Sleep is as important to your health as nutrition, exercise and good quality supplements. The thing is that  I struggle a lot to get a good nights rest. Sleep deprivation causes you to feel worn out, tired, stressed and on the edge. Sleep is very important for normal body, mental and hormone function and by not sleeping well really you can rob yourself of a quality life.

We have become a 24hr society. We have work, televisions, telephones, computers, lights and novels to keep us up until the wee hours of the morning. Humans have become the only animals to fight the urge to sleep, but historically we would sleep and wake with the falling/rising of the sun. In 1910 the average person slept for nine hours! Today very few people sleep that long.

Insomnia is:
-    a state when you lie down at bed time and you toss and turn.
-    Your inner thoughts are running wild and keeping you from sleep.
-    You wake in the middle of the night after falling asleep.
-    You wake to early and can’t fall back to sleep.

Can insomnia be caused by hormones?

Stress can keep us awake by raising cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone and when we are under stress cortisol rises. Cortisol levels are supposed to fall in the evenings but if we are stressed this will not happen.  Stress makes sleep extremely difficult.

Melatonin is the sleep hormone. Melatonin is increased during the evening and is decreased during the day. Melatonin can be naturally increased by darkness and the largest organ to synthesize melatonin is the skin. It is a powerful antioxidant and protects nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. (Source)

So Insomnia can be a hormonal problem and it can also affect the way we metabolize glucose.

Quotes are taken from this Science Daily article published Oct. 25, 1999.

Chronic sleep loss can reduce the capacity of even young adults to perform basic metabolic functions such as processing and storing carbohydrates or regulating hormone secretion, report researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center in the October 23 issue of The Lancet. Cutting back from the standard eight down to four hours of sleep each night produced striking changes in glucose tolerance and endocrine function — changes that resembled the effects of advanced age or the early stages of diabetes — after less than one week.

“We suspect that chronic sleep loss may not only hasten the onset but could also increase the severity of age-related ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and memory loss.”

said Eve Van Cauter, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and director of the study.

When tested during the height of their sleep debt, subjects took 40 percent longer than normal to regulate their blood sugar levels following a high-carbohydrate meal. Their ability to secrete insulin and to respond to insulin both decreased by about 30 percent. A similar decrease in acute insulin response is an early marker of diabetes.

I have been trying to lose my last ten pounds since winter and have not succeeded. I have also not been able to get better sleep either.

Doctors normally recommended exercise throughout the day to aid in sleep but this really has not work for me. I have even had to temporarily give up exercise because of the extra stress of the exercise. I would do my exercise and the exercise would keep me tossing and turning in bed. And then exhaustion would set in. So don’t feel horrible about being to tired to do your daily exercise. Long term stress and exhaustion is horrible for the adrenal glands. Learning to rest and relax is the best thing for a worn out body.

I am focused on healing! Sleep will help with that tremendously. I feel great when I get a good nights sleep. Just doing so consistently is the key.

Melatonin supplementation has many benefits and I contemplate doing this. I have been reading up on it and will explore that topic in future blog updates.

A question for you:

Have you tried melatonin supplementation to aid in sleep?

To your health and wellness,

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For the past nine days I have been taking Coconut Oil on a daily basis. The dosage I have been taking is 2-3 heaping teaspoons. I have gained a few pounds from doing this! Yikers! I will continue taking it to see if this is just my initial reaction to it and see if there will be any other changes. Coconut Oil is just too healthy and after trying for a long time to find a tasty way of supplementing it into my diet, I have finally found a way that could eat it every day!

I am also experiencing a mild Candida die off. My tummy has been sensitive for the past 4-5 days. I am glad that it is not as severe as when I initially started the Atkins Low Carb diet. The first Candida die off lasted about a week and a half and I could not leave the house or eat anything because the food would just go right through me.

My weight now is 120 – 122lbs. It was 117lbs a few weeks ago. Maybe I should just throw out my scale.  My goal is just to get rid of belly fat. But instead of losing weight I have stalled and gained.

Exercise Update…

I have not been good this past week. My youngest daughter is sick with a nasty fever and cough and I have not gone running outside. It has been cold here but the sun has been shining and I have been itching to just go running. Since my schedule has been a bit off I have not done my regular Unstoppable Fat Loss Workouts either.

I have no idea if I will be able to reach my goal to lose my belly fat by April 25. There is only two short months left to go.

One thing that I love is blogging about my weight! It holds me accountable and keeps me on track so I can reach my goals. I may also start a food log and log my daily food intake. This is highly recommended by lots of “experts” but I have always found it tedious. I may have to control my meal portion sizes (Gasp!) and write down what I eat.

After listening to yesterday’s livin lavida low carb podcast about sleep, my intentions were to go to bed by ten pm.  Well that did not happen (laundry was calling me!), but I did lower the lights and took some Valerian Root. I had no trouble falling asleep and I slept deeply. Tonight I will again aim to go to bed by ten and do the same thing, lower the lights and take Valerian Root. Hopefully I will be able to wean off Valerian and adjust to this routine.

Sleeping better will reduce my dependence on caffeine which can release an insulin response and inhibit low carb fat loss. And of course if I reduce my caffeine I will have to replace it with water therefore increasing my over all water intake.

Break through the stall steps:

1.    Log food
2.    Log beverages
3.    Sleep – get to bed by ten pm.
4.    Keep taking coconut oil

The focus: Get healthy, get fit, and get lean!

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Getting more sleep has been a challenge for me. I have made no changes to my sleeping habits even though I really had wanted to sleep better. I have finally found my motivator to getting to bed early!

I listened to Jimmy Moore’s Livin Lavida Low Carb Show on sleep with author T.S. Wiley. She is the Author of Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival. She explains the importance of sleep and how it relates to the function of our bodies and hormones. The bright house lights, computers and televisions that emit so much light can disrupt our hormones. This is the cause of many sleep issues. Cortisol (the stress hormone) increases and Melatonin (the sleep and repair hormone) decrease when our cells are exposed to light. Melatonin is important to our health because it is a powerful antioxidant and we want our levels high.

Right now we are in the dead of winter and it gets dark pretty early (around 5:30pm). T.S. Wiley does mention that we have to follow nature’s rhythm and go into hibernation. Every cell in our body is light sensitive and artificial light in the winter deceives our cells into thinking that it is summer all the time. Animals are more active and store up fat for hibernation in the summer time.  Our bodies are meant to do the same thing, but are in “summer mode” all year long thanks to our bright technology.

Can we really lose fat by lowering our lights and hibernating through the winter?

I think this is the primary reason that I can’t lose the last stubborn 10 pounds.

She also talks about how sleep affects our cravings for carbs and sugars.

It is a very interesting interview that I think everyone would enjoy listening to it.

I never knew how important sleep and sleep cycles are. I will lower my lights and see how this affects my sleep. Good quality sleep affects our mental clarity, physical energy, immune and hormonal health. Insulin
release would be lowered and then I can finally see some fat loss results.

I will keep updating my progress.

Listen to the interview and let me know what you think.

To your health and wellness,

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The past week has been pretty rough for me. I went to the doctor for some issues regarding sleep and anxiety. I have been working on getting better sleep so that I can increase my energy levels and decrease my stress.  Stress increases cortisol and cortisol increases blood sugar levels and then the body responds by increases insulin levels. Insulin is the fat storing hormone and I am working hard at getting rid of this belly fat.

However, I have suffered from anxiety all my life. It is crippling. I don’t know if you want to know all of my hidden anxieties but they are the reason I am who I am today.

Anxiety has crippled me in so many ways… I dropped out of high school three times because of anxiety. If I fell behind in school it was just too much for me to catch up so I would quit. I am not able to be employed because of anxiety. I had chronic neck and shoulder tension to the point that it became painful. I became self-employed by cleaning houses and that was a lot to handle too. I work from home now and still the stress and anxiety does not go away. I have anxieties over safety for my kids. This is a big one because it is constant.

I finally want to be “normal”. I want to be able to fall asleep without worrying.  I would love to not fret over the little things. The lack of sleep definitely increases the volume of the anxiety.

I went to see my doctor over these issues and we talked about it. He recommended some blood work to be done and he prescribed some anti-anxiety pills and sleeping pills. Now, I do not like taking prescription drugs but I thought that the anxiety and lack of sleep were negatively affecting my health. So I filled the prescription.

Normally when you fill the prescription at the pharmacy you get pamphlet that tells you about the drug you are taking. My prescription never came with one. I figured that I should just take the anxiety pill (Effexor) before I chickened out. I took it after breakfast and felt fine until about lunch. That is when I started to feel really bad. I had back and neck tension, my head started to feel tight and my facial muscles became tight. My hands were shaky. My mind went into hyper perceptive mode. And I became agitated.  It was weird! I looked up the Effexor website and checked out their info and found out that you are not supposed to take Effexor if you have been taking St. John’s Wort. Well I had been taking St. John’s Wort the day before! Taking both can cause Serotonin Syndrome which can be potentially life threatening.  I looked up Serotonin Syndrome on Wikipedia and it looked like I had the mild symptoms.

I called the Doctor’s office and they were closed. I called the tele-health phone number and they were closed. I finally called the pharmacist and she finally called me back in the evening after her customers were gone and only recommended weaning off the the St. John’s Wort.  ( I would have gone to the hospital if I was starting to feel worse but the muscle tension was easing slightly throughout the day)

I did not take any more Effexor pills or St. John’s Wort. It took me a full two days to recover.

The lesson learned here is to tell your doctor about all the vitamins and herbals you are taking as well as any concerns you may have. I found through this research on Effexor that it is a drug that is very hard to come off of. I only want to take medication as a short term solution.  This is a concern that I will have to address with my doctor (actually I don’t think I will take Effexor again).

I am looking forward to the results of my blood work so then I can find out why I am feeling so poorly.

To your health and wellness,

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I have had a bit of trouble losing my last ten pounds. It is incredibly frustrating to exercise and eat well and still not see results. I know the reason why…

It is the lack of sleep. Sleeping five-six hours a night creates unnecessary physical and emotional stresses. Cortisol levels are increased and that can have a negative impact on insulin. Drinking caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea throughout the day also have a negative impact on insulin. I have been on a low carb diet to regulate my insulin and yet these bad habits are contributing to elevated insulin.

How To Get Better Sleep

To fix this I am going to establish a regular bedtime routines. That means going to sleep every single day at the same time and waking up every single day at the same time. I will also take valerian root to help fall asleep. Valerian root works really well for me and I can fall asleep very quickly and sleep deeply.

I would love to hear if you have had any experiences with sleep and weight loss/gain.

To your health and wellness,

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