November 28, 2021: Sleeping For the Season
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A few weeks ago, Daylight Savings time occurred and we turned back the clocks. The extra hour of sleep was nice, but with that came more darkness. This time of year, many of us go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. This can really mess with our sleep schedules and energy. This week, we’re going to talk about how sleep changes this time of year and how to get back on track.
The Importance of Sleep
The focus of a health and fitness program always tends to be on the importance of exercise and nutrition, and sleep gets ignored. According to T.S. Wiley, author of Lights Out, “There are at least 10 different hormones as well as many neurotransmitters in the brain that go sideways when you don’t sleep enough. Melatonin is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It is all of the other shifts that change appetite, fertility, and mental and cardiac health.”
Changing of the Season
Your body runs on day/night cycles that have internal timers. Summer is 3-4 months out of the year with long light and high carbohydrate consumption. The problem is, as a society we have an “endless summer” due to long hours of unnatureal light and high carbohydrate diets. A summer that lasts, day after day, year after year, and so on, causes us to age FOUR times as fast and crave more sugar.
Effects of Sleep on Hormones
Melatonin is the hormone that helps you to go to sleep and stay asleep. When the lights are on, your body doesn’t make melatonin. Instead, your body makes cortisol (our stress hormone). Cortisol then mobilizes blood sugar into the bloodstream as part of the stress response. This rise in blood sugar calls for insulin to disperse.
When you are mobilizing blood sugar in the hours you should be making melatonin, you are also mobilizing insulin making yourself more insulin resistant. Insulin resistance causes the blood sugar to get stored as body fat around your middle versus going to your muscles or liver. When you stay up late, even if you are not eating, cortisol is still mobilizing blood sugar out of the liver. If you stay up, plus eat, that is twice as bad!
Tips to Improve Your Sleep
Keep your sleeping space dark! When light hits the eyes, it disrupts the circadian rhythm of the pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin. Opt for dim alarm clocks and don’t use a nightlight.
Avoid television and/or computer activity right before bed. These electronic devices are too stimulating to the brain. They are also disruptive to the pineal gland for the same reason mentioned above.
Read the right type of material. Try not to read anything stimulating such as something to do with your work or a mystery or suspense novel before bed. This is my biggest challenge as a thriller reader!
Get to bed as early as possible. Our bodies do the majority of their recharging and recovering between the hours of 10pm and 2am. Your liver, gallbladder, and brain also do important detoxing while you are asleep.
Keep the temperature in the bedroom below 70 degrees F. If your bedroom is too hot or too cold it can have an impact on the quality of your sleep.
Sleep well!
Next Sunday, we’ll talk about recipes for grain-free holiday cookies.
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I hope you have a wonderful week,
Kelly
Kelly Morgan, Ph.D.
Tsirona - www.tsirona.com
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