You can lose weight without changing what you eat or doing one minute of exercise! It's a bold claim. And don't get me wrong: Nutrition and exercise are important! But there's another key to weight loss -- and most people don't even know about it. It's sleep.
In fact, besides eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health. On the flip side, sleep deprivation makes you fat -- AND leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and much more.
That's why in today's blog I want to talk about the impact sleep has on your health and give you 19 tips you can use to get a good night's rest and enjoy all the health benefits sleep has to offer. Let's start by talking about a rather serious sleep condition called sleep apnea.
The Dangers of Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a condition where your sleep is interrupted all night because your airway closes and your body startles you awake so you don't suffocate. This is a very common and extremely under-diagnosed problem. It affects 18 million Americans and most are NOT treated for it.
Let me tell you about one of my patients who was in that same predicament. He was so tired that he had to stand up at his computer to work during the day so he wouldn't fall asleep! His wife reported hearing his horrible snoring and gasping episodes at night. He would fall right asleep as soon as he sat down to watch TV at night.
Most frightening, he had fallen asleep at the wheel when driving. Then he came to see me. When we got his sleep apnea diagnosed (with a sleep study in a sleep lab) and got him treated with a device to keep his airway open at night, he lost 50 pounds, his blood pressure turned to normal -- and he got his life back.
But people with sleep apnea are not the only ones in trouble. It is estimated that 70 percent of Americans are sleep deprived. The era of Starbucks has been surpassed by an era of prescription stimulants to keep people awake and functioning, like dexadrine and Ritalin -- otherwise known as "speed" or amphetamines.
Surprisingly, I see an increasing number of patients prescribed these "uppers" by their psychiatrist because coffee is not enough to keep them energetic. It seems we believe that if you can't do ten things at once, something must be wrong with you. But this is preposterous.
Your biological rhythms keep you healthy and produce cyclic pulses of healing and repair hormones, including melatonin and growth hormone. When those rhythms are disturbed by inadequate or insufficient sleep, disease and breakdown get the upper hand.
We evolved along with the rhythms of day and night. They signal a whole cascade of hormonal and neurochemical reactions that keep us healthy by repairing our DNA, building tissues and muscle, and regulating weight and mood chemicals. The advent of the light bulb changed all that.
When you are sleep deprived, your cortisol rises -- and so do all its harmful effects, including brain damage and dementia, weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, depressed immunity, and more.
The reality is that most of us need at least eight hours of restful sleep a night. But meeting this goal has become more and more difficult. Partially because good sleep is not something that just happens (unless you are a baby or teenager). There are clearly defined things that interfere with or support healthy sleep. Here is what you need to do:
19 Tips to Improve Sleep
First, you have to prioritize sleep! I used to think that "MD" stood for "medical deity" and meant I didn't have to follow the same sleep rules as every other human being. I stayed up late working long shifts in the emergency room, ignoring the demands of my body to rest. It wasn't until I learned that shift work (like I did in when I worked in the emergency room) leads to a shortened life expectancy that I quit.
Unfortunately, our lives are infiltrated with stimuli -- and we keep stimulated until the moment we get into bed. This is not the way to get restful sleep. Frankly, it's no wonder we can't sleep well when we eat late dinners, answer emails, surf the Internet, or do work, and then get right into bed and watch the evening news about all the disaster, pain, and suffering in the world.
Instead we must take a little "holiday" in the two hours before bed. Creating a sleep ritual -- a special set of little things you do before bed to help ready your system physically and psychologically for sleep -- can guide your body into a deep, healing sleep.
We all live with a little bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome (or, I should say, traumatic stress syndrome, because for many of us there is nothing "post" about it). Much research has been done on the effects of stress and traumatic experiences and images on sleep. If you follow my guidelines for restoring normal sleep below, your posttraumatic stress may become a thing of the past.
Here's how restore your natural sleep rhythm. It may take weeks or months, but using these tools in a coordinated way will eventually reset your biological rhythms:
• Practice the regular rhythms of sleep -- go to bed and wake up at the same time each day
• Use your bed for sleep and romance only -- not reading or television
• Create an aesthetic environment that encourages sleep -- use serene and restful colors and eliminate clutter and distraction
• Create total darkness and quiet -- consider using eyeshades and earplugs
• Avoid caffeine -- it may seem to help you stay awake but actually makes your sleep worse
• Avoid alcohol -- it helps you get to sleep but causes interruptions in sleep and poor-quality sleep
• Get regular exposure to daylight for at least 20 minutes daily -- the light from the sun enters your eyes and triggers your brain to release specific chemicals and hormones like melatonin that are vital to healthy sleep, mood, and aging
• Eat no later than three hours before bed -- eating a heavy meal prior to bed will lead to a bad night's sleep
• Don't exercise vigorously after dinner -- it excites the body and makes it more difficult to get to sleep
• Write your worries down -- one hour before bed, write down the things that are causing you anxiety and make plans for what you might have to do the next day to reduce your worry. It will free up your mind and energy to move into deep and restful sleep
• Take a hot salt/soda aromatherapy bath -- raising your body temperature before bed helps to induce sleep. A hot bath also relaxes your muscles and reduces tension physically and psychically. By adding one-and-a-half to one cup of Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) and one-and-a-half to one cup of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to your bath, you will gain the benefits of magnesium absorbed through your skin and the alkaline-balancing effects of the baking soda, both of which help with sleep
• Get a massage or stretch before bed -- this helps relax the body making it easier to fall asleep
• Warm your middle -- this raises your core temperature and helps trigger the proper chemistry for sleep. Either a hot water bottle, heating pad, or warm body can do the trick
• Avoid medications that interfere with sleep -- these include sedatives (these are used to treat insomnia, but ultimately lead to dependence and disruption of normal sleep rhythms and architecture), antihistamines, stimulants, cold medication, steroids, and headache medication that contains caffeine (such as Fioricet)
• Use herbal therapies -- try passionflower, or 320 mg to 480 mg of valerian (valeriana officinalis) root extract standardized to 0.2 percent valerenic acid one hour before bed
• Take 200 to 400 mg of magnesium citrate or glycinate before bed -- this relaxes the nervous system and muscles.
• Other supplements and herbs can be helpful in getting some shuteye -- try calcium, theanine (an amino acid from green tea), GABA, 5-HTP, melatonin, and magnolia.
• Try one to three mg of melatonin at night -- melatonin helps stabilize your sleep rhythms.
• Get a relaxation, meditation or guided imagery CD -- any of these may help you get to sleep.
If you are still having trouble sleeping, you should be evaluated by your doctor for other problems that can interfere with sleep, including food sensitivities, thyroid problems, menopause, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, heavy metal toxicity, and, of course, stress and depression. Also, consider getting tested for a sleep disorder.
Sleep Testing: What You Need to Know
There are many medical sleep disorders, the most common (and most under-diagnosed) is sleep apnea. If you experience excessive daytime sleepiness, fatigue, snoring, and have been seen to stop breathing in the middle of the night by your spouse or partner, then you could be one of the many people with undiagnosed sleep apnea.
People with sleep apnea have a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and sudden death, so diagnosing and treating it is imperative. High blood pressure is a clue, because half of all people with high blood pressure have undiagnosed sleep apnea.
Get an overnight sleep study done in a sleep lab. It may the best thing you ever do for yourself. It might just save your life!
And remember -- don't skimp on sleep! It is one of the most powerful healing treatments available if you want to achieve lifelong vibrant health.
For more on sleep, I recommend The Promise of Sleep by William C. Dement MD, PhD (Random House, 1999).
Now I'd like to hear from you...
How much sleep do you typically get each night? Do you think it's enough?
If you are not getting enough sleep, what do you think is the cause?
What healthy sleep habits to you plan to start?
Have you noticed a connection between your weight or health and how much sleep you get?
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below.
To your good health
Mark Hyman, M.D.
Mark Hyman, M.D. practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center is a pioneer in functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is now sharing the 7 ways to tap into your body's natural ability to heal itself. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, watch his videos on Youtube and become a fan on Facebook.
Follow Mark Hyman, MD on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markhymanmd
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Is Sleep All It's Cracked To Be?
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Arianna Huffington: Sleep Challenge 2010: The Good, the Bad and the Coffee
Is it not time for this suppliment to make its way back into the mainstream?
Forget the leafy vegetables, warm milk, turkey, etc. where it exists naturally - eating them before bedtime is not the same as the suppliments I used to take.
I rememeber the L-tryptophan window being somewhat short, but very reliable.
Melatonin? When it did work, half the time I was groggy the next day. Never with L-tryptophan.
If this is out of synch with the physical body no herbs or drugs are going to work well.
But little is known about this body, except in some Eastern Medicine.
Life throws curveballs, and traumas that disrupt us. Exercise and diet go with balance, but only Time will cure if you are lucky.
We have materialistic values and are spiritually impoverished. That is the cause of unhappiness, which in turn upsets sleep.
2. Sleep on your side. if sleeping on your back, use a small round pillow which tilts your head back. this should do a lot to prevent sleep apnea. Head tilted forward restricts the air passageway.
3. Eat some ice cream or candy sweetened with sucrose before going to bed to reduce the cortisol.
4. Eat a low carb, high animal fat diet
5. If you wake up and cannot go back to sleep, eat some salty carb food, then go back to bed. Maybe even eat your entire breakfast except for the caffeine, then go back to bed. Then just have coffee for breakfast.
6. if your early morning temperature is consistently below 98F, you probably are hypothyroid, and will not sleep well until this is connected. A man needs 60g high quality protein per day minimum, a woman 50g per day minimum, or the thyroid will shut down. 50g carbs per day minimum also are necessary to keep the thyroid happy.
6. Take mineral supplements, but take no vitamin supplements. You need magnesium, as mentioned in the article, calcium, and Lugol's solution of iodine - to get the correct ratio of iodine to iodide. Do a Google search on' vitamin supplements cause cancer' to understand why no vitamin supplements.
7.If adequate protein, magnesium, and animal fats do not correct the thyroid problem, work with a Doctor to correct the problem. One will never sleep well if their metabolism is slow.
http://www.snoringisboring.com/
What worries me is that sleep deprivation is truly impacting my health. Other articles I've read in relation to this one list a series of symptoms caused by sleep-deprivation, and I have nearly every one of them. The holiday vacation restored me wonderfully, but only a week and a half into the new module, I'm spiraling downward: my blood-pressure is up, I grasp for the simplest words when teaching, the list of deprivation symptoms goes on and on. The school's schedule is hard and fast, and going "part time" doesn't make economic sense. I try to maximize my health in many other ways, but the sleep thing seems like a no-win situation. At least I sleep well, when I get to sleep.
What I want to do is find a $40/hour job that will allow me to work my own part-time schedule and be blissfully stress free. HaHa! Don't we all? Any other suggestions out there?
The best advice I can give is to work with the people you got your equipment from. They should be willing to help you find the best mask for you. And see your doctor if you think the pressure is wrong or something else you need adjusted. I actually had two sleep studies to make sure I had the exact right pressure levels and equipment prescription.
If you stick with it, you WILL feel better!!
I've been taking my shower at night whether or not I exercise because it helps me to sleep. I don't like baths because I get cold and bored (and I have to clean the tub more often.) But a nice hot shower at the end of the day is divine.
But I need more than 8 hours to feel rested and still nap 1-2 hours in the afternoon.
I'll be adding the salts to my bath ritual.
And may try melatonin too.
But at this point, I think I really need to find a holistic doctor and switch from Synthroid to natural dessicated thyroid.
If you are sleep-deprived, you will do things while awake to compensate for the fatigue, whether it is eating more (or the wrong type of food), drinking more coffee, smoking more cigarettes -- anything to fill the void left by a lack of sleep.