Trouble sleeping through the night? Feeling exhausted? Running on stress hormones all day? Sleep is this daily thing that we all do and yet we're just beginning to understand all of the ways it helps us and all of the factors that can affect it. The modern science of sleep is fascinating, complicated and growing but sleep has been one of the 5 major tenets of naturopathic healing for centuries. (The other 4 are pure water, sunlight, whole food and fresh air.) Lack of sleep affects just about everything in your body and mind. People who get less sleep tend to be at higher risk for many health issues like diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancer, not to mention slower metabolism, weight gain, hormone imbalance, and inflammation. Lack of sleep also affects mood, memory and decision-making skills and may even negate the health benefits of your exercise program. Knowing this it's easy to see the three main purposes of sleep: To restore our body and mind. Our bodies repair, grow and even “detoxify” our brains while we sleep. To improve our brain's ability to learn and remember things, technically known as “synaptic plasticity”. To conserve some energy so we're not on-the-go 24-hours a day, every day. 7- 8 hours of sleep per night goes a long way in supporting adult wellness. You’ve heard all this, right? So, how can you set yourself up for a good night’s sleep? Consistency Make a consistent sleep schedule a priority and you're more likely to achieve it. This means turning off your lights 8 hours before your alarm goes off. Seven. Days. A. Week. Weekends can easily throw this off but by making sleep a priority for a few weeks your body and mind will adjust and thank you for it. This is especially important with sleep patterns that get thrown by Daylight Savings Time. Our internal clock that regulates waking and sleeping, our circadian rhythm, is in tune with sunrise and sunset, not an arbitrary clock. Balance your blood sugar throughout the day. Balanced blood sugar means balanced hormones which means better sleep since sleep is regulated by hormones. As I keep repeating in every blog: eat whole foods. They are full of blood-sugar-balancing fiber. Choose an apple over apple juice, for example. Protein balances blood sugar: avocados, seeds, nuts, hummus are all easy protein choices. Get some sunshine and exercise. These things tell your body it's daytime; time for being productive, active and alert. By doing this during the day it will help you wind down more easily in the evening. Evening exercise makes it hard for your body and mind to prepare for sleep. Again, work with your bodies natural inclination to rise and settle with sunlight. Choose wisely after 12pm. Whole foods like fruits and veggies are fine for late afternoon snacks, it's the added and processed sugar and stimulants that disrupt hormones and in turn, sleep. Yes, this includes your beloved afternoon chai latte. Whole foods such as tomatoes, walnuts, olives, rice, barley, strawberries and cherries contain melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate your daily sleep-wake cycle. When your body absorbs melatonin from these foods, you may begin to feel calm and sleepy so these are good choices to include in your evening meal. Also, there is a melatonin-B vitamin connection when it comes to a good night's sleep. Without B12, the body can’t produce melatonin. Doctors have prescribed B12 to treat insomnia in many patients. Two small clinical trials, published in Sleep, 1990 and Jpn J Psychiatr Neurol, 1991 showed that people suffering from insomnia experienced an improvement in sleep after receiving supplemental B12. Additionally, folic acid (B9), another essential vitamin for healthy sleep cycles, improves in effectiveness when taken alongside B12. B12 also helps folic acid regulate the formation of red blood cells and absorption of iron, a key component in sleep health. Magnesium-rich foods like spinach, Swiss chard and pumpkin seeds help promote the beneficial calm that helps you wind down. Both caffeine and added sugar can keep your mind a bit more active than you want it to be in the evening so forego the afternoon coffee and eat your chocolate at lunch. By the way, chai latte lovers, fear not! Keep on reading. Have a relaxing bedtime routine. Adopt a routine that starts 1 hour before your “lights out” time that is 8 - 10 hours before your alarm is set to go off. This would include dimming your artificial lights, nixing screen time and perhaps reading a “real” book--with paper pages-- or taking a bath or warm shower. Add some pure lavender essential oil to your bath or spritz the essential oil in your shower stall as your shower. Lavender contains linalool, a compound that is shown in clinical studies to help treat insomnia and improve quality of sleep. Rub a few drops of lavender essential oil diluted with a carrier oil such as jojoba oil onto the bottom of each foot or spritz your pillow with lavender. Many women I work with, especially those of a certain--ok,let's just say it: menopausal-- age cite sleep issues as their most disruptive hormonal challenge. The wisdom years are about being wise enough to offer yourself the consistency in taking the actions that will support getting a healthy night’s sleep. You deserve sweet dreams. Here's a little caffeine-free, spicy-sweet Chai Latte to lull you into calm and comfort. Be well. Sleep well. xoxo Beth
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The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. ~ John F. Kennedy Weight loss advice is so common (and contentious) now. There are differences of opinion everywhere. I say, forget about "who's right" and let's focus on "what's right for you” because what gets results is what I'm focusing on in this post. I respect you too much to make empty promises and try to convince you about something that doesn’t work. There are SO many weight loss myths out there. I’m going to tackle the top ones that I’ve proven wrong in my personal experience and oneI come across with my clients. Myth: Calories cause weight gain, and fewer calories are the path to weight loss Calories are absolutely important for weight loss. If you eat and absorb a ton more than you use, then your body’s wisdom will store some for later. Calories do matter but they are not the “be-all and end-all" of weight loss; they're important, but they're a contributor, a symptom, but not the cause. To understand the reasons people eat more calories we need to keep in perspective the many factors that influence weight gain and loss and one is one of the main drives behind calorie intake. People eat too many calories, not because they're hungry, but because they feel sad, lonely, or bored or maybe because they're tired or stressed; maybe even because they're happy on vacation or celebrating a birthday or a holiday. All these feelings interact with our gastrointestinal, nervous and hormonal systems which influence our calorie intake. Myth: “Eat less, move more” is good advice Daily exercise is absolutely key to a healthy body, a healthy mind and a healthy spirit. But the premise of the above myth that calories in minus calories out equals your weight so you should eat fewer calories and burn off more calories to manage weight. It's not that simple because human physiology is not a simple math equation. Even if people can happily and sustainably follow this advice, which is difficult for most, it completely negates other factors that contribute to weight problems. Things like the causes of overeating we mentioned above. Not to mention any health conditions we're dealing with or our exposure to an obesogenic environment. You can read a scientific study about environmental factors in obesity in this abstract. Myth: A calorie is a calorie This is a paradigm that must change. It’s outdated and inaccurate. Science has confirmed several caloric components of food differ from others. For example, the “thermic effect of food” (TEF) is that some nutrients require calories to be metabolized. They can slightly increase your metabolism, just by eating them. For example, when you metabolize protein you burn more calories than when you metabolize carbohydrates. Proteins and carbohydrates both have 4 calories/gram but the TEF of protein = 15–30%; and the TEF for carbohydrates = 5–10%. Examples of high protein plant based foods are lentils, quinoa, hemp seeds, chia seeds, spiraling, nutritional yeast, chickpeas and most beans. If you choose to eat soy products, ALWAYS CHOOSE ORGANIC. Forget soy milk and go for tempeh, sprouted tofu or edamame. Remember, too, not all carbs are the same. Simple carbs like candy, sweetened drinks, fruit juice, all pasta, including gluten-free pastas, crackers and processed cereals including quick oats have high sugar and low thermic effect. Complex unrefined carbs, especially ones higher in fat like avocado, nuts and seeds have a higher thermic effect. Here’s another example of a calorie not being a calorie. Different fats are burned and stored differently. Medium chain triglycerides (fats) (MCTs) have the same 9 calories/gram that other fats do but, they're metabolized by the liver before getting into the bloodstream and therefore MCFA and MCTs aren't utilized or stored the same way as other fats. Coconut oil is an excellent source of MCTs. Myth: A supplement/tea/food/magic potion will make you lose weight There is no magic pill for weight loss. No supplement, tea, food, or other potion will do the trick. There are products that make these claims, and they're full of garbage. The only thing you will lose is your money and possibly your hope and the will to create positive, perennial behaviors with food and weight loss. So, please don’t believe this myth. There is a reason most people who lose weight can’t keep it off. The real magic is in adopting a sustainable holistic and healthy approach to living your life. What you need is a long-term lifestyle makeover, not a product. Live your truth and you will find the magic. Weight loss is hard! There are too many influences out there trying to make it sound like they have the simplest, or the latest and greatest, solution. Let go of the myths. Understand the principles and get support to put them into practice.
Now check out my magical, myth-free Mediterranean Kale and Cucumber Super Salad recipe. It's filling and nutritious and super-delicious! Take care of that beautiful you. xoxo Beth Last week’s Wellness Wednesday blog post talked about physiological and bacterial gut health and how to promote good flora for good belly and good whole-body health. Now it's time to understand how the gut is equally as governing and intelligent as the brain. This “brain in your belly” is often smarter than the brain in your head. Butterflies in your stomach. Gut-feelings. A lump in your throat. Rarely do we say, “ I had this nose feeling,” or “I am trusting my elbow instincts” when we are moved to describe a feeling of knowing. It’s all about intuition--a word we use that comes from the Latin intueri, meaning ‘consider’ or ‘look on.’ For me, it means, “Look IN TO IT!” Get it? Intuit. In To It? Pun fun for the word nerd. But I really mean it: go inward. Look into what your belly is telling you. Gut feelings have been distinguished as a source of intuitive knowing by ancient world cultures to this day. Fay Bound Alberti, author of This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture, writes: ...the gut is also linked to our languages and our experiences of emotion. Intuitive forms of knowledge-’gut feelings’-are part of a much longer history of experiencing extra-sensory knowledge through the body rather than the mind. Our Western culture once devolved the Eastern understanding of intuition as a seat of higher thought, wisdom, soul and Spirit physically located just above the navel to perceiving the belly as a source of strength and labor. Queen Elizabeth I is noted for declaring that though she was a woman, she had “the heart and stomach of a king.” And so our perspective changes. Science always influences. History has taken us from the sentient gut-knowing to the Renaissance's ‘it’s-all-in-the-head’ scientific knowing to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s when our culture got more touchy-feely and the gut-emotion connection was recognized once again, as was Eastern thought and culture. What goes around comes around. So yeah, as it turns out, gut thoughts and feelings are not a fanciful notion but a physiological fact. Rather than the one brain found in our head, scientists have revealed that we have two brains – the other one is located in the digestive tract. The enteric nervous system (ENS), the gut’s brain or the brain in the belly is housed under the mucosal lining and between the muscular layers of the esophagus, the stomach, and the small and large intestines. The enteric nervous system is a rich and complicated network of neurons and neurochemicals that sense and control events in other parts of the body, including the brain. Amazingly, when scientists finally counted the number of nerve cells in the gut-brain, they found it contained over one hundred million neurons – more than the number of nerve cells in the spinal cord. Who knew we such had a super-highway of inner intelligence. Researchers have observed a greater flow of neural traffic from the belly-brain to the head-brain than from the head-brain to the belly. Yep, the belly is telling the brain what’s going on, not the brain telling the belly what to eat and how to metabolize. This is not an excuse to eat the whole bag of chips. Your belly did not make you do it. What is important is that your belly is a wonderful source of intelligence. Listen! Your brain is listening to your belly. Are you? There is a lot more scientific and physiological stuff I can cite and comment on. Super-interesting for the left (analytical) brain, but we are talking right (emotional) brain here. However, this is really interesting: the enteric nervous system (the gut-brain) and the central nervous system (the head-brain) share a very cool similarity. In the sleep state, the head-brain moves through cycles of 90 minutes of slow-wave sleep frequencies, immediately followed by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in which dreams are produced. The gut-brain also moves through a nightly cycle of 90 minutes of slow-wave muscular contractions followed by brief spurts of rapid muscular movements. Your belly is the seat of feeling. The whole digestive tract is lined with unique cells that produce and receive endorphins and other chemicals and hormones that we feel as joy, satisfaction, and pain relief. These comfortable gut feelings that can be experienced after a satisfying meal or a stimulating encounter are based in the belly-brain and send pleasure chemicals to receptive cells throughout your body. The gut is beautifully engineered to send out the feel-goods. Then there is the flip side. The digestive sensations we are aware of might feel negative: peptic ulcer, irritable bowel syndrome, heartburn, upset stomach, diverticulosis and other digestive upset and discomfort. Sometimes we say we can’t “stomach” a situation, something makes us want to “gag,” or we have “a knot” in our stomach. What we are doing is expressing psychophysiological information from the the brain in our belly. Your belly knows how to handle stress, if you let it. The belly produces substances similar to the active ingredients in the prescription drugs that chill us out. Think: Valium and Xanax without the nasty side effects and cost. Where does food come in? We are physiologically wired to have the gut-brain and the head-brain communicate. Wild animals don’t stress about their nutritional meal choices. Absent from their conversation is the dinner dilemma: What will it be tonight, dear? Elk or moose? I dunno. What do you think? Definitely not bear, it’s too high in fat. And definitely not deer! Instincts tell animals what to eat. And we should listen to our gut instincts, too. Our head-brains just override this knowing. Too often when we make belly decisions it’s about the look, not about nourishment and not about ‘the feel’. Poor quality food, stressed eating and a toxic world environment make it difficult for our belly-brain to function as it is meant to function: intuitively, responsively, in accordance with nature. What we want to see often clouds what we feel. The contemporary preoccupation with “six pack abs” is a distorted yearning to display, rather than actively use, the inherent intelligence of the belly. Trust your gut. Our gut intelligence has been underused, and perhaps even dumbed-down with lack of physical, ideological, social--you name it--nourishment. Nourish the gut brain with wholesome, nutrient-dense food for optimal attunement and energy. Tune in and the tone will follow. Tuning in. Breathe into your belly. Ask it for feedback. What is your belly telling you about what’s happening in your life? Your very sensitive belly-brain is offering your its unique intelligence in the subtle sensations, curious feelings, instincts, and intuitions. Without getting all yogi on you, here’s the energetic take on that place just above your navel that the Japanese call Hara. It is the location of your third chakra. ‘Chakra’ means ‘wheel’ in Sanskrit. (You can look up chakras here.) The third chakra is the energetic location of your personality, identity, and the-knowing -of-who-you-are. It’s the center of willpower, self-esteem and self-discipline. It’s all about the perception of who you are: personal power, confidence, responsibility and reliability. This solar plexus chakra is kin to the life-giving and fiery sun in the center of our planetary solar system. Yes, there is a simile here.... The energy of this chakra allows you to transform inaction into action. It allows you to meet challenges and progress in life. It helps you digest, literally and figuratively. The challenge for this wheel of energy is to use personal power in a balanced manner, consciously harnessing the energy of the belly, being proactive rather than reactive or inactive. It's all about balance. When the belly is balanced with nutrient-dense food, friendly bacteria (pre-biotics and probiotics), supportive lifestyle and positive thoughts, we feel well. The energetic center is balanced. Digestion and elimination are naturally comfortable and work smoothly. When the belly is imbalanced by poor food choices, discomforted by dysbiosis and stressed to the max with emotional eating and negative thoughts, we feel ill. The energetic center is imbalanced. Constipation (inactive energy) and diarrhea (reactive energy) often result. The third chakra is associated with the color yellow. Imagine the fire of hope, positivity, energy, and action in your belly. This energetic center is the sun around which your whole wellness revolves. Shine onward and outward from your nourished soul-center. Here’s a glowing Lovely Lentil and Squash Soup recipe that’s full of fiber, soothing spices and warmth. I know it’s still cold in the North and what better way to conjure Spring. For those of you in the South, here is a cooling Fennel, Cucumber and Mint Salad to balance and support the fire in your belly. Yumminess. I can hear my belly purr. Xoxo Beth |
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