Refuel:
Bring Sleep into Your Night
by Ashley Koff, RD, and Kathy Kaehler
Life as a mom is a
shapeless blob of happy chaos. ~ Julia Roberts
What your body does from
the time it slips into bed to the time it wakes you up might have more to
do with your energy metabolism than you realize. New findings in sleep
medicine are currently revolutionizing how we think about the value sleep
brings to our lives.
For so many moms we
interviewed for this book, sleep ranked high on the list of priorities.
Chaka Khan calls sleep “the key to a great energy balance”; Julia
Roberts admits that any extra sleep she can get helps counterbalance the
“mom struggle” that naturally accompanies having time thieves running
around her house. Most of us just don’t get the sleep we need. Sleep
deprivation is epidemic. And let’s face it: When we’re sleep-deprived,
moody, and things don’t go our way, we can begin to go down that dreaded
path that ends in depressive thoughts or a full-blown depression.
Moms in particular are
starved for sleep, evidenced by the National Sleep Foundation’s annual
poll. The average woman aged 30 to 60 sleeps only six hours and forty-one
minutes per night during the workweek (less than the optimal eight to nine
hours for health and wellness). On average, we get an hour less sleep per
day than we did 40 years ago, and roughly two-thirds of us complain that
sleep deprivation cuts into our life and well-being. In fact, sleep may
have a greater influence on your ability to enjoy your day than household
income and even marital status. One study found that an extra hour of
sleep had more of an impact on how a group of women felt throughout the
day than earning more money per year.
Without adequate sleep,
not only does your entire body reel from its repercussions, but one system
in particular—the endocrine, the center of gravity for a woman’s
energy levels—starts to malfunction. This can lead to everything from
appetite and fat-storing hormones running amok to bona fide infertility.
Cutting-edge science now
shows how critical sleep is to our ability to stay focused, able to learn
new things and remember old things, lose fat and keep excess weight off,
and generally lower the risks for a slew of health problems such as heart
disease, obesity, and cerebrovascular disease. It also recharges us
(duh!). But moms everywhere are burning the candle at both ends and
leaving sleep last on their list. What’s more, millions of moms struggle
with chronic pain, high anxiety, or full-blown depression, and many become
addicted to pain-soothers such as alcohol or prescription pills, all of
which further drain energy—including the energy required to get well.
Today sleep medicine is
a highly respected field of study that continues to provide alarming
insights into the power of sleep in the support of health and energy.
Sleep can dictate whether you can fight off infections, and how well you
can cope with stress. We’ve already covered how sleep deprivation
creates an imbalance of hormones that control your appetite and how your
body burns energy. That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it
comes to associations between sleep and well-being.
Sleep is not a state of
inactivity. It’s not as if our bodies press pause for a few hours during
the dark. Much to the contrary, a lot goes on during sleep at the cellular
level to ensure that we can live another day. Clearly, a night of poor
sleep or no sleep at all won’t kill you, but prolonged sleep deprivation
can have unintended consequences, not to mention putting you at high risk
for an accident.
There’s something to
be said for looking refreshed and feeling smarter upon waking from a good
night’s sleep or a nap. Seemingly magical events happen when you’re
sleeping that just cannot happen during wakeful hours, and which help keep
you stay energized and quick-witted. Proof of sleep’s profound role in
our lives also has been demonstrated over and over again in laboratory and
clinical studies. It keeps you sharp, creative, and able to process
information in an instant. Losing as few as one and a half hours for just
one night reduces daytime alertness by about a third. And among the many
side effects of poor sleep habits are hypertension, confusion, memory
loss, the inability to learn new things, weight gain, obesity,
cardiovascular disease, and depression.
One underappreciated
aspect to sleep that is especially influential to our sense of well-being
is its control of our hormonal cycles. Everyone has a biological, internal
clock called a circadian rhythm (yes, even men can say they have a
biological clock). It’s the pattern of repeated activity associated with
the environmental cycles of day and night—rhythms that repeat roughly
every 24 hours. Examples include the sleep-wake cycle, the ebb and flow of
hormones, the rise and fall of body temperature, and other subtle rhythms
that mesh with the 24-hour solar day. When your rhythm is not in synch
with the 24-hour solar day, you will feel (and probably look) it. Anyone
who has traveled across time zones and felt off-kilter for a few days can
understand this.
So much of our circadian
rhythm revolves around our sleep habits. A healthy day-night cycle is tied
into our normal hormonal secretion patterns, from those associated with
our eating patterns to those that relate to stress and cellular recovery.
Cortisol, for example, should be highest in the morning and progressively
decrease throughout the day, with the lowest levels occurring after 11 p.m.
With (hopefully) low evening cortisol levels, melatonin levels rise. This
is the hormone that tells you it’s time to sleep; it helps regulate your
24-hour circadian rhythm, alerting your brain that it’s dark outside.
Once released, it slows body function, lowers blood pressure and, in turn,
core body temperature so you’re prepared to sleep. Higher melatonin
levels will allow for more deep sleep, which helps maintain healthy levels
of growth hormone, thyroid hormone, and sex hormones. All good things for
keeping up appearances and energy levels.
If
you’ve ever had a tough time winding down at night due to stress, you
may be secreting too much cortisol, which competes with the
sleep-enhancing melatonin.
Lots of hormones are
associated with sleep, some of which rely on sleep to get released. As
soon as you hit deep sleep, about 20 to 30 minutes after you first close
your eyes, and then a couple more times throughout the night in your sleep
cycle, your pituitary gland at the base of your brain releases high levels
of growth hormone (GH)—the most it’s going to secrete in 24 hours.
Growth hormone does more
than just stimulate growth and cell reproduction; it also refreshes cells,
restores skin’s elasticity, and enhances the movement of amino acids
through cell membranes. Growth hormone aids in your ability to maintain an
ideal weight, too, effectively telling your cells to back off on using
carbs for energy and use fat instead. Without adequate sleep, GH stays
locked up in the pituitary, which negatively affects your proportions of
fat to muscle. Over time, low GH levels are associated with high fat and
low lean muscle.
Growth hormone affects
almost every cell in the body, renewing the skin and bones, regenerating
the heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys, and bringing back organ and tissue
function to more youthful levels. Growth hormone also revitalizes the
immune system, lowers the risk factors of heart attack and stroke,
improves oxygen uptake, and even helps prevent osteoporosis.
Sleep on this:
The trouble with running up sleep shortages day after day is that it’s
very hard to make up the loss unless you’re going on vacation. What’s
more, when sleep is skimpy, your cortisol levels don’t drop as much as
they’re supposed to at night, and growth hormone doesn’t rise as much
as it should, which can undermine muscle strength. Remember, you need a
daily dose of growth hormone, which gets secreted during deep sleep, to
refresh your cells and prepare you for the next day. It not only
stimulates cellular growth and reproduction, but it also has strong
anti-inflammatory, antifat, and anticortisol effects—all good things for
energy (not to mention weight maintenance!).
It’s one of those
fundamental questions that have plagued scientists for a very long time.
As we were writing this book yet another study emerged to help explain how
the body knows to flip the switch and go from wakefulness to a sleep
state. It turns out that those fundamental molecules of energy that
literally charge our cells—ATP—take center stage.
Washington
State
University
researchers documented how active brain cells release ATP to start the
events leading to sleep. The ATP then binds to a receptor responsible for
cell processing and the release of cytokines, small signaling proteins
involved in sleep regulation. By charting the link between ATP and the
sleep regulatory substances, the researchers found the way in which the
brain keeps track of activity and ultimately switches from a wakeful to
sleeping state. For example, learning and memory depend on changing the
connections between brain cells. The study shows that ATP is the signal
behind those changes. Pretty cool stuff, and once again a reminder that
energy has as much to do with how we feel during our waking minutes as it
does with how well we sleep at night and prepare for another active day.
It’s a myth that
there’s a magic number of hours the body requires to sleep. Everyone has
a different sleep need. The eight-hour rule is general, but not
necessarily the ideal number for you. Most people need seven to nine
hours, and chances are you know what your number is. If you feel like a
drag after a six-hour night, then clearly you need to aim for more sleep.
Think of the last time you went on vacation and slept like a baby for more
hours a night than usual. That is probably your perfect number. Poor sleep
catches up to most of us, and it’s practically impossible to make up a
sleep loss because life keeps moving forward and demanding more of us.
Despite what many people attempt to do, shifting your sleep habits on the
weekends to catch up can sabotage a healthy circadian rhythm.
Not surprisingly, stress
and staying up too late are the two big culprits to poor sleep, which is
why it’s important to establish what’s called a healthy “sleep
hygiene”—the habits that make for a restful night’s sleep regardless
of factors such as age and underlying medical conditions that can disrupt
sleep. The goal is to minimize those factors’ effects on us so we can
welcome peaceful sleep.
1.
Get on a schedule. Go
to bed and wake up at the same time seven days a week, weekends included.
Try not to fall into a cycle of burning the midnight oil on Sunday night
in preparation for Monday, letting your sleep debt pile up for the week
and then attempt to catch up on sleep over the weekend. It won’t work.
Stick to the same schedule seven days a week. Your body and energy levels
will love it.
2.
Unplug to recharge.
Set aside at least 30 minutes before bedtime to unwind and prepare for
sleep. Avoid stimulating activities (e.g., work, cleaning, being on the
computer, watching TV dramas that get your adrenaline running). Try
soaking in a warm bath or engaging in some light stretching. Once you’re
in bed, do some light reading and push any anxieties aside.
3.
Don’t let your To Do
list or worries take control. Early in the evening—say, right
after dinner—write out tasks you have yet to complete that week (not
tonight!) and prioritize them realistically. Add any particular worries
you might have. If these notes begin to talk to you when you’re trying
to go to sleep, tell yourself it’s time to focus on sleep. Everything
will be okay. You’re tired and will have a productive day tomorrow.
You’re relaxed and at peace. The body needs to sleep and is ready for
it.
4.
Create a restful refuge. Reserve
the bedroom for sleep (and sex) only. Remove distracting electronics and
gadgets and keep it clean, cool, and dark.
5.
Nix the fix and cut the
caffeine. Stop drinking caffeinated beverages about eight hours
before bedtime. Due to caffeine’s half-life (how long it takes for
caffeine to lose half of its punch in your body), you’ll need all that
time to let your body process all the caffeine so it won’t infringe upon
restful sleep. If you cannot go cold turkey on the caffeine in the
afternoon, then switch to drinks with less caffeine, such as teas.
6.
Don’t sweat it. Watch
out if you exercise within three hours of bedtime. For some people,
exercise can be stimulating to the point it affects getting to bed on time
and falling asleep easily. This is when tracking your sleep experiences
and what you do beforehand can help you to pinpoint your own unique
culprits to restless sleep. If your body’s reaction to exercise is
stealing your sleep, then shift your exercise to earlier in the day.
7.
Limit your libations.
Be cautious about alcohol intake in the evening hours. If you use a glass
of wine as a way to unwind after the kids have gone to bed, which is how
many moms decompress at the end of the day, be mindful of how that glass
(or two) could be influencing the quality of your sleep. You might want to
test out avoiding this routine and see if it changes how refreshed you
feel the next day.
8.
Ditch digestive
distractions. Keep in mind that heavy foods too close to bedtime
can upset your sleep as much as they upset your stomach. The best bedtime
snack is nothing. Eating provides energy and that runs counter to prepping
the body for rest. If you need to take a medication or if you are
breastfeeding and up during the night, then maybe a liquid such as plain
coconut water will satisfy you. This requires no extra digestive work;
it’s a diluted amount of carbohydrates that also provides potassium for
hydration, which will help the body with recovery. To balance it out, you
could have 10 to 15 nuts with it.
9.
Focus on relaxing.
Try valerian herbal tea or a chamomile blend before bedtime. Take your
magnesium supplement in the evening hours to help relax muscles for better
sleep and regularity.
10.
Practice aromatherapy. Keep
a sachet of lavender by your bed and take a whiff before hitting the
pillow. Lavender has known sleep-inducing effects. Other aromas widely considered to be relaxing are rose,
vanilla, and lemongrass—but different ones work for different people.
For you, maybe lavender is stimulating and rose is not. Scented lotions
can also be effective.
11.
Take a d-e-e-p
breath…and release. On your back with your eyes closed and your
body stretched out, hands by your side, palms facing up, begin to squeeze
and release your muscles, starting with your head and face and working
down to your toes. Breathe in deeply and slowly, telling yourself I will
fall asleep. I am going to sleep.
12.
Get out of the bedroom.
We all think that if we lie in bed long enough, sleep will come. Instead,
our minds tend to get busier and our muscles tenser as we stress over
being awake. Give it a rest. If you can’t get to sleep within 20
minutes, slip out of bed and go to a safe haven—a place that’s comfy,
has dim lighting, and no distractions. Just sit comfortably. Or do your
breathing exercises. Or read. No e-mail, TV, or other electronics though.
The point is to give your mind-body a respite from trying so hard to nod
off. After 20 minutes or so, go back to bed and see what happens when
you’re more relaxed. Repeat once or twice if necessary.
Do sleep aids aid? There
are plenty of pill pushers these days in the sleep department. From
over-the-counter remedies to prescriptions marketed as non-addictive and
safe, sleep aids are a gigantic industry. Choosing to go that route is
totally up to you, but be aware of the potential downsides, including
those related to energy metabolism. Modern sleep medications are not all
they are cracked up to be. They may not be as chemically addicting as
earlier generations of sleep drugs, but they can be psychologically
addicting. What’s more, they can prevent you from reaching the farthest
reaches of deep sleep for long enough to reap all of its rewards. They may
also make you groggy or feeling hung over the next day.
You’d be amazed by the
power of sleep when it comes naturally just by regulating your sleep
habits. You body will respond and adapt to the sleep cycle you put it on.
If your body clock is truly off, try getting some natural morning sunlight
on you, do some exercise during the day, don’t stay up until the wee
hours of the morning cleaning house, and set aside time to wind down
before bedtime. Yes, it’s as simple as that!
One more note before
moving on: sometimes our sleep troubles are hiding more profound problems
which surface late at night, stirring insomnia. Let’s call it negative
energy, and this can entail any number of loaded guns—body image issues,
feeling inadequate as a mother or wife, health concerns, failures in your
relationships, disappointments at work, worries about money and financial
strife, struggles with juggling your parents’ health and raising your
own children, etc. Go ahead and think of what keeps you up at night. We
all have our lists. And they can be long.
Don’t think for a
minute that these matters don’t play into our energy equation. They will
pull down any bit of good energy and sabotage it into a very dark and
negative place. That then can bleed into every part of your being—your
relationships with your kids, spouse, friends, job, yourself. Letting
these dilemmas simmer in our minds is so worthless, and it gets us
nowhere. It also eventually leads us to degrade ourselves. And our bodies
hear it, immediately downshifting to preserve precious energy.
In the next and final
chapter, we’ll delve into the secrets to managing stress, which will
play into your ability to get a good night’s rest. When you do find
yourself churning awful thoughts, turn it around and say something
positive about yourself and your commitment to make positive change. For
every one thing you say negative about yourself and any “predicament”
you might find yourself in, say three things positive. I hate my legs. I
love my elbows. I love my chin. I love my hair. I hate my job. I love my
children. I love my courage. I love my strength. Self-esteem and
self-confidence are very powerful. They are also very energizing.
Of all the ideas we’ve
given to help you get a good night’s sleep, one of the most essential
(and least followed) is the one about setting aside time to wind down
before bedtime. Far too often, moms find themselves doing last-minute
chores and tasks long after the day should have been declared over. Once
the kids go to bed, don’t give yourself permission to use the rest of
the night to catch up on everything else at the expense of a full
night’s sleep. So if you want just one thing to do differently, see if
you can—for one week, hopefully longer—allocate one
hour before your bedtime during which you don’t engage in any
stimulating activities such as e-mail, internet surfing, or even watching
television. Instead, opt for a hot soak in your bathtub, reading, or
spending time with your spouse. If one hour is unrealistic, then try it
for a few days and then cut it back to 30 minutes. But no less! This is
You Time, and you’ll notice a difference in the quality of your sleep.
The
above excerpt is taken from the book Mom Energy; A Simple
Plan to Live Fully Charged
by Ashley Koff, RD, and Kathy Kaehler. It
is published by Hay House (September 1, 2011) and available at all
bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com
____________________
Ashley Koff is a registered dietitian (R.D.) who strives to make better nutrition a way of life for all. Koff has the proven ability to demystify the science of nutrition and communicate the importance of a healthy lifestyle to clients in a way that instills loyalty and trust. Never preachy, Koff's clients truly admire her gentle and patient way of finding the correct and effective nutritional program to suit their individual needs. Her passionate style is effective, resulting in Koff being named by Citysearch as LA's "Best Nutritionist" three years running; and a national media favorite. Koff is seen regularly in such media outlets such as The Huffington Post, Good Morning America Health, E! News, O! The Oprah Magazine, Redbook and Natural Health magazines, and is the resident nutritionist for the CW's "Shedding for the Wedding," and the upcoming Lifetime networks "Love Handles."
www.ashleykoffapproved.com
Kathy Kaehler is one of the most sought after health and fitness experts in the world. Kathy is also an internationally recognized celebrity personal trainer as she continues to train A list celebrities. Some of her big name clients have been Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, and Jennifer Aniston. Kathy's television appearances reach millions of people each year and include The Today Show, CNN's Campbell Brown, The View, Oprah and many others. Kathy has provided health and wellness tips, workouts and advice on living a healthy and productive life to such magazines as InStyle, Elle, Marie Claire, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Woman's World, Shape, Self, Fitness, First, People, Us, Prevention and more among others. Kathy is sought out as an expert in healthy living by major corporations like PepsiCo, Usana, Practor and Gamble, Armour-Eckrich Meats LLC and many more.
www.kathykaehler.net
