Stress and Sleep Numbers

“Stress is not what happens to us. It's our response TO what happens. And RESPONSE is something we can choose” ~ Maureen Killoran 

About 75% of the people I speak with about nutrition have some pretty serious stress and sleep issues. 100% of the people I speak to have had, at one time or another, some stress and sleep issues. Totally normal, right? Wrong! Sleep is the single most important thing we can do to correct our health issues.  When we sleep our bodies do some pretty amazing things with recovery, rejuvenation, regulation, and fat burning. Without this proper sleeping pattern we cannot completely do all of those things.  People ask “What should I take to make me sleep?” Immediately, they think of prescription drugs like Lunista, or Ambien, but the issue isn’t that they have a Lunista deficiency! It is something else that is not functioning properly. Maybe they have a magnesium deficiency or zinc deficiency. Maybe their body is so stressed out that they have a cortisol imbalance, maybe they do not regulate blood sugar properly, or maybe they do not produce melatonin as they should.

Listen folks, as much as we all admire Evil Knievel, we can’t just build a ramp to jump over the Grand Canyon when the bridge is out. We need to smooth our body’s sleep-wake cycle process instead of relying on a caffeine jolt to ramp us up and a prescription sleeping pill to zonk us into a bad dream. Given enough attempts of ramping over the Grand Canyon, everybody will, sooner or later, fall.  Simply take the time to bridge the gap. Sure it sounds plain, boring perhaps, but it’s safer and a much smoother ride. 

The American population is about 54-75% deficient in magnesium levels and if not properly supplementing and properly exercising that number increases to near 100%.  Add that on top of a stressful career, multiple children, a mortgage, car payments, wars, violence, and stock market collapses streaming at them on the news, and you will have one stressed out person. Our stress and the size of our gut are directly related. We live in a highly indulgent society where much of the nutrition we need is in our food, yet we are highly overweight and highly nutrient deficient. Well, guess what, stress decreases our ability to absorb many of our essential nutrients. Many essential nutrients are needed to produce stomach acids that absorb themselves. So what do we get? A cycle of overeating and malnourishment! Stress causes nutrient deficiencies. Nutrient deficiencies cause digestive problems, and stress along with digestive issues causes cortisol levels to rise and then we cannot sleep to regulate any of those issues. Our bodies start freaking out at this point. We eat more, caffeinate more, sleep less, eat more, caffeinate more and sleep even less. We become malnourished, overweight, stressed out, tired, hungry, and insomniacs. 

Wow, that’s a negative spiral! We have basically ramped our cars attempting to get over the Grand Canyon but are now realizing that we aren’t going to make it! You see, there is a gap, something is missing, and it needs to be filled in order to move forward. 75% of all people have stress and sleep issues to some degree, 75% of people are magnesium deficient.  Here are some other statistics that may shock you: ~30% of all Americans are obese, and about 68% are considered overweight. Seriously, numbers that mirror each other like that aren’t just coincidental; they are related! Magnesium is emerging as a great choice to help manage diabetes by regulating blood sugar levels. It is also a key player in metabolizing cortisol and fatty acids. Magnesium actually has over 300 metabolic roles in our bodies. It is often times unabsorbed because it actually creates stomach enzymes to digest itself. Try this on for size: in 1996 the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that more than 70% of all foods tested had at least one form of pesticide on it! Do you think that messes with your digestive systems? 

Statistics:

75% of Americans have Stress and Sleep Issues
68% of Americans are Overweight (~30% Obese)
75% of Americans are Magnesium Deficient
70% of Foods have one or more pesticides on them

In the famous words of Austin Powers, “Whoopie-dee-doo. What does it all mean Basil?” It means that approaching your health and fitness is about understanding all the different roles your environment can play on your physiology. This also includes understanding how your physiology is supposed to work. Our bodies produce a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol, when elevated, can increase alertness, excitability, and hunger. When cortisol is too high it can manifest itself as feelings of anxiety, irritability, and panicking. When cortisol is low the body will feel very calm, relaxed, tired, and satisfied (not hungry). Physiologically speaking, the body should awake on its own because it is alert and hungry. As the day draws to an end the body should feel tired and not hungry. Unfortunately, that is actually a rare occurrence with most people struggling to lose body fat. In fact, as I stated earlier, it’s about 75% not happening as it should be. Many of us hit snooze a few times, struggle to flop out of bed and open our eyes. If we eat breakfast, it is generally because we know we are supposed to and not because we feel ravenous. When we get home from work and finally settle down for bed, we are suddenly starving and tired but wired all at the same time. Some of us eat ourselves into an insulin induced coma so that we can fall asleep, others simply toss and turn, while others may fall asleep but awake frequently.

To help one achieve a better night sleep make sure to turn off all artificial lights in your room. Unplug or cover your cell phone lights and make sure the window curtains keep your room pitch black. Do not watch television while trying to sleep. Do not surf the internet while you lay in bed. Artificial lights will stop the production of the key hormone for sleep, melatonin.  In a research study, subjects who were asleep were woken just by someone shining a flashlight on their feet! If you awake for more than 3 seconds your sleep is considered interrupted. Now, during the day we rely on caffeine and sugar to keep us alert because we crave it.  Then in turn, the sugar and caffeine create more stress on our system, create stomach acid imbalances, insulin resistance, disrupt sleep even further, and thus the cycle builds upon itself. The root of this cause is most likely elevated cortisol levels in the evening and low cortisol levels in the morning.  We must work to reverse that curve.  It is as fixable as a 6-8 step process.

1. Take responsibility for your feelings. Circumstances in life will present themselves as stressors, but it is up to you to choose the feeling of stress or the feeling of peace.

2.  Take time to be a human being, not a human doing:
            -Meditate
            - Stretch
            - Breathe deeply
            - Do yoga or tai chi
            - Pray or use positive self-talk

3. Avoid foods with added pesticides, artificial sweeteners, or animal products that are grain fed, and non-organic

4. Take a high quality multivitamin that is formulated using whole foods

5. Follow the yin and yang nutritional protocol (The Meat Continuum)

6. Supplement with high quality magnesium products, especially if you are active

Bonus Stuff:

7.  If you have very high stress use Relora-Plex at night

8.  If you are still having issues supplementing with Phosphotidylserine is a tremendous help in lowering cortisol

There is nothing better than “me time” for calming the system. Science has shown that simply breathing deeply can reduce stress hormones.  It can also help to release 70% of all our toxins. Take just a moment every day to fill your lungs with air. The benefits will go beyond just physical relaxation.  Your sleep will be much better, your mood will be more positive and the benefits of both will amaze you! Post-exercise is a great time to stretch. It has been proven to repair your muscles and loosen your tendons, but it also has a tremendous effect on lowering cortisol levels, which are elevated post exercise. Add in the use of positive self-talk, gratefulness for all things you have in your life, the use of prayer and your stress will just melt away. Life will be good, because life is good!  Yoga and Tai Chi are two forms of exercise that take advantage of all of those aspects of stress relief.

Our bodies are designed to eat natural, organic foods. Unfortunately, today our world has produced all kinds of crop protecting pesticides and fertilizers that make them much larger in size but much less in nutrients. We have also learned how to make cattle yield much more tender meat by feeding cattle grains and estrogens.  This produces a much greater bang-for-your-buck product and no doubt, will improve sales for the farmer. However, these products are not well tested for their safety and can cause some serious health issues, starting with the gut. Our digestive systems will become wrecked from all the pesticides and artificial sweeteners, thus making us less likely to absorb the nutrients our bodies need to function. It also turns our detoxifying system into hyperdrive which stresses our whole system. This produces an even greater problem because our bodies are unable to absorb the nutrients needed to detoxify our system, generate the proper stomach acids, and deal with the added stress. Eating foods high in probiotics, or supplementing with a full spectrum probiotic can help reverse this trend of poor digestion.

Taking a naturally derived multivitamin, multi-mineral can drastically improve your body’s ability to deal with stress.  It gives you thrival, not survival, levels of nutrients.  Many people argue they can get all the vitamins and minerals their bodies need by eating food. This can be true but the issue is 2 things. One: our crops and soil are producing about 85% less nutrients than they were 100 years ago.  Two: the RDI (recommended daily intake) of vitamins is created to prevent disease, not to create optimal health. There are many progressive nutrition coaches and progressive supplement companies that want you to have levels of nutrients for optimal living. It’s called thriving, and you deserve to do just that!

Statistics:

75% Have Stress and Sleep Issues
68% Overweight (~30% Obese)
75% Magnesium Deficient
70% Foods having one or more pesticides on them
70% Of toxins are released through breathing
85% North American soil is depleted of nutrients

The good news is now we know. Knowledge is power. You now have the power to change your life! We cannot control what happened to us via stress. We cannot control the pesticides farmers put on foods, or the percentage of nutrient depletion in our soils, but we can choose to actively de-stress, or choose to feel peace. We can choose to buy organic foods. We can choose to supplement with adequate amounts of nutrients we may be missing from our food, and we can choose to eat foods high in probiotics. We can choose to supplement with a quality Probiotic, and we can choose to eat foods high in nutrients like magnesium.  We can choose to turn off all artificial light sources for sleep. We choose to exercise for our health. We choose what we love the most. Love your health, educate yourself, and take action.