Most of the clients that come through my doors have trouble sleeping. It’s one of the things I want to work really hard to help with right away, because sleep is so very important for restoring our health. How well we sleep affects our eating habits and metabolism (anyone out there trying to lose weight?), our moods, and our brain health and memory. Here are five reasons you may be having trouble sleeping, and how you can begin to help. Which ones speak to you?
1. Caffeine Consumption
A majority of my clients enjoy coffee and tea, and there is nothing inherently wrong with these beverages. In fact, they both contain food sources of antioxidants, which have a protective effect on our health. However, excessive caffeine consumption can definitely disrupt sleep in several ways. Of course the caffeine can keep you awake if you drink it too close to bedtime. What “too close” is varies greatly for people. For some, anything after first thing in the morning will keep them awake, while others can consume caffeine right up until bedtime without any perceived effect.
The other way that caffeine can influence your sleep is by its affect on blood sugar. For some people, the jolt of coffee really stimulates the body to produce energy. But with this stimulation, your body uses up your available blood sugar and can overshoot the mark, causing you to experience an energy slump later on in the morning or day. If you repeatedly reach for a caffeinated beverage to correct this problem, I hope you can visualize the roller coaster experience your body is riding to try to equalize your energy and blood sugar levels.
I generally recommend that you consume your caffeine before noon, and limit yourself to 1-2 cups of coffee or tea per day (not espresso!). Don’t forget that chocolate also contains caffeine, so you might want to rethink that flourless chocolate torte dessert after dinner.
2. Exercising Late in the Day
Exercise is an important part of any healthy lifestyle, but as with anything, too much of a good thing at the wrong time can cause trouble. Vigorous exercise, such as a cardio-type workout, is perceived by the body as a form of stress. In spite of the important cardiovascular effects, this stress elevates your levels of the hormone cortisol, which typically begins to decline after mid to late morning. If you exercise in the afternoon or evening, you may find that you have a difficult time falling asleep.
Aim to complete your exercise during the morning hours. The best for weight loss is on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, before you eat breakfast. An even better addition is to do your morning exercise outside in the daylight, as this helps reset your circadian rhythm, and can doubly help you feel more like sleeping when it’s time to go to bed.
3. Low Melatonin/Gut Infections
You may not be thinking about your melatonin levels, but being infected by hidden pathogens such as parasites, bacteria, or yeasts may have an impact on your ability to sleep well. There are several reasons this is so. Melatonin is a hormone that helps us feel sleepy. Some is produced by the pineal gland in the brain, but 70% of it is produced in the gastrointestinal system. When we have a pathogenic infection in the gut, one of the side effects of the infection can be a low level of melatonin. This can translate to more difficulty sleeping.
Gut infections also create elevated levels of cortisol, our stress hormone, which can also affect blood sugar levels. Cortisol is responsible for our circadian rhythm, and therefore has a lot to do with our wakefulness. Cortisol should be low at night when we are trying to sleep, but pathogenic infectious agents tend to create a rise in nighttime cortisol levels over normal, impacting our ability to go to sleep and stay asleep. If you suspect you may have a pathogenic infection, reach out to me or another practitioner who can help you explore this.
4. Staying Up Late (Even if We Sleep Longer in the Morning) and Not Getting Enough Sleep
Don’t lie, I know many of you burn your candle at both ends, and regularly stay up late. I used to be one of you! It’s not uncommon for people to go to bed at 11, 12 or even 1-2 am. I was guilty of this when my kids were little because I wanted just a little time to myself, and to catch up on things I couldn’t do while my kids were awake. I couldn’t have been more misguided about this.
Our brain needs to restore and repair itself while we sleep. For the best restorative effects, we need to spend time in REM sleep, dreaming. Because our sleep cycle is partially regulated by our cortisol rhythm, we naturally become sleepy in the middle evening, around 9 or 10 PM, and reach the point of lowest cortisol production in the middle of the night. We naturally begin to become progressively more wakeful later during the night.
When we push ourselves to stay up past that natural decline of cortisol in the evening, we get a second wind. Have you noticed this? Then we’re ready to stay up for a few more hours. But because of our cortisol rhythm, our deepest, most restorative REM sleep is available to us in the early hours of our sleep cycle, before midnight. Regularly going to bed before midnight generally leads to better overall sleep quality, and also helps increase the hours we are asleep.
You don’t have to look far for the benefits of getting enough quality sleep. People who sleep less than 6 hours per night are at an increased risk of infection, insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, and mood disorders. Particularly interesting is the connection between sleep and blood sugar, insulin regulation, and obesity. Short sleep is associated with increased levels of the hormone ghrelin, and decreased levels of the hormone leptin. These two changes together are associated with increased appetite, and decreased satiety. Have you noticed that when you don’t sleep well, you are more hungry the following day?
This all adds up to the following recommendations: aim for about 8 hours of sleep, with a bedtime before midnight, ideally around 10:00 pm.
5. Blue Light and Screen Time
Finally, I want to discuss the effect of blue light screens, for example televisions and computer or tablet monitors, on our sleep. So many of us watch shows and movies at night, or surf the web to wind down at the end of the day. The blue light coming out of the screen suppresses your sleep hormone, melatonin. The easiest way to prevent this effect is to put away the tablet, and turn off the TV 2 hours before you go to bed. Use that time to unwind in a deeper way and prepare your body for sleep, by connecting with your family, reading a book, stretching, taking a bath, or some other calming ritual to help you settle down for the night.
If you can’t prevent screen time before bed, there are a few workarounds to reduce the impact of the blue light. There are several apps available that shift your screen to a more orange hue. This one, called f.lux is free. Some iPads have a function in the settings called Night Shift, which does the same thing. You can also purchase orange glasses, to wear while you work.
I do hope these tips can help get you sleeping longer and more deeply, so you are feeling happy, well-rested, and ready for your day. Let us know in the comments below if any of these tips has helped you.
