holistic lifestyle

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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Sleep:

• I’ll explain why you need sleep and how it works for you
• I’ll also talk about what happens when you don’t get enough sleep and how that works against you
• Finally, I’ll share some simple and effective sleep rituals that you can practise for better health and wellness

CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET LEAN

In the previous podcast I talked about how oxygen is our primary nutrient. Well I believe sleep is our second most important nutrient or at least on equal footing with water, food, and movement.

Before we dig in let me make a distinction and explain the difference between what I cal quality restorative sleep (QRS) and long restless sleep (LRS).

So QRS is when you go through the usual five stages of sleep, which are stages one, two, three, four, and rapid eye movement (REM) and this is considered one sleep cycle before it goes back to stage one again. Each cycle lasts on average 90 minutes and you should have four to five sleep cycles every night, so around six to eight hours of sleep. If you are not getting four sleep cycles minimum per night or if your sleep cycles keep getting interrupted before going through all five stages you are potentially not getting the correct rest and repair you would normally get during sleep. I call this LRS where you might sleep for up to 12 hours, but if most of your sleep cycles were disturbed and if you only got three full cycles then you may well wake up feeling more tired and worse off than before you got into bed.

Now I will go through some of the benefits of quality restorative sleep and how it improves your life.

• It gives you more energy
• Sleep is when memory imprinting happens where short-term memory becomes long-term memory enhancing your memory skills
• Allows you to think clearly increasing your ability to focus due to the detoxification processes in the brain that only happen while you sleep
• Sleep also puts you in a very good mood (no matter which side of the bed you wake up on)
• Improves your performance on the sportsfield and on the court, in the boardroom, as well as the bedroom
• Helps you adapt to more stress and better manage yourself when stress happens
• Keeps you looking youthful and full of vitality
• Gives you a healthier body composition by keeping you lean

 
So how to get QRS? Your body has an internal clock a biological clock that runs on a circadian cycle, a natural rhythm of about 24 hours. Your circadian rhythm is based on the cycles of the sun and the moon, the day and the night.

Your body has light receptors not just in your eyes, but also on your skin. When you are exposed to light in the morning your body releases cortisol (a stress hormone) that is used to wake you up, to get you active, to get you alert and ready to play out your day. In the morning your cortisol levels should be high in order to help get you out of bed. As the day goes on your cortisol levels drop gradually and from the afternoon your cortisol drops big time because when you’re getting ready to wind down for the evening and to get ready to go to bed you don’t want to be full of stress hormones causing you to feel awake, active, and alert.

The hormone on the opposite end of cortisol is melatonin. This hormone deals with repair, rest, and sleep. In the morning melatonin should be at it’s lowest levels and as the day goes on and you expose yourself to sunlight during the day melatonin production begins to rev up. It doesn’t get released yet, but by getting daylight exposure you’re telling your body to start making melatonin. When night time comes and you’re no longer bathing in the sun sometime after six o’clock that’s when melatonin will begin to be released. This will help you to wind down, to relax, and get ready for awesome sleep. Now if cortisol is up in the evening melatonin is going to struggle to rise. Also blue light (which is the same as sunlight) and bright light exposure after sunset will prevent melatonin from rising at night. Also in the morning melatonin should be low and not be interfering with the rise in cortisol.

So we have two hormones here. One that wakes you up, gets you active and alert (cortisol). The other winds you down and prepares you for sleep (melatonin). Your circadian rhythm is driven by these two hormones, but the levels and the times at which these two hormones are released are determined by your exposure to sunlight, the day and night cycle, as well as the amount of stress that you perceive in your environment and the amount of hidden stress that is happening within your body. The more stress you have in the evening the higher your cortisol the lower your melatonin. When you have chronic stress, stress that is ongoing and neverending, your cortisol levels drop across the board meaning overtime eventually your cortisol levels will be low in the morning making you not want to get your butt out of bed and to start your day and when you do get up you’re like a muppet without a brain… a zombie… the walking dead. Chronic stress can also disrupt your daily cortisol output causing it to rise in the evening. Say goodnight to melatonin and awesome sleep if that happens.

Now in order to reset your circadian rhythm you need to manage how you deal with stress giving you a regular cortisol output high in the morning and low in the evening. Then you’ll need to expose your eyes and body to sunlight early in the morning and as much as possible throughout the day to get enough melatonin produced. Okay so to get enough melatonin released at night giving you better sleep you then need to remove exposure to blue and bright lights at night.

For QRS you want to aim to go to bed by 10.30p and get up around 6a. Now I know not everyone can do this and these are just general guidelines, but getting to bed before 11p and waking up 6-8 hours later is the ideal sleeping window for adults, a bit earlier and longer for children, and even moreso for teenagers. Sorry night owls you are not going to like this next part, but you’ll get more QRS for your body and mind if you go to bed around 8p and get up seven hours later around 3a then you would going to bed midnight and getting up eight hours later at 8a. Remember the saying:

“Every hour before midnight is worth two after.”

The main reason for this is your physical repair processes happen between the hours of about 10 in the evening and two in the morning. Now after 2a to when you wake up is when your immune and neurological repair processes do most of their work. So your body repair work happens before your mind repair work giving a preference to body maintenance over mind maintenance.

Also consistency with your wake and sleep times is crucial to resetting your circadian rhythm. Imagine having a clock that ran half the speed one day then twice the speed the next and then normal speed another day with your set alarms going off at random times. How would your ability to stick to a schedule be? If your wake and sleep times are all over the place this will throw of the timing of the production and release of your wake and sleep hormones and will severely upset your circadian rhythm.

Okay so let’s say you are going to bed consistently between 10p and 6a, getting blue light and sunlight during the day and reducing that light exposure during the night and that your hormones are in the correct levels at the correct times and your circadian cycle is in sync with the day night cycle what will that mean? It’ll mean you will reap all the previously mentioned benefits that sleep freely provides.

However, if you are constantly depriving yourself of QRS and getting LRS instead or just not getting enough sleep you are not going to like what I have to say next on how a lack of quality sleep affects your health and your life.

• It increases your blood pressure
• Increases your risk of heart disease and diabetes
• Increases your risk of cancer

 
Cancer! Lack of sleep increases the growth of tumours in your body and your risk of cancer. I want to talk more about this one. How is this possible? Melatonin. Remember the amount of sunlight and blue light exposure you get during the day determines the amount of melatonin produced and the lack of blue light at night determines when and how much melatonin gets released. If your circadian cycle is out of sync with the day and night cycles you won’t have enough melatonin at the correct time to do the job it’s meant to do.

Now guess what melatonin does besides helping with repair, rest, and sleep? Melatonin stops the growth of tumours. That’s right, it stops cancer in its tracks! Not only that, but it also activates cell death. Cells in your body are continuously being created and destroyed. Cancer cells on the other hand are stubborn little buggers and won’t do as they’re told when it comes time for them to expire. Melatonin makes sure that cancer cells do as instructed when given the signal to die. Melatonin is also a powerful antioxidant. As an analogy picture chemical reactions in the body producing rust due to oxidation okay and melatonin cleans up that rust, shines it up real nice and does a really good job of it acting as an antioxidant. So while eating organic antioxidant rich foods and taking antioxidant supplements like vitamin C and vitamin E is one way to battle the rust in your body, you can just go outdoors during the day and bathe in the sunlight, keep blue light exposure to a minimum in the evening and for free you can have an antioxidant in the form of melatonin with phenomenal cosmic powers fighting the good fight on your behalf.

Oh! Another thing about melatonin. Melatonin comes from serotonin and a lot of people don’t know this, but over 90% of serotonin is produced in your gut, in your gastrointestinal tract, your intestines, mmm hmm. Also, serotonin comes from tryptophan, which is found abundantly in animal protein. So if you have an issue with your gut, if you’re eating the wrong foods, and if you’re experiencing stress (which can cause issues with the assimilation and absorption of nutrients in the gut) you will not be getting enough tryptophan leading to low serotonin meaning you’ll have very low melatonin, okay. Hippocrates the original gangster, the OG of MD’s himself said:

“All disease begins in the gut.”

He knew, that guy. He knew even way back when that a sick gut leads to overall sickness. Smart guy.

Okay where were we before that cancer tangent…? Hmm…

• Lack of sleep creates a weakened immune system
• You age faster — when you sleep is when the most amount of growth hormone is released in your body (besides doing high-intensity exercise) and without adequate growth hormone you are unable run growth and repair processes leading to more cell death than cell creation. So all your wrinkles and body parts starting to sag, yeah, get some sleep.
• You get brain fog or foggy-headedness and can’t think straight
• Your memory declines and you become forgetful — Mr Forgetful I used to call myself back in my unhealthy days. I mean that was all based on bad food choices creating gut issues that lead to sleep issues and then issues with my memory. It’s all connected it really is, the brain and the gut.
• Your pre-frontal cortex shuts down affecting your mental health and yes I’ve been there myself
• Increases your risk of death from any cause — sleep shorter, live shorter
• Weight gain

 
Your hunger hormones increase while at the same time your feeling-full hormones decrease causing you to eat more without you even realising it. Not only that, but it has been shown that just one night of poor sleep can make you as insulin-resistant as a type 2 diabetic. Meaning the sugar stays in your blood longer than usual. You become diabetic for a day after only one night of sleep deprivation.

Insulin is a hormone that drives nutrients and sugar into cells. Problem is when you’re insulin-resistant your cells will no longer listen to insulin and take in that sugar and if there’s too much sugar in the blood there’s only three places in your body that sugar can be safely stored — your liver and muscles as glycogen (a form of glucose) and your fat cells as triglycerides (fat). However, now that you’re insulin-resistant your liver and muscle cells no longer respond to insulin leaving only one place left to store all that excess sugar in your blood (which has been broken down to glucose) — your fat cells. So the liver won’t store that excess glucose, but it will turn it into triglycerides and then insulin will store that fat into your fat cells. Also, when there’s too much glucose in the blood you get a lot of it sticking to cells and proteins causing damage and inflammation (like a fire) in your body. Bottom-line being insulin-resistant sucks hard so get more sleep!

Let’s see where was I… poor sleep can also lead to:

• Parkinson’s
• Multiple sclerosis
• Gastrointestinal tract disorders
• Kidney disease
• Behavioural problems

 
Now the last negative side-effect of bad sleeping habits I find very interesting.

The brain isn’t fully connected with the lymphatic system of the body. The lymphatic system is your sewage system where lymph fluid moves waste products around your body. Since the brain isn’t fully connected to the lymphatic system the brain has it’s own waste removal system called the glymphatic system. Now this glymphatic system works only when you sleep, well let’s just say it works a lot more when you sleep. It is barely active during the day, but when you sleep this system is in overdrive. The glymphatic system works by pumping cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) through your brain’s tissues flushing waste from your brain into your body’s bloodstream that then goes to your liver to be processed for elimination. It has also been found that your brain cells shrink about 60% which allows for more effective waste removal as the CSF flows more easily between the brain cells.

Okay so if you’re not getting enough QRS you’re not allowing your glymphatic system to switch on and to do it’s job of removing waste from your brain and your brain cells won’t be shrinking providing better removal of that waste.

But wait there’s more. Before I go more into how lack of sleep affects the brain I want to talk about dental health. Now we’ve all heard of dental plaque, right. Plaque on the teeth is formed by eating too much processed and refined sugary food-like products. Note I didn’t say food, they are pretend foods, okay. So processed and refined carbohydrates is the reason for plaque forming on your teeth. Why is that? Because sugar is a sticky substance. Ever heard of caramel, butterscotch and toffee. This causes a layer of bad bacteria to stick to your teeth. Now these bacteria thrive on sugar, they love sugar. When the bacteria eat sugar they produce acids and these acids eventually lead to tooth decay and gum disease.

Why am I talking about dental plaque? Your brain cells produce a protein called amyloid-beta and the majority of amyloid-beta is removed along with other brain waste products by your brain’s glymphatic system during the CSF flush while you sleep. However, with poor sleep causing you to become insulin resistant (meaning your brain cells won’t respond to insulin and take in excess sugar leaving the sugar to float around the brain) and poor sleep stopping your brain’s glymphatic system from removing amyloid-beta those amyloid-beta proteins will start to clump together and stick to each other and will build up overtime leading to the formation of amyloid plaques. Guess what’s found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients? Amyloid plaques.

So if you’re not getting enough sleep, if you’re not removing the waste from your brain, and if you’re consuming, eating, drinking, thinking a diet high in processed and refined sugary pretend food-like products this is potentially one cause for the buildup of amyloid-beta proteins and amyloid plaques with Alzheimer’s being the end result. Now Alzheimer’s is a chronic health condition and is a symptom that takes many many years, decades before it rises to the surface. So while people will be diagnosed with it in their later years 60s, 70s, and 80s, you actually get Alzheimer’s in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. It just takes its sweet time to show up.

So that’s the downside. That’s what happens against you when you don’t get enough sleep.

Let’s now get into some sacred sleep rituals that you can use to get QRS and improve your health and vitality.

As I’ve already mentioned if you can get to bed by 10p and sleep for six to eight hours that would be ideal, with going to sleep from midnight onwards being the worst.

You also need to reduce the amount of stimulants in your system after 2p. So no caffeine and nicotine after 2p. If you’re really struggling with sleep you’ll also want to stop consuming processed and refined sugars and alcohol in the evening as well. Okay so some of you may be thinking, ‘oh, but alcohol helps me fall asleep’. Yeah, alcohol’s a good drug for knocking you the freak out buddy, but you’re knocked out you’re not technically sleeping. You don’t get all the stages of sleep the full sleep cycle. You don’t get memory imprinting. You don’t get your brain’s glymphatic system doing what it’s meant to do. Your melatonin is low instead of high. You are knocked out, you are not sleeping with alcohol. So get rid of the stimulants after 2p and if need be keep away sugar and alcohol as well.

Another stimulant you need to remove in the evening is blue light, which has the same effect on your body as sunlight. Yes you want to get as much of it as you can during the day to help with melatonin production, but if your body thinks it’s day time while you’re indoors in the evening that’s going to prevent enough melatonin from being released helping you fall asleep. So as the sun goes down you want to reduce your exposure to blue light in the evening as much as possible. Where do you see blue light? In fluorescent and extremely bright lights, television screens, computer and laptop screens, mobile smart devices, LEDs on alarm clocks and small indicator lights. So for a light source you want low wattage amber coloured emitting light bulbs or use candles or fire from your fireplace is perfect. That’s what our ancestors evolved alongside with right.

One tip to reduce your blue light exposure is to wear amber or orange tinted glasses. So I have these amber-tinted safety goggles that I wear after sunset. I call these my anti-cancer glasses. Why? Because with these on the photoreceptors of my eyes are not getting bombarded with blue light from TVs, lights, or mobile devices allowing my body to release melatonin in the evening. Now these goggles are not the coolest or most stylish looking forms of eye-wear around, but you gots to do what you gots to do. It’s definitely helped me with my sleep. You can find these at your local hardware store or online. I’ll put a link to the pair I wear in the show notes for this episode.

There are programs and apps you can install on your computer and mobile device to change the colour temperature of the screen. Flux or f dot lux works for computers and iPhones (after you jailbreak your iPhone that is) and can be found at justgetflux.com. I personally have an Android device so I use the Twilight app that you can find on the Google Play Store. These apps are free too. Just be sure to set your geographical location properly and it’ll match with your local sunrise and sunset times and as the sun sets your screen will automatically turn amber, orange, and red.

It has been shown that exercising in the morning produces a stronger drive for sleep in the evening, okay. So exercise in the morning gives you the best sleep. Afternoon exercise will give you good sleep. Exercise too close to bedtime is not the best. Try each one out and see which one works best for you though, we’re all different. If you do feel the need to move in the evening do low intensity stuff like walking or yoga.

Next thing is you want to turn your bedroom or the room you sleep in into a sacred place just for sleep and for sexy times as well. You want to make it your sleep sanctuary. No longer is it your office, your kitchen, your dining room, or your entertainment living area. It’s a room for only sleep and sex. By entraining yourself and making the bedroom a sacred place for sleep you won’t be tempted to bring in work, to bring in food, to bring stressful baggage, and anything else that isn’t related to sleep or sex. So sleep and sex, that’s what your bedroom is for from now on if you want to have better sleep. As I say:

“There’s no need to count sheep, if you have the big O before you sleep.”

Okay? That should help with that there, alright.

First thing to do for your bedroom is to have it go dark, completely pitch black. If you have street lights or external sources of light coming in through your windows even with the curtains and blinds you have get blackout curtains. They’re really thick and block almost all light from coming through. Switch off or turn away alarm clocks and cover little lights and LEDs.

Also you want to keep the temperature of the room between 16 and 20°C or 60 and 68°F. As you wind down heat is released from your body as it prepares for sleep. If your bedroom is too hot your body will not reach its ideal temperature, which may disrupt your sleep.

Now it’s time to remove electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from the room. These EMFs interfere with your own body’s energetic field, your aura. If you have a cell phone or computer or any other electronic device near your body while you’re trying to sleep your aura will get out of balance disrupting your sleep. So switch off your devices and if you need to use them as an alarm put them into flight mode. Unplug any unused appliances and switch off your power points at the wall. Finally, turn off your wifi. This is the major source of EMFs in homes and businesses today. If someone needs to use the Internet get them hardwired in. Plug in a network cable, because wifi signals have a significant impact on your biology including sleep.

You also want to manage yourself when it comes to stress. If you’re stressed throughout the day, if your nervous system is in a sympathetic state, if you’re in fight, flight, flee, or freeze mode all day it’s going to be very difficult to calm down and wind down in the evening. It’s not impossible, but unless you have a meditation or gratitude practise that calms you down at night it’s going to be very hard for your stressed out body and mind to get into a nice rest, digest, calm, and connect state in order to fall and stay asleep.

Eating the right food at dinner can help you improve your sleep as well. Adding more whole real food carbohydrates like sweet potato, kumara, plantains, white potato, as well as white rice, to your meal makes tryptophan from the meat and fish protein you eat more available to the body giving you more serotonin and melatonin. Without the correct amount of carbs not as much tryptophan is converted. Aim to finish eating dinner at least two hours before bedtime.

Another food tip is if you’re going to eat closer to bedtime then make it a light snack full of protein and fat such as almonds, cheese, or for the best choice try a cup of warm bone broth. Drinking powdered gelatin and collagen mixed in with some water is also another good choice. Too much carbs close to bedtime will make it difficult to fall asleep.

So remember carbs at dinner or no carbs with your before-bedtime snack.

Alright so those are my tips for getting QRS.

Remember sleep is an important nutrient. Get it in your holistic lifestyle diet. Having poor sleep once in a blue moon isn’t going to kill you. Chronic lack of sleep, ongoing poor quality and neverending LRS on the other hand is a recipe for a very unawesome life.

Sweet dreams y’all.

Links and Resources

• Amber glasses
• f.lux
• Twilight app for Android
• Blackout curtains

 
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