How Can I Avoid the Post-Lunch Slump?
After a large meal, your digestive system is calling the shots, turning you into a sleepy shadow of your morning self. But there are ways you can bargain with biology.
Hunger makes the mind alert—this is a survival necessity handed down from our ancestors, who needed to keep going while searching for food. Today, this lends us a little concentration boost leading up to lunch.
After a meal, the arteries widen so that there is a healthy blood supply for the gut to squeeze and extract the nutrients. Becoming a food-processing machine is hard work—and this surge of blood goes hand in hand with the urge to put head to pillow. The instigator of this so-called food coma (or postprandial somnolence, to give it its formal name) is the “gut brain.” It releases sleep-inducing hormones, including cholecystokinin, so that you move less and your energy resources can instead go into the hard work of digestion.
After a big lunch, sleepiness can come on after about 20 minutes and last for hours, so if sharp thinking is called for in the early afternoon, a hearty midday meal is going to make that more challenging. Stay off the roads after lunch, or be cautious when driving, because there’s a spike in automobile accidents at this time, thanks to all those drowsy drivers. Exercising after eating won’t help you stay alert—the squashing and shaking of a food-bloated stomach will make you feel nauseous but no less sleepy. The only way to lessen the slump is to eat less for lunch. The gut will release more sleep hormones when it is overfilled with food. Providing you eat enough during the day, you can minimize the disruptive effects of digestion and sleep hormones by keeping lunches light (see below).
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This shows the passage of a meal, first through the stomach and on to the gut (intestines). Sleep hormones are only released when the gut is very full—a lighter meal of around 12 oz (350 g) of both food and drink will help keep you alert in the afternoons.
Want to avoid falling asleep at your desk?
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Keep your lunch light so you aren’t overwhelmed by sleepy gut hormones.
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Get Outdoors—daylight (even on cloudy days) sends signals to your body clock to stay awake.
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Or You Could just go with nature. Studies show that even 5 minutes of shut-eye can be good for you.
The 9–5 work ethic is completely at odds with the body clock; you are built for two sleeps each day, not one. Sleeping every six to eight hours is the norm in nature—chimpanzees and dolphins do it, and even insects have downtime in the hours after midday. Coinciding with the hottest hours when hard labor would risk overheating and dehydration, this rhythm is etched into your DNA, regardless of the climate you live in today.