Good Sleep Hygiene

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:03:01 +0000

I’ve written about sleep before, but sleep is critical to good health. Just ask anyone who isn’t getting any! Let’s have a refresher.

Poor sleep means waking frequently throughout the night, difficulty falling asleep, or waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. This affects every area of your life: you feel foggy, irritable, unable to concentrate, and you may experience cravings or increased hunger due to imbalanced blood sugar.

While we sleep, our immune systems are most active, scavenging through the body for abnormal cells, kind of like the night cleaning crew. Organs detoxify and repair and regeneration occurs. Lack of sleep means you’re robbing your body of this crucial process, and you may notice accelerated aging and higher susceptibility to illness.

Insomnia or poor sleep can be caused by a number of factors. A very common culprit is high cortisol. Cortisol is your main stress hormone, and it is high during times of stress to sharpen senses and increase chances of survival (if you were, say, outrunning a tiger). After the stress passes, cortisol should lower, but if you remain stressed out for long periods of time and cortisol stays high, it affects your overall hormonal balance.

Other than acute periods of stress, cortisol should be highest first thing in the morning to wake you, and lowest at night so you can fall asleep. If your cortisol levels do not fall naturally during the day because you are constantly under stress, you will have trouble falling asleep, or wake throughout the night. Ever have that wired feeling at night when you should be tired? Likely due to high stress hormones.

Get your cortisol levels tested. We offer a very easy take-home saliva test, and it is easy to correct imbalanced stress hormone levels. Lifestyle changes along with a treatment plan are critical to rebalance stress hormones.

For everyone that has trouble sleeping, practicing good sleep hygiene can make all the difference. Here are some tips:

*First, check your bedroom. Make it as dark as possible (think cave). Remove electric appliances, save for an alarm clock that is not directly next to your head. That means no tv, no stereo, and absolutely NO computers or cell phones.

*Create a sleep ritual and get your body on a schedule. Plan to go to bed at 10:30 or 11pm every night. What’s important is to get to bed at the same time every night. Start an hour before you hit the sack: stop watching tv, put down the computer, and start winding down with a cup of herbal tea (chamomile, skullcap, valerian, passion flower, lemon balm). Take an epsom salt bath–the magnesium will help you sleep. Then get in bed and read for 30 minutes til you fall asleep. Do this every night.

*Take the minerals magnesium and calcium in the evening to relax your nervous system.

*Taking 50mg of 5HTP in the evenings can also help. 5HTP is the precursor to serotonin, which regulates sleep, mood, and appetite.

*Stop drinking so much coffee! Even if you drink in the mornings, it can affect sleep at night (caffeine has a long half life). Stop drinking caffeinated herbal teas after 3pm and absolutely no coffee after noon!

*If you toss and turn and can’t fall asleep after 30 minutes, pick up a book and read, or do another relaxing activity, then try again.

*If you wake up around 3 or 4am feeling wired and can’t get back to sleep, the culprit might be blood sugar. Nocturnal hypoglycemia means your blood sugar drops too low at night, signaling to your brain that you need food, so your brain signals to your body to wake you. Eat a snack about 30 minutes before bed. Try a potato or some yogurt – sounds funny, but it works. Potatoes increase serotonin, and yogurt is high in tryptophan. But any small protein-based snack will work. NOT sugar or refined carbs, which will exacerbate the problem. Other ideas are toast with nut butter, eggs, nuts, or a gluten-free bran muffin.

*Avoid alcohol, which affects blood sugar and interferes with nighttime liver detox. If you wake between 1am and 3am, especially take this under consideration.

*Avoid heavy meals three hours before bed.

*Consider kicking your snoring partner out into the guest bedroom. Better yet, figure out why he/she is snoring. This is an entire other post. Hmmmm.

Solutions for Sound Sleep

admin — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:21:03 +0000

One of the most common concerns I run across with my clients is insomnia – the inability to sleep altogether, or trouble falling or staying asleep. Sleep is vital to good health! And well being! Everyone knows that frazzled and fatigued feeling you get when you haven’t had a good night’s rest. I’ll share some strategies for getting a good eight hours’ worth.

We function according to daily circadian rhythms that tell us when to sleep and when to wake, in accordance with the rise and fall of the sun. Cortisol levels peak in the early morning hours to get us out of bed as the sun rises and taper off as the sun sets, reaching their lowest levels three hours after dark. This daily rhythm of cortisol dictates when we should be our most active and when we should rest. Cortisol not only dictates our sleep and wake states: it is also the primary hormone involved in directing immune system functioning.

circadian rhythm

One reason why good sleep is so vital is because that is when the immune system does the majority of its work. As cortisol drops at night, we enter into rest and recovery, physical repair and psychic regeneration, and immune cells become more active. Our immune system will function optimally if we to go to sleep by 10 p.m: Physical repair takes place between 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. when immune cells patrol our bodies, eliminating cancer cells, bacteria, viruses and other harmful agents. If your circadian rhythm is disrupted and cortisol is elevated at night, this immune function is compromised, and you probably aren’t getting restful sleep. You may feel run down or susceptible to illness.

Most people need a good solid eight hours. I feel best with nine. But too much sleep can be detrimental as well. More than ten hours could signal a problem like depression or chronic fatigue from depleted cortisol levels and burned out adrenal glands. When you go to sleep makes a difference too: if you wait too late past 10pm, you’re missing out on vital immune system repair.

The best way to ensure restful sleep is to practice good sleep hygiene. Make sure your bedroom is as uncluttered as possible, is the proper temperature, and is very dark at night. Your body produces the important antioxidant melatonin at night, and production is stimulated by darkness. This is one reason why people who work the night shift have higher rates of cancer than those with regular schedules. Also, some people are sensitive to the EMFs of alarm clocks and other electronics like tvs and stereos, so it’s best to keep these out of the bedroom altogether, save for an alarm clock that should not be directly next to your head.

an excellent minimalist feng shui-ed bedroom. wish it was mine.....

Enhance sleep by taking time to wind down before bed. Try a hot bath with epsom salts and lavender essential oil. Drink herbal teas or try tinctures with chamomile, passion flower, valerian. These are nervine herbs that relax the nervous system. Also try tinctures or herbal supplements with adaptogenic herbs such as rhodiola, ashwaganda, or siberian ginseng. Get to bed at the same time every night to establish a regular schedule. If you tend to wake frequently throughout the night, a snack with protein and complex carbs shortly before bed can help stabilize your blood sugar. When your blood sugar drops too low at night, your brain tells you to wake up because it needs fuel! Yogurt is great because it has both protein and tryptophan, an essential amino acid that aids sleep. Other good sources are eggs, nuts and seeds, poultry, and bananas (eat with a protein like dairy or nuts to avoid a blood sugar crash – bananas are high in sugar). Alcohol can adversely affect sleep due to its sugar content and overburden placed on the liver. Avoid heavy meals at night too.

When clients come to me with sleep disturbances, I give them the adrenal stress hormone saliva test to assess cortisol levels. If you have high cortisol at night, you’re not going to sleep well, or at all. Also, low progesterone in women can affect sleep; some women notice they don’t sleep as well later on in their cycles. It is easy to correct hormonal imbalances with bio-identical hormones once I know the results, and people often see improvements right away.

Aside from herbs, also try a mineral complex in the evenings – calcium and magnesium are especially necessary for sleep. Try up to 500mg of both after dinner. Taking 5-htp, the precursor to serotonin, can help. Inositol enhances REM sleep. Take 100 mg daily, at bedtime. Try a B complex during the day to reduce stress (not at night, it can be stimulating). Also try melatonin, 1.5 mg an hour or so before bed. Gradually increase the dose if this doesn’t work, up to 5mg.

Finally, it doesn’t hurt to have a good quality mattress. Organic bedding is all the rage right not and for good reason: some folks are so chemically sensitive that chemicals used for mattress processing can affect them.

Sleep well!

Holistic Nutrition Bytes--San Francisco Nutrition Consultation » insomnia

Good Sleep Hygiene

Solutions for Sound Sleep