Sleep

Today’s Teaching Video from Coach Kelsey:

Homework:

1) Do your sleep math problem.

2) Start to pay attention to your sleep. Is it taking more than 5-10 minutes to fall asleep? Are you waking up multiple times a night? Are you waking up at the same time every night? Do you feel rested when you wake up? What does your sleep hygiene look like? What things could you focus on tweaking as it pertains to sleep? Start implementing some of the sleep tips if you are currently not sleeping well.

Teaching:

Sleep: A time to detox and repair the brain.

We work out of our REST Biblically speaking:

Our days and our weeks start with rest. That’s because God knows what we need and He wants us to get full of Him to be able to go serve fully. He needs to fuel our tanks to go out and run the race. Life STARTS with Him!

EVEN HEROES NEED SLEEP.  WELL, ESPECIALLY HEROES.

What if I told you that a large sleep study was done comparing sleep and death that found people who slept 6 hours nightly versus those who slept 7 to 9 hours had a 21% higher risk of death during the study. And it was done over 14 years! There’s more evidence from a 22-year study that shows even worse news, even for those who use prescription sleep aids!

Research shows that poor sleep – less than 6 hours per night – significantly increases the risk of poor health conditions, including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease.

In her book “Go to Bed”, Mom Sarah Ballantyne finds that:
• Sleep disorders increase the risk of developing an autoimmune condition by 50%.
• Sleeping less than 6 hours per night increases risk of obesity by 55% in adults (90 percent in children!).
• Sleeping less than 6 hours per night increases the risk of type 2 diabetes by 50%.
• Routinely sleeping less than six hours per night doubles the risk of stroke, doubles the risk of myocardial infarction, increases the risk of congestive heart failure by 67%, and increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 48%.
• The amount of sleep you get upon and after breast cancer diagnosis is a predictor of survival, and getting less than six hours of sleep increases the risk of death by 46%.

This correlation with disease can be attributed to how sleep throws off other cycles in the body.

Sleep is not the boring part between memorable moments. It’s what makes those moments possible. When you sleep, your body and mind regenerate from the stress of the day. And the need for sleep never goes away – especially if you’re pushing yourself creatively, professionally or athletically.

 

FACT: More than 83 million Americans do not get enough sleep.

Why Sleep?

  • Sleep is where the body recovers best, but a DEEP state of sleep is required.
  • It’s your biological maintenance.

 

How much Sleep?

7-9 hours a night is average sleep need. 

 

Sleep Chronotypes:

Chronotypes are your circadian rhythm: (your body’s preference)

  1. Morning person – more focused early in the morning, more creative and productive before 3 or 4pm. 
  2. Night owl – more focused after 2pm, life is more effective after 2pm 
  3. Advanced sleep based syndrome – in order for them them to function they need to go to bed at 8pm and they do better waking up between 4 and 5 am. This is genetically coded in you. (more rare)
  4. Delayed sleep based syndrome – opposite of the above. (more rare)

IT’S OK TO BE ANY OF THESE!

The problem is often just that we do not adapt our lifestyles to our sleeping chronotype, our sleeping preferences so we end up not getting enough sleep…..get the 7-9 hours, whether that’s 8 to 4, 9 to 5, 10 to 6, 11 to 7, whatever!

 

Sleep Equation:

How much sleep are you really getting? Follow this formula for figuring out your true number.

Time you go to bed to time you wake up. Ex. 8 hours.

—Subtract—

How long does it take you to fall asleep? Ex. 30 minutes

—Subtract—

Do you get up in the night due to light sleeping or use the restroom? If so, how much time is that? Ex. 30 minutes.

—Subtract—

How long does it take you to fall back asleep each time? Ex. 10 minutes x 3 wake ups = 30 minutes

SO WHILE WE STARTED WITH 8 HOURS OF SLEEP, AFTER DOING THE SUBTRACTIONS, WE WERE LEFT WITH ONLY 6.5 HOURS.

 

Understanding Sleep:

In lighter sleep stages: 

  • Brain waves are extremely slow.
  • Blood flow is directed away from your brain and towards your muscles, restoring tissues
  • Plays a major role in maintaining your health, stimulating growth and development, repairing muscles and tissues, and boosting your immune system.

 

In deeper sleep stages:

  • Maintenance the brain.

 

When you’re sleep deprived, 3 progress-prohibiting things happen:

  1.  you feel hungrier
  2.  you eat more food
  3.  you make poor food choices

Missing out on sleep interferes with the normal rhythms of your hunger hormones. 

  • When you get fewer than 7 hours of sleep (even in the short term), Ghrelin increases and leptin decreases, which is why you likely find yourself hungry or after a restless night.
  • Studies show that missing a few hours of sleep even just one night causes people to eat an average of 559 calories more the next day.
  • Being deprived of sleep for just one night causes the brain reward centers to go buck wild when they see images of high-fat, refined, carbohydrate heavy processed foods.
  • Lack of sleep feeds into the stress cycle by impacting your memory, judgment, and mood, making you much more susceptible to feeling stressed. Not only are you more susceptible to stress, but lack of sleep lowers the Threshold at which you perceive stress –  meaning you’re likely to interpret the same situation as more stressful if you had a late night verses when you’re well rested.
  • One study showed that people who logged 4 hours of sleep for five consecutive nights already started to show a 3% decrease in resting energy expenditure, about 42 calories per day. Furthermore when people are tired, they are two to three times more likely to skip their planned workout.

 

Sleep deprivation, in combination with late night eating, causes more damage:

    • During sleep we produce growth hormone that help repair damaged cells 
      • When we sleep less, we have less of this growth hormone present to repair our cells
    • When we eat late into the night, our stomach is thus working late into the night to digest the food – so the stomach cannot repair itself
    • Lack of growth hormone, in conjunction with food in the stomach, slows down the repair process
      • This causes damage in the gut which can accumulate
      • When the gut lining is damaged – allergy causing food particles or disease causing bacteria can enter the blood and cause more inflammation

Sleep is a foundational bedrock for our ability to learn from experience. Without sufficient sleep, our ability to learn – the acquisition of new memories – begins to rapidly break down. And yet, this is only one of the major roles we now appreciate that sleep has. Sleep is critical to learning and survival because it facilitates a process similar to the input, storage, and transfer of data in a computer.

 

Sleep preps the brain for information input…

The formation, or “encoding,” of memories occurs when the brain engages with new information – ideas, actions, or images – and leads to the formation of a representation of this information in the brain. Sleep preps the brain so that it can assimilate this new information and lay down the framework for new memory traces. Without sufficient sleep – in particular, the slow wave sleep that occurs during the stage of non-rapid eye movement, or NREM – the brain’s ability to receive new input is markedly impaired. This phenomenon has critical implications in students and has been observed when college students who were deprived of sleep experienced dramatic deficits in their ability to learn new information.

 

Sleep facilitates information storage…

Sleep also facilitates the more permanent storage of new information that has been stored in the hippocampus – the region of the brain responsible for the formation and consolidation of short-term memories. Sleep that occurs after exposure to new information fulfills the role of the brain’s “save button.”

Poor sleep, however, inhibits the brain’s ability to form memories. Dr. Walker and his colleagues believe that this might be a quality of a time-limited capacity for hippocampal storage. Wakefulness that exceeds the typical 16-hour day might effectively outstrip this region’s capacity for short-term storage of information.

Sleep provides the transferring of short-term memories to long-term memories…

The intake and storage of mere short-term information are insufficient for optimal learning. The final, and perhaps most critical, way in which sleep aids in learning is that it provides a mechanism by which new information can be permanently stored – the formation of long-term memories via transfer to the brain’s cortex, where they can be retained and then retrieved for future use. Without this transfer phase, we run the risk of hippocampal-associated memory impairment – a problem readily observed in older adults who experience loss of slow wave sleep and subsequently demonstrate difficulty retaining memories overnight.”

 

There is a common thread between:

  • aging-associated loss of slow wave sleep
  • accumulation of amyloid-beta (a toxic protein)
  • impairment of hippocampal-dependent of memory

The decline of deep, slow wave sleep begins much earlier in life than most people would expect, with losses occurring as early as the late 20s. By the time a person reaches 50, they’ve lost roughly half of their deep sleep, and by the time they’re 80, deep sleep brain waves are almost undetectable, according to Dr. Walker. Small wonder, then, that aging is accompanied by cognitive decline and substantive memory loss, especially in age-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. 

 

Sleep Environment:

Set the environment of your bedroom up for successful sleep conditions:

  • A dark environment is best. Having the bright white happy bedrooms are not best environments for successful sleep. Your bedroom is your cocoon, you rest there. Have the rest of your house bright white and happy.
  • The best temp to set your thermostat to is between 60-68 degrees. The comfort level of your bedroom temperature also especially affects the quality of REM sleep you get. More specifically if you can make sure your bedroom is colder than the temperature you were at most of the day, that’s where we want to be.  So

 

Helpful Sleep Tips:

  • No caffeinated beverages after 1pm. In most humans, caffeine has a half life of 8 hours. That means if you drink 200mg of caffeine in an espresso beverage at 3p.m. you’ll have roughly 100mg of caffeine still in your body at 11p.m. when you’re trying to sleep. 
  • Stay away from electronics at least an hour before bed. Blue light is terrible for the brain. Keeps it engaged and brain can’t turn off for the night. Use dimmers when possible. 
  • 5-10 min UPPER BODY mobility before bed
  • Reading fiction book before bed, it helps relax the brain and preps it for dream cycles.
  • NEVER read anything in your field of expertise – this will be very stimulating to the brain and it will struggle to transition into relaxation mode.
  • Never use your bed as an office.
  • “Bedtime” on IPhone for warning reminders that you’re getting close and need to wrap the night up; as well as “Night Shift” under iPhone settings for a warmer, more melatonin-friendly light.
  • Tweaking nutrition to make sure your body is not having insulin issues where your insulin is dropping and waking you up- no sugars, caffeinated drinks, glutamates or large meals before bed.  
  • Weighted blankets have been known to help with anything from quality of sleep to anxiety, ADHD, Pain, Monopause, Restless Leg Syndrome, FAS, Fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, PTSD, and more. 
  • Sleep apps
    • Iphone
    • Android
    • FitBit

 

Sleep Supplements:

*Supplements tried if other methods not working….

  • L-Theanine to fall asleep (take 45 minutes before you need to fall asleep)
  • Magnesium supplement or magnesium bath to obtain deeper sleep.  *Magnesium with D3 enhance one another. Great to take together before sleep.
  • DoTerra’s Serenity Pills
  • ****Fair skinned people and red heads are typically predisposed to not being able to convert regular B6 into a special form of B6 called P5P and P5P is key for good sleeping. Many see a difference even within a week or so with adding this into their routines.

 

Sleep Cycles Impact Other Cycles:

There is growing evidence that sleep cycles impact other cycles in the body, including the rhythmic
patterns of the digestive and immune systems. When we sleep, the brain produces 90-minute cycles
of slow wave sleep. Periods of rapid eye movement (REM) follow, during which time dreams occur.
During the night, the gut also produces 90-minute slow wave muscle contractions, followed by short
bursts of rapid movement. Poor sleep cycles can disrupt this digestive function and the healing
process within the gut.

 

Low Melatonin Can Impact Gut Health

The sleep cycle, beginning with the release of the hormone melatonin from the pineal gland, appears
to support the body’s immune system by resetting the balance of healthy bacteria in the small
intestine. Melatonin, in combination with the hormone prolactin, triggers an immune response that
regenerates the microflora and epithelial lining in the small intestine to restore a healthy balance
and negate the threat of viruses, bacteria, and other toxins in the body.

Balancing Sleep can help balance Adrenal Rhythms

As you may know, the stress hormone cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands. The sleep hormone melatonin is released by the pineal gland, a small pinecone-shaped endocrine gland located near the center of the brain.
Our cortisol rhythms are supposed to be highest in the morning and then wane as the day wears on. When people are active at night and slow in the morning, the cortisol patterns are reversed. This throws off the circadian rhythm and can lead to sleep disruptions, which, in turn, can further impair adrenal function.
This triggers a vicious cycle. Without proper melatonin production from the pineal gland, adrenals will overwork at night. Melatonin needs to help drive down cortisol. When the adrenal hormone cortisol is too high at night, the pineal excretion of melatonin will be inhibited, causing cortisol levels to remain too high, which requires the adrenals to overwork. These high cortisol levels during sleep prevent you from dropping into the appropriate level of REM sleep that allows the body to regenerate, detoxify, and support immune activity. Lack of REM sleep reduces mental vitality and vigor and induces depression. Conversely, if the pineal secretion is excessive in the morning, it’s going to depress the output of cortisol, and you won’t feel like you’ve had any rest.

Impaired Adrenal Rhythm Impacts

• Energy Production: Abnormal adrenal function can alter the ability of cells to produce energy.
• Muscle and Joint Function: Abnormal adrenal rhythms compromise tissue repair and increase tissue breakdown, leading to muscle and joint pain.
• Bone Health: The adrenal rhythm determines how well we build bone. If the night and morning cortisol levels are elevated, our bones do not rebuild well.
• Immune Health: The immune system cycle follows the cortisol cycle. If the cycle is disrupted, especially at night, the immune response in the lungs, throat, urinary tract, and intestines is suppressed.
• Sleep Quality: The ability to enter REM sleep cycles and experience regenerative sleep is interrupted by high cortisol values at night and in the morning. Chronic lack of REM sleep can reduce a person’s mental vitality and vigor and induce depression.
• Skin Regeneration: Skin regenerates during the night. With higher night cortisol values, less skin regeneration takes place.
• Thyroid Function: The level of cortisol at the cell level controls thyroid hormone production. Often, hypothyroid symptoms such as fatigue and low body temperature are due to an adrenal maladaptation.
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A common HPA axis defect in CFS is impaired corticotrophin release.
• Glycemic Dysregulation: Chronic hypoglycemia can impair normal adrenal function by constant overstimulation of cortisol production. Recurring exposure to high cortisol will impair insulin activity and invariably lead to insulin resistance or diabetes.
• Allergies/Autoimmune Disorders: Patients with environmentally triggered allergies and autoimmune diseases dramatically benefited when given cortisol for other purposes. Apparently, the disruption of the adrenal axis and cytokine relationships leads to predisposition and aggravation of autoimmune diseases.
• Depression/ADD: Several recent publications report a hyperactive HPA axis in depressed patients. Elevated midnight salivary cortisol is now considered one of the best tests in diagnosing endogenous depression. Other anomalies in cortisol rhythm usually accompany the midnight elevation. On the other hand, cortisol elevations and rhythm disruptions throughout the day are typical of attention deficit disorders.

Circadian Rhythm:

If you’ve ever noticed that you tend to feel energized and drowsy around the same times every day, you have your circadian rhythm to thank. What is it, exactly? Your circadian rhythm is basically a 24-hour internal clock that is running in the background of your brain and cycles between sleepiness and alertness at regular intervals. It’s also known as your sleep/wake cycle.

For most adults, the biggest dip in energy happens in the middle of the night (somewhere between 2:00am and 4:00am, when they’re usually fast asleep) and just after lunchtime (around 1:00pm to 3:00pm, when they tend to crave a post-lunch nap). Those times can be different if you’re naturally a night owl or a morning person. You also won’t feel the dips and rises of your circadian rhythm as strongly if you’re all caught up on sleep. It’s when you’re sleep-deprived that you’ll notice bigger swings of sleepiness and alertness. 

A part of your hypothalamus (a portion of your brain) controls your circadian rhythm. That said, outside factors like lightness and darkness can also impact it. When it’s dark at night, your eyes send a signal to the hypothalamus that it’s time to feel tired. Your brain, in turn, sends a signal to your body to release melatonin, which makes your body tired. That’s why your circadian rhythm tends to coincide with the cycle of daytime and nighttime (and why it’s so hard for shift workers to sleep during the day and stay awake at night).

Your circadian rhythm works best when you have regular sleep habits, like going to bed at night and waking up in the morning around the same times from day to day (including weekends). When things get in the way, like jet lag, daylight savings time, or a compelling sporting event on TV that keeps you up into the wee hours of the morning, you can disrupt your circadian rhythm, which makes you feel out of sorts and can make it harder to pay attention . 

Interestingly, your circadian rhythm will likely change as you get older. And you may not have the same sleep/wake cycle as your partner, child or parents. But the more you pay attention to your body and notice feelings of alertness and drowsiness, and the more time you spend developing good sleep hygiene habits, the better your slumber will be and the better you’ll feel. 

How to solve Sleep Challenges:

To solve sleep challenges, you need to look at the underlying issues. These can range from low levels of melatonin in the system, which can make it challenging to fall asleep, to blood sugar and hormonal challenges or an overload of the detoxification organs, such as the liver and gall bladder, which can contribute to nighttime waking.

 

Difficulty Falling Asleep

If you struggle to fall asleep or experience racing thoughts or worries while lying in bed, it can indicate that the body’s natural sleep and wake cycles, known as the circadian rhythms, might be a little out of balance.
Cortisol and melatonin have an antagonistic relationship. Elevated cortisol levels at night turn off melatonin production. Similarly, if melatonin is elevated, then cortisol is depressed, throwing off the
circadian rhythm.
It might help to think of a teeter-totter. When the stress hormone (cortisol) is high, it forces the sleep
hormone (melatonin) to be low. People often supplement with the melatonin hormone, which can help in the short term. The challenge here is that the body, specifically the pineal gland, is supposed to make melatonin, and external supplementation of the hormone sends the signal to the body that it is sufficient in melatonin production. It reduces the body’s production of the hormone. In otherwords, it throws off the body’s internal sensor for self-regulation.

Box breathing is another tool for help in falling asleep.

 

Trouble Staying Asleep

Nighttime waking, awakening shortly after falling asleep or waking up throughout the night, can often be attributed to:
1. Blood sugar issues
2. Liver and Gallbladder overload
3. Hormonal issues

 

Symptoms Of Blood Sugar Imbalance

• Awaken hours after going to bed
• Find it difficult to go back to sleep
• Crave coffee or sweets in the afternoon
• Feel sleepy or have energy dips in afternoon
• Feel fatigued after meals
• Need stimulants such as coffee after meals
• Feel like skipping breakfast
• Slow starter in the morning
• Chronic low back pain, worse with fatigue
• Chronic fatigue, or get drowsy often

 

Night Waking Due To Liver/Gallbladder Overload

According to Chinese medicine, each organ has a time of the day/night where it does its thing, and waking between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. is “liver time.” During the night, the liver is busy rebuilding the body and cleansing it of accumulated toxins. The liver is most active between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., often peaking at 3 a.m. When you wake at this time, it often reflects an overload in body’s ability to detoxify from toxins or emotions like anger, frustration, or resentment. Unlike blood sugar night waking, liver- and gallbladder-trigger awakenings are often accompanied by a feeling of grogginess, and many find it easier to fall back asleep.

Liver

The liver filters and detoxifies any harmful substances from the blood while we sleep. If too many toxins accumulate and the liver is fatigued or overburdened, it might present with symptoms like:
• Waking up between 1 and 3 a.m.
• Becoming sick or easily intoxicated when drinking wine
• Easily hung over when drinking wine
• Long-term use of prescription/recreational drugs
• Sensitivity to smells, like tobacco smoke
• Pain under the right side of rib cage
• Hemorrhoids or varicose veins
• Chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia

 

Liver Emotions

The liver also stores and releases emotional toxins, like feelings of anger, frustration, or resentment, which might present with symptoms like:

• Feeling irritable or impatient
• Inappropriate anger, including angry outbursts
• Over-reactivity, “flying off the handle,” or having a difficult time letting things go
• Feelings of not feeling heard, not feeling loved, not being recognized, inability to be honest with yourself and others
• Experience of resentment, frustration, or bitterness
• Can be judgmental, overly critical, fault-finding, or complaining
• Feeling the need to control situations; domineering or bossy

 

Gallbladder

The gallbladder concentrates the bile to help break down fat and carry toxins out of the body. If the bile becomes too thick, it doesn’t flow as well, and toxins don’t move out of the system as efficiently,
resulting in reabsorption of toxins like old hormones. If it is fatigued or overburdened, it might present with symptoms like:
• Waking up between 1 and 3 a.m.
• Pain between the shoulder blades
• Stomach feels upset by greasy foods
• Avoiding eating fatty food
• Stools are greasy, shiny, or float in the toilet
• Nausea or motion sickness
• Dry skin, itchy feet, or peeling skin on the feet
• Mild headache over eyes

Night Waking Due To Hormonal Issues

Hormonal ups and downs of menstruation, pregnancy, and midlife fluctuations can impact sleep. For example, the hormone progesterone promotes restful sleep, and a drop in estrogen can leave you more vulnerable to stress. Similar to blood sugar events, a rush of cortisol can cause hot flashes that alert your mind and wake you up.

 

Symptoms Of Hormonal Imbalances Related To Night Waking

If you recognize yourself in 2 or more of the symptoms below, you might consider essential oils to
support your hormones for night waking.
• Cracked and dry heels
• Libido missing
• Rapid weight gain that won’t budge
• Irregular periods, intense PMS, hot flashes or other menopausal symptoms
• Feeling moody, irritable, weepy or have unstable or unpredictable moods
• Hair loss at the crown of your head, or growth on the chin or other weird places
• Hair feels dry and “crispy”
• Skin looks crepe-y and hangs off cheeks or chin.
• Fat accumulating in new places – under arms, muffin-top, pectorals, or knees
• High cholesterol

 

Furthered Learning Articles On Today’s Topic:

 

https://www.amymyersmd.com/2015/05/a-doctors-evening-routine-for-restorative-sleep/

https://www.amymyersmd.com/2017/09/magnesium-101-powerful-health-benefits-get-diet/

http://valleysleepcenter.com/the-affect-of-sleep-on-the-immune-system/

https://draxe.com/sleep-deprivation/

https://blog.spire.io/2018/01/30/sleep-affects-weight-loss/