It is said that "spring is sleepy, autumn is lackluster, summer napping, winter and March cannot wake up". It's time again when you finish eating, you immediately start to feel sleepy and have to take a nap, and you have to have a cup of coffee to refresh yourself after the rest.
Why do you get so sleepy after eating? Today we will talk about it together~
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Sleepiness after meals may be related to food
At present, the cause of sleepiness after meals is still in the unproven stage, and some studies believe that high-carbon, high-fat diets are easy to make people feel tired.
First of all, compared with a high-protein diet, a high-carb diet can increase the content of tryptophan in the blood, and after tryptophan enters the brain, it can be synthesized into serotonin, also known as serotonin, and serotonin is then converted into the familiar melatonin, which can promote and improve sleep. Moreover, people are accustomed to eating refined rice noodles, and rice and noodles are high GI (GI: glycemic index) foods, which can quickly increase blood sugar and increase satiety. However, when blood sugar rises, the body's orexin (hypothalamic secretin) content decreases, and when the content decreases, the person feels drowsy and unwilling to exercise.
Therefore, some people also believe that the reason why China has the habit of taking a lunch break while the West does not may be due to the difference in eating habits, and the proportion of carbs in China's lunch is more.
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Secondly, a high-fat diet corresponds to a high-calorie diet, and studies have shown that high-calorie foods increase the level of IL-1, an interleukin, which can stimulate sleep-promoting neurons in the brain, and the use of IL-1 antagonists will alleviate the symptoms of drowsiness after meals.
So in this way, high-carbon and high-fat foods do have the possibility of making people "dizzy".
In addition, there are other inferences, such as people's sleep is related to the circadian rule, people are more likely to feel tired from one to two o'clock in the afternoon, plus the impact of eating is more likely to be sleepy; Or sleepiness after meals is for energy storage, people are in a state of low energy consumption when sleeping, and they can retain energy for a long time.
These inferences sound reasonable, but no matter what the statement, they are just speculation, after meals sleepiness involves the participation of multiple systems of the human body, and there are currently no studies that can clearly confirm what causes sleepiness after meals.
Sleepiness can also be a sign of illness
The various reasons mentioned above are all inferred based on the health status of the human body. However, some scholars have suggested that being sleepy after a meal may indicate a physical illness.
After eating, I became sleepy, and it is possible that I had postprandial hypotension.
When eating, the digestive system begins to function, resulting in a feeling of fullness, when the stomach is swollen and congested, blood flow increases, while blood flow in other parts will be relatively reduced, blood pressure will be slightly reduced, resulting in drowsiness, heart rate slowdown, breathing slowdown.
At this time, the body's self-regulation mechanism comes into play, which can quickly adjust blood pressure to maintain normal levels by constricting blood vessels, accelerating heart rate, etc., and ensuring the stable blood supply of various organs. Therefore, healthy people, whether they eat more or less, will not have a significant drop in blood pressure.
However, due to the decline of physical function, the ability to regulate is weakened, the sensitivity to food stimuli is reduced, and it is easy to reduce blood pressure after eating, and the blood supply to the brain is insufficient, resulting in symptoms such as drowsiness, dizziness, chest tightness, etc., and there is a potential risk of syncope and fall.
The elderly with high blood pressure should pay more attention to the fact that severe hypotension can cause insufficient blood supply to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular vessels, resulting in serious harm such as myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction. Therefore, the elderly must pay attention to their physical condition and measure blood pressure regularly to prevent hypotension.
Tips: Since postprandial hypotension generally appears after breakfast, elderly patients with high blood pressure should take antihypertensive drugs in the middle of two meals and avoid taking antihypertensive drugs before meals.
How to reduce postprandial sleepiness?
For office workers and students, most of them are still normal "meal dizziness", in order to cope with the busy work and classes in the afternoon, it is necessary to learn to reduce the sleepiness after meals.
Based on the aforementioned causes of sleepiness after meals, the practice of mitigating sleepiness can be inferred in reverse.
1
Reduce food intake
Most people will eat more lunch in order to replenish energy, but this also greatly increases the burden on the stomach, so eating seven points full, not only reduces the burden on the stomach, but also can alleviate drowsiness. If you tend to get hungry in the afternoon, you might as well prepare a snack for afternoon tea.
2
Light diet
In order to alleviate post-meal sleepiness, you can choose low GI foods such as coarse grains and grains, increase the proportion of protein, eat more vegetables, and cook less oil and salt.
3
Drink coffee after meals
Changing your eating habits is difficult for most people, but there are a few things that can be used to refresh you. For example, brewing a cup of coffee or tea after a meal, caffeine has the effect of driving away drowsiness and restoring energy, and taking a nap immediately after drinking it has a better refreshing effect. However, whether this method is effective depends on the individual's physique, and cannot be blindly chosen.
Source: Pixabay
4
siesta
Lunch break after meals is the basic habit of Chinese people, but the longer the nap time, the more energetic you get up, and the best time is 10~20 minutes, which can effectively regulate the spirit.
In general, in addition to the postprandial hypotension that the elderly need to pay attention to, drowsiness after meals is a normal reaction, and it is still recommended that you adjust your eating habits, which can not only maintain the afternoon work state, but also good for good health. The work is already very hard, so drink less bitter coffee.