Got Sleep? Here’s A Wake Up Call!

Next week represents National Sleep Awareness Week, so if you have found yourself dozing off in the middle of day, at your desk or in the classroom, you are not alone in the CDC’s current wake up call.  More than one third of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep each night — a deficit that could put your health at risk, a new report  says.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed sleep surveys of 74,571 adults in 12 states and is offering up its findings in a report released Thursday. In questions about habits within the prior 30 days, almost 38% of respondents said they had fallen asleep by accident and almost 5% said they had nodded off or fallen asleep while driving. 

The map below depicts age-adjusted percentage of adults who reported 30 days of insufficient rest or sleep during the preceding 30 days. Data is from the 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States.

The health hazards of not getting enough sleep cannot be overlooked.  The official report is called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, and it states that “sleep difficulties, some of which are preventable, are associated with chronic diseases, mental disorders, health-risk behaviors, limitations of daily functioning, injury and mortality.”  It’s true – multiple studies have demonstrated the negative health consequences of insufficient sleep, which appears to afflicting more and more people as the years go by.  In this way, it sounds eerily similar to ‘catching a bug’, like something that gets you from the outside – a plague of sorts - though it actually has everything to do with our modern accoutrements and lifestyle choices.

Whether staying up late to finish a project or update your  facebook and twitter accounts, or overstressed and unrelaxed after a hectic day and catching up with the nightly news, proper sleep is something that your body cannot do without.  There is a saying in health, that if you do not give to your body what your body requires, it will take it from you regardless.  The way you see this is through various physical and psychological imbalances.  Everything from erratic blood sugar fluctuations and higher cortisol to strange mood swings can be some of the first signs.  Dozing off is to be expected.  And this can happen just after even 1-2 nights of poor sleep.

So what’s the goal to shoot for?  The National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep per day for adults and 10 to 11 hours for school-age children.

One of the first things to aim for in improving any health condition, is to improve the quality of your sleep.  This is why I mention sleep as one of the components of The Big 3 (click).  For those of you interested in taking the survey used by the National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), click here and see how you score.

Night Night!

The Big 3

Continuing along with the theme of ‘effective simplicity’, I’d like to dive in some more with you on the 3 main areas to focus on regarding your health that you will derive the greatest benefit  and get the biggest bang for your buck from, if you simply apply these consistently.  This is what I call ‘The Big 3’ – nutrition, exercise, and sleep.  This is to help you sort through all the competing influences of health information that you read  and see in the magazines, newspaper articles and television shows, which if you are like most people, end up leaving you more confused and not sure what to do to improve your health. 

It goes something like this —- Should I use the microwave?  I heard it’s bad for you.  Oh yes, gotta throw out the plastic – bad for you too.  Drink goji juice.  Don’t eat starch and meat at the same time.  Never eat fruit with other foods.  Umm, let’s see, also have to eat oats to lower my cholesterol right?  Oh yeah, gotta stay away from egg yolks, because that will give me a heart attack.  And don’t put anything in aluminum foil – it will give me Alzheimer’s.   I have to get my heart rate in the ‘fat-burning zone’ to burn fat because other exercises will boost my cortisol too much and cause me to gain belly fat – can’t do that.  What’s that special pill my friend was telling me about?  She heard from someone somewhere that it cured their diabetes — gotta remember to ask her………you get the picture, on and on, ad nauseum.   While some of this may be true, where is the leverage?  What are the things that are going to make the most difference?  Enter ‘The Big 3′.

 ‘Big 1’: Nutrition

Perhaps the single most important factor in your nutrition is a diet that works for you to keep your blood sugar stable.  I have spoken extensively about the role of proper blood sugar management here and here.  Keeping your blood sugar stable will greatly contribute to greater energy levels which don’t rise and fall as the tides do, but stay steady and calm providing you with a sense of well-being including better mood and emotional balance.  Good blood sugar control is paramount to healthy aging; in fact, the aging process – how rapidly you age – is determined by the damage that high blood sugar exerts on your tissues over time.  Serious stuff here.

Appetite is directly tied into blood sugar levels, so when there is balance here, your appetite is normalized and you won’t constantly crave processed foods – the sweets and treats and refined baked goods that oftentimes for many of us are hard to resist.  Multiple studies have shown that processed, refined carbohydrates are the key players in the onset of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and many forms of cancer; we know this well by now, but we need to get to a point where we don’t crave them because willpower will only get us so far in helping us avoid eating these ‘foods’.  Our bodies have to come to a point where there are no strong desires for them, and this is done simply through a process of regulating your blood sugar. 

So how do you know if your blood sugar is stable or not?  Please go back to my radio show posts I mentioned above, take a listen to them, and find out.  You’ll know by some reference ranges in your bloodwork such as fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C, as well just seeing how you feel after eating meals.  For instance, if you find yourself tired or grumpy after eating, that particular combination of foods is probably not helpful to you.

So the question is, what to do about it.  Drawing from my own personal experience, my professional clinical experience in working with hundreds of people, and what the overwhelming majority of research studies done in this field has to say, a diet that is low in these highly refined carbohydrates is a starting point for everyone.  These are the ‘foods’ that cause massive disturbance in blood sugar levels, so of course you would want to avoid them.  What about whole grains?  For many of you, these can be worked in your diet just fine, but keep an eye out for the above symptoms, for these also can generate high blood sugar levels.  Note that some of you will simply not do well with whole grains – you could be genetically predisposed to blood sugar problems and thus it is not surprising that you don’t do well with them.  You may experience bloating or have the same energy crashes I mentioned above as with the simple, refined carbohydrates.  Furthermore, many of you are sensitive to gluten, a substance found in most grains, and that just adds to the problem, insult to injury.  If you are pre-diabetic or diabetic (type II), I would suggest to work with your doctor or healthcare provider to gain control over this, because with proper care and attention, your body may be able to recover, heal and return to good health.  Diet is key, no question about it, and as Hippocrates indeed stated so long ago, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food.” 

What to eat?  Well, let’s take a good look around us, and in particular, around the grocery store, along the perimeter.  What’s there?  Fresh foods – fruits and vegetables, meat, chicken, seafood, eggs, dairy and cheese (if you are not intolerant).  I gave a whole 2 hour seminar recently where I spoke of the necessity of having the bulk of our diet come from these foods, in an effort to stabilize blood sugar levels, stabilize the important hormone insulin, and therefore vastly improve our health.  Ditch the soda, fruit juice and sports drink and develop the fresh taste of pure water.  No need to count calories on this type of approach, for your appetite normalizes, you feel fuller longer, and your energy levels consistently improve while your body composition and weight balance out.  Other benefits soon follow – lower blood sugar levels, improved cholesterol profiles, better blood pressure control, lowered inflammation – all major risk factors for chronic illness tend to improve.  I will write much more in this topic in future posts to do this piece justice.

 ‘Big 2’: Exercise

One quick, casual glance at the human body and you can immediately see that it was designed for movement.   The vast network of structural, functional muscles as they attach to the various bones in our body which act as levers for muscle to attach to, allow for swift and efficient movement, movement that has to occur regularly if there is going to be any use for our muscles and bones.  The fact of the matter is, that our muscles are very metabolically active tissue, meaning that they require lots of energy from food if they are used properly and they contribute a very very large portion to our overall health.  When used, energy requirements go up and lucky for us, we get to eat more.  The key here is, of course, used properly.  If we don’t use them, then we must lose them. 

In a time where we had to physically work for our food, our muscles were constantly being called into action and we did not have to think about exercise for it was a natural part of daily living and our survival depended on it.  With the advent of agriculture and the commodities of modern living, our physical exertions became less and less, and as a result we have become more sedentary.  The consequences of this have come at a high cost, because first and foremost, the more sedentary we are, the more our caloric needs go down – yet we leave in a time of abundance, with all types of artificial foods around us which trick our natural appetite and hunger mechanisms to the point where we cannot intuitively rely on them.  We then have to consciously curb portions, and one question to always ask here is – “how’s that working for you?”   Remember that willpower alone will only get you so far if you are constantly feeling hungry.   You gotta work the balance, and this balance relies on blood sugar.

Well guess what?  Exercise is well known to enhance insulin sensitivity, which helps maintain stable blood sugar levels.  That’s right, exercise is good medicine.  It effectively allows you to eat more carbohydrates than if you did not exercise, and that is most helpful in the sea of carbohydrate abundance we live in today.  Most people when they crave food, they crave chips, breads, pasta, cereal, cookies, crackers —- refined carbohydrates; they don’t crave meat, eggs, vegetables and fruits necessarily, do they? (Unless they’re pregnant of course, then all generalities go out the window!)  Well, part of this is because these carbohydrates cause a quick increase in serotonin in the brain, and that is a feel-good neurotransmitter – you are immediately rewarded with stress reduction when you eat these foods; however, the price you ultimately pay for that down the road is far greater.  Spiraling out of control glucose levels and associated inflammatory damage is occurring when this gets out of hand, and statistics do show that 50% of adult Americans will be either full blown diabetic or at the least pre-diabetic by 2020 if this continues.  Regular exercise and physical fitness allows us to get away with more carbohydrate in the diet, plain and simple, because the blood sugar is burned off for energy, not left floating around in the bloodstream causing harm.

So, exercise for good health and well-being.  Find something fun and stick to it consistently.  Explore what may be a new type of fun for you – try some yoga, pilates, strength training, swimming, biking, tennis, etc.  What is fun you will most likely continue with.  Find a friend to make this fun for you if you are the more social type and need motivation.  But by all means, as Nike is famous for saying, “Just Do It.”  Many more posts to come on this topic too.

 ‘Big 3’: Sleep

Ok, now right after reading this, turn out the lights and go to sleep.  Seriously?  Seriously folks.  What’s the average amount of sleep you get per night?  If you are like most people, then roughly about 6 to 6.5 hours per night.  That’s not going to cut it for optimal health and well-being.  It has been shown that the body will sleep about an average of 8.5 hours if left uninterrupted, and this is to facilitate the regeneration and repair of all tissues and organs in your body.  Your body grows most at night while asleep, if you are looking to put on muscle.  Your body works more diligently to combat infection while asleep, which is why oftentimes fevers are more pronounced at night.  Your conscious, active part of the nervous system takes a back seat to rest and lets other parts of the brain become more dominant so that it can wake up in the morning and do it all over again.  Once again, with the advent of modern living and technology, we have sacrificed sleep requirements for getting more things done.

You owe it to yourself to rearrange your priorities and responsibilities to slowly but surely allow for more sleep.  Many of you are wakeful at night and/or have difficulty falling asleep.  If it’s a chronic problem, seek attention and please view my previous posts on the importance of sleep and what you can do about it.  It’s that critical, because so many things in your health hang on this one very critical facet of life.  Case in point: a study was performed on two groups of Olympic athletes – people who were very fit and ate a healthy diet.  One group was the control group, where everything was the same, and the only difference  in the test group was that they were instructed to restrict their sleep to just under 6 hours.  Within 3 days, this control group developed blood sugar levels in the range of pre-diabetes!

Your quality of sleep is an effective barometer of how your body is dealing with stress.  Typically good sleep equates with good stress control.  You can probably see how poor stress control also dovetails into less healthy food choices and lack of motivation for physical activity.  Better sleep, better stress control, more motivation to live a healthier lifestyle.

The Road Ahead

How can you have more energy and experience a greater sense of well-being?  How can you most simply and effectively improve your health condition?  Acknowledge the  ‘Big 3’ and start letting the big changes into your life that are surely to follow.  No matter what your limitations may be, there is always something you can do to help yourself here, and if you need further help, please ask us.  This is who we are, and this is what we do.

I trust that this helps you as you read and hear about the next dietary or fitness trend that is due to hit the bookshelves, magazine stands and airwaves – ask yourself, how does it square up to the ‘Big 3’?  My hope is that this simplifies your understanding of what it takes to be healthy and feel well, for these 3 areas will always be the foundation of health.

A prosperous 2011 New Years to you and yours, and feel free to let me know what your thoughts are on the topic.  We always love to hear from you!

Ricardo Boye

BSI Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.  ~Irish Proverb

Now that we’ve come to appreciate more the benefits of proper sleep, I’d like to discuss some good habits that will help facilitate a restful eve’s slumber.  Remember that sleep is just as important as being awake, as the two help balance out that basic biological pattern I spoke about in my last post, the ‘circadian rhythm’.  Ever wonder why it’s almost considered normal these days if you have trouble falling asleep, but if you ever have trouble waking up, and I don’t mean just feeling groggy in the morning, but actually waking up, then you’ve got a first class ticket to the emergency room?  Double standard, I say.  Anyhow, our brains sometimes won’t shut off, and we tend to just shrug it off as not much of a big deal.  Little do we know we are contributing to some serious problems down the road.

This circadian rhythm helps manage your natural, internal sleep clock.  When this cycle works correctly, sleep comes easily and you will tend to sleep through the night.  Your body asks for sleep on time, and wakes on time, not even needing an alarm clock – ever had that happen?  When the cycle comes off its axis, then the sleep clock gets damaged and no telling when you’ll get to sleep or how long you will remain asleep or when you’ll awake for that matter!  As a result, your whole body and metabolism suffers and then a host of problems associated with your appetite, weight gain, hormones and energy levels soon follow.   These are the first signs of sleep deprivation, and others much more serious can develop over time.

Deep sleep allows your body to produce human growth hormone, also known as hGH, and this is the most potent anti-depressant and mood-elevator there is.   Furthermore, this hormone is an essential player in cellular regeneration, helping your body to repair damaged, worn out cells, and replace them with new, fresh, healthy cells.  Do you have some illness you’ve been struggling with for some time?  Well then get too sleep.  Are you tired, achy from a hard day’s work and subsequent exercise session?  Get some sleep.  Are you feeling run down with a cold or the flu?  Sleep it off.  On the converse, are you feeling energetic and vibrant?  Maintain that state by relying on good sleep.  Sometimes it’s easier said than done.

So, here’s my top 10 (plus 1!) things to do to get some shut-eye:

1. The attitude of gratitude.  This I learned from a friend a few years back and since then, I’ve seen this method employed by many people with great effect.  In the spirit of journaling, write down everything you can think of that you are grateful for, that very day.  No need to go over 1 full page, but just write and think about people, places, events that you are grateful for.   Start your sentences with “I am thankful/grateful for…..”.    This helps keep one’s world in perspective, as it is quite easy to allow the mind to get wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of the day.  As you write, the heart will soften and you will tend to entertain feelings of greater confidence in that things will work out just fine.  The mind can have ‘a mind of its own’ and it can easily get whipped up into a frenzy of anxiety and worry — the attitude of gratitude can swiftly soften these tensions.  This step may be the most important one for you – please do not overlook.
2. The golden rule.  Look at your day and think about one nice thing that you did for someone that nobody asked you to do.  Write it down.  Then think about one nice thing that someone did for you.  Write it down.  Then write down anything you may have learned in the process, any valuable life lesson that taught you how to be a better person, a greater person.  This takes honesty and humility and can be challenging, but life surely ends up rewarding those who display these very same qualities in due time.
3. De-clutter and darken your bedroom.  Make your bedroom a sanctuary.  Make it a dark sanctuary for the purposes of relaxation and regeneration.  This means, get black-out curtains if you need them and shut off all sources of light.  Better yet, move out any electrical appliances such as TVs and radios, entertainment systems – multiple studies have shown the hazardous effects that even small amounts of light have on our body’s internal clocks by upsetting the release of various nighttime hormones such as melatonin.  Yes, even the small lights from an alarm clock – it’s true!  Turn it around or stand it on its face.  Have a sleep mask at hand if your loved one insists on staying up to read.  If you need to get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, do not turn on the light.  Some folks will need to even remove all electrical appliances that are plugged in to the wall of their bedrooms because of the radiating electromagnetic fields that these cause, and how they potentially upset brain waves (more on this topic in the future).
4. Avoid carbohydrates and sugars before bed.  This is especially true of processed, refined starches such as breads, crackers, cereal and the likes – not to mention candy or even fruit for some.  The reason is that these can provoke a low-blood sugar response hours after you eat them (reactive hypoglycemia), stressing your adrenal glands and this will cause you to wake between 1 – 3 am.  Ever had that happen?  A snack of just a small handful of nuts can be helpful if you need, as these contain magnesium and tryptophan which can relax the nervous system.
5. Eat a light dinner.  This is for those of you who lie down and feel heavy, uncomfortable, and perhaps suffer from digestive reflux.  No chance for a good night’s sleep when this happens.  Eat light, and have at least 3 hours between the end of dinner and bedtime.
6. Drink in moderation for best sleep.  This one has to be mentioned because it applies to many people.  One glass of a nice fine wine can do wonders to help many people de-stress, but more than one can end up interfering with a good night’s sleep.  It has to do with the liver’s detoxification mechanism which gets up regulated during the night, and more so if it has to process more alcohol.  Alcohol is a toxin and toxins are dose-dependant.
7. Drop the temperature.  Now this is very interesting.  Research has shown that optimal sleep temperatures are somewhere around 65 degrees Fahrenheit.   I can remember in more than one client of mine, that nothing helped them improve their sleep, absolutely nothing short of sedation, until they dropped the temperature in the room to at least 70 degrees.  Try it.  Best to pile the covers on, as there is nothing worse than being uncomfortable at night just because your body temperature is up.
8. Do some simple stretching.  This provides amazing benefits to the nervous system.  The best stretches for relaxation are those that you hold for 15 seconds and breathe deeply.  Target the lower back, hamstrings and neck for best effect.  Try a light yoga workout if you are more adventurous.   If you can’t do any of this, then lie on the floor, and prop your legs on a chair or on your bed if it’s not too high.  Lie there for 5-10 minutes while you focus on breathing deeply – this helps to activate your parasympathetic nervous system which is the first step towards your body relaxing.
9. Use aromatherapy with or without a bath, along with a cup of ‘sleepytime tea’.  Essential oils like lavender, and certain herbs like chamomile and valerian, have long been staples in homes across the world for their restorative properties.  They help bring about a sense of ease and calm, very gently and naturally, and can even be used with children.
10. Instead of the nightly news, watch a comedy.  Laughter is golden, one of nature’s best cures.
11. Take your supplements.  This is the last one here, and I won’t go into details about which supplements to use because there are many, and in my practice, as many of you are already aware, I test people for what nutritional supplements they are best suited for individually.  What works for you may not work for your friends and family members as we all share both similars and differences.   Most people will do fine with the first ten steps, and if you really have further problems, then consider getting tested with our (click here) bioenergetic assessment. 

Folks, remember this old saying –

Early to bed, Early to rise (and proper exercise!), Makes a (wo)man healthy, wealthy and wise.

or…….sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!  (did I have to go there….?)

Have a great night’s sleep!

Say ‘Nighty-Nite’ to Weight Loss!

In our efforts to shrink our waistline, we often overlook some of the most important factors that may be preventing us from losing weight more easily.  Your body works as a whole system, and so it is that losing weight involves much more than simply “eating less and moving more.”   You have to have the right balance of hormones working in harmony so that your body is not like salmon swimming upstream, fighting the natural flow.   How much easier things are when you are swimming with the current, using the least amount of energy necessary to get the job done.  We already have enough challenges as it is when wanting to lose weight, with all the unhealthy foods and treats around tempting us to overindulge, don’t you think?  Let’s make this easier if we possibly can!

As a healthcare professional, one of the first things that I do in helping people lose weight and become healthier is ask about their sleep habits.   This is because the sleep cycle forms part of one of the most basic and foundational aspects of our biology called the ‘circadian rhythm’.  I often describe this as a stable axis around which all of our other bodily processes revolve around, and we have a variety of hormones and brain chemicals which regulate this rhythm.  We are diurnal in nature, programmed to be active in the day and to sleep at night, and if anything goes wrong with this system, then the system loses its axis and begins to wobble.   This spells trouble for our health, and a new study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine demonstrates how this affects our ability to lose weight.

In this study, the authors examined whether “recurrent bedtime restriction” affected the amount of weight people lost when dieting, increased their hunger, and affected their leptin and ghrelin serum concentrations. They also examined changes in circulating cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, thyroid, and growth hormone concentrations due to sleep loss.  Dr. Arlet V.Nedeltcheva, MD, from the University of Chicago, Illinois, and colleagues found that a lack of sufficient sleep may compromise the effectiveness of a well-planned diet and exercise program, because it caused a primary imbalance in the body’s hormones which then affects how they body uses and burns energy.

Senior study author Plamen Penev, MD, PhD, from the University of Chicago reported, “These results highlight the importance of adequate sleep for maintenance of fat-free body mass when dieting to lose weight.  Among other hormonal effects, we found that sleep restriction caused an increase in ghrelin levels in the blood.  Ghrelin is a hormone that has been shown to reduce energy expenditure, stimulate hunger and food intake, promote retention of fat, and increase glucose production in the body. This could explain why sleep-deprived participants also reported feeling hungrier during the study.”

So, this is partly why I am always emphasizing good sleep and proper rest in our lives.  Sleep is when we recharge, plug ourselves back into the energy grid and allow the whole system to reset itself, ready for a new day’s work (you can tell I am part of the computer generation, can’t you?)  When we sleep, we heal, we grow and repair muscle fibers after we exercise, and now we are learning that we lose weight too!  Just watch some new infomercial coming out — “sleep and lose weight with our new cryogenic fat-blasting chamber!  We’ll put you to sleep, freeze you, and then wake you up 10-40 years from now a shadow of your former self!”  Sorry, I couldn’t resist……  :)

Anyhow, take the time to focus on what your body requires for good sleep, and when I say good sleep, I don’t mean the type where you wake up groggy from certain medications or certain supplements and feel like you have been run over by a truck.  Nutritional science today has discovered that key nutrients such as magnesium, b-vitamins and certain amino acids are required in sufficient amounts for the nervous system to engage in deep sleep.  Furthermore, the amounts needed can vary from one person to the next – you may need more than your spouse due to genetic variability, or acquired deficiencies.  Gentle approaches like certain homeopathic remedies can be incredibly useful too.  What about adrenal stress and hormone stress….this can be another factor — what are you doing to address this?  Ever notice as you go through ‘life changes’, that your sleep gets disturbed?  This happens to everybody, male and female, and we all need proper nutritional support first and foremost.  Proper testing and evaluation of your health can open the door to a new you.

The basic overall health triad is “Exercise – Nutrition – Sleep”.  Focus on a balance of these and your health will surely improve.  I’ll be talking about proper sleep hygiene on my next post, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Ann Intern Med. 2010;153:435-441, 475-476.