early, jittery, and ready to crash later in the day.
So…it’s more complex than perhaps your post implies. At least for me.
I very much liked the article and it is good to see some scientific studies that confirm sugar is not a hyperactivity inducing food. One reason I like this blog is that it links to the science rather than leaning me wondering if that which is posted is true!
Thanks for mentioning the link to sleep and carbohydrates. A friend has mentioned this to me before and I have briefly to reduce carb intake but did so in order to reduce weight rather than improve sleep. I will need to find time to research more about a low-carb diet and any unwanted side effects.
Hi Gavin,
To explain what I think you’re trying to understand (why avoid carbs?), I’ll give it a try.
Carbs are essentially ONLY energy. Whether simple (table sugar) or complex (starch), carbs are only energy. When it comes to nutrition, energy is important, but it is typically not difficult to acquire. That’s just a matter of quantity, and we are not short of food in today’s world.
Food sources also must give us our essential nutrients. I don’t know how much you know about biochemistry, but I’ll try and explain what these nutrients are that are deemed “essential.”
So, throughout your body, every cell essentially acts like an isolated factory, with the body, the overall economy, and its success, contingent upon the sum of the activity of all of those factories/cells. There is tremendous diversification throughout your body in terms of cell type*, and there is accordingly a great diversity in terms of output, or product, from these cells. Like any factory, it needs certain inputs to produce its outputs efficiently. In each cell, to continue the analogy, the “workers” of the assembly line are the PROTEINS. Just like if you want a job done, you need to hire a person with a certain set of skills, the cell needs to build a certain protein with certain skills.
Now with that set up, let me get into how nutrients are relevant. The nutrients we need to function as an organism are essentially the “protein’s tools” that it NEEDS in order to do its job. Like if you want a worker to hammer a sheet flat, you need to get a hammer for that worker. To keep that assembly line churning in that cell, you need to supply it with sufficient glucose. But up to that point, if it can stay open, more sugar does nothing. However, there is another area for possible deficiency when it comes to nutrition. Those tools. The proteins need co-factors (vitamins), minerals (metal ions), in order to work. Without them, the proteins, and cell’s energy store, is useless, and no product can be produced.
So to get to the point, low-carb diets are great, because we don’t need to worry about getting enough calories. Your body will quickly make you hungry if you aren’t eating enough (even long, long before the point of necessity… the reason for fat accumulation), but it will NOT direct you to eat according to nutrient intake. Essentially, carbs are “empty” calories, because the nutritional content per calorie is very low, while vegetables, meats, and nuts, and virtually anything not white, have much more diverse stores of those “tools,” and are a much better alternative for a healthier body, healthier economy. It won’t kill you to eat carbs, you’ll just not be running your cells as efficiently as possible, and thus, fortifying your body as best you can.
Colin,
You’re right to take note of the effect of carbs on levels of arousal. Carbohydrates cause spikes in blood-sugar which throw your body’s homeostasis off, as its regulatory mechanisms are not used to such sweet, easily digested, simple sugars, as we are so often exposed to in modern society.