Good afternoon everybody, happy Veterans Day! It is November 11, 2016. I welcome to Sleep Part 2 podcast. On Monday, just gone.
I did sleep part 1 where we talked about how many hours of sleep to get. Do us everyone need the same amount of sleep, how does sleep affect fat loss and I touched on some sleep apnea as well a bit. So just going into a little bit more detail today but I'll try not to drag it out too much. I just want to touch on some hormones and some other stuff that can affect your sleep which then of course carries over into your health and fat loss if that is your goal.
And I think in my opinion more importantly brain function because if your brain is not functioning properly you will not be making smart choices, your days are going to be a lot tougher and then anything that you may have learned in that day is not going to get processed or stored properly. So just looking back on what sleep is. So sleep is in many terms it is basically when we pretend to be dead for a few hours. That's what it is.
It's an anabolic state where we are doing our repair and our restore and processing information and doing everything that our body needs to be done that it can't do while we are in a catabolic state which is when we're walking around day to day or we're in the gym working out. Wherever we're doing generally when we're awake we're in a catabolic state and we're under some sort of stress which is not good for the body. So sleep is where we're doing all our repairs and we're rebuilding new muscles and new tissues and new hair cells and brain cells and everything like that. So high quality sleep is what we're more looking for.
We're not looking to get more sleep, we're looking to get a better quality of sleep. So then the carryover with a better quality of sleep is going to be a strong immune system, your hormones will be more imbalanced, your metabolism will boost, you'll have more energy, you'll obviously have improved brain function, you'll be able to make smarter decisions. Realistically sleep plays a huge part in health and fat loss and if you don't have the sleep that your body needs it's unlikely that you're ever going to get the body or life that you want to have. There's always going to be some strain there or a drain on the system.
So this is where I'm going to look into sleep for hormones because sleep has the biggest impact on your hormones even more than food and we all of course should know at this stage that hormones have the biggest impact on fat loss and our ability to burn fast. Now how do we optimize our hormones in our favor so that it coincides with our sleep and our natural circadian rhythm which is our internal clock which coincides with the planets circadian rhythm. So what we're looking to do to optimize this, when we wake in the morning our body releases cortisol which is our stress level. This is our stress hormone that's telling us hey it's time to get up, get kids ready or hit the gym or do whatever, this hormone gives us our boost and gets our body out the door basically.
That hormone starts to come into effect usually as the sun rises because our hormones and our circadian clock work with the sun and the moon. So as the sun rises our body picks up the slide and then it knows to release cortisol usually between the hours of 6 and 8 a.m. in the morning that's when your cortisol levels will start to release and then they spike around 9 or 10 where you'll find you have your most energy. So in order to optimize this what we want to do is when we get out bed we want to open all the curtains in the house and get as much natural light into the house as we can try not to put on any fake lights.
If you can stand outside for a couple of minutes 15 at the least but during the day you would want to be aiming for 15 to 30 minutes direct sunlight. So this is going to tell your body and your adrenal glands how hormones need to be released and when and what kind of the day we're at and so on so it's very important that you're getting that sunlight in. So knowing that your cortisol is higher in the morning and supposed to be higher then we can kind of plan the rest of our day around that. So if we're getting our exercise in earlier in the morning our stress hormones coincide with the cortisol levels so the stress hormones that we would release in the gym because exercising is a big stress on the system will coincide with our natural cortisol levels that have already released.
So then your hormone levels or your stress hormone levels will start to balance out as the day goes on and you will get more mellow and your clock will keep moving forward getting you ready to go into more of a relaxation state so you're getting ready for bed, sleep, a repair, recovery and so on. Usually then as the sun goes down and there are variables that will take into account where you live on the planet and the time of year and so on but generally then our melatonin levels will start to kick in as the sun sets are usually around 7 or 8 p.m. in the evening the melatonin will start to increase and the cortisol will decrease so melatonin is the hormone that as I stated on the last one it's your sleep quality hormone so it's not getting you to sleep it's your sleep quality so you want that to be running nice and natural and smooth so as the evening comes in we're trying to avoid fake light because when we have this fake light on in our house the lights and your house when they are on what they're doing is we're creating a fake daytime so they're sending signals to your adrenal glands saying oh we're still in daytime so keep producing the cortisol so then your melatonin gets suppressed so even though you might feel tired because you're run down because this is a repetitive state that you're in when you actually get to bed your melatonin levels are not where we would like them to be so you're falling asleep but you're not getting that quality of sleep that you need to do all the restorative work so I know this can be hard especially as winter comes in because you don't be walking around the dark but there are a few hacks so I will leave my curtains or my blinds open as long as I can until dusk is right upon us and it's pretty dark outside then I will put on some dimmer warmer lights instead of those white fluorescent lights the dimmer warmer lights that have more of a red tone to them are definitely more beneficial than the wider with the blue tones I'll also use candles I like to use a lot of candles and we know this is more natural life for us we have used candles I won't say till the beginning since the beginning of time before hundreds of years now we've been using candles so it's more natural to us and you know yourself when you have candles lighting it's definitely more calming relaxing environment that you're in I'll tend to turn the TV down the music down whatever else down a little lower so everyone can start to get into that rest state and calm down and relax a lot more obviously I'm trying my best to avoid carbohydrates late in the evening because they carbohydrates induce stress on the body so that's going to bump your cortisol back up again and we want to keep it down low and then you can kind of see where that entwines with putting on weight because we know if our if our stress hormones are high then their stress hormones connect to our survival instinct and they make our bodies storm or fat or store sugar for the day the zombies arrive so just think about it for a second it makes a lot of sense so then what else am I doing some nights I'll have a calming team we spoke about that in the last podcast but then on evenings that may have been extra stressed maybe I'll have a warm bath about an hour before bed because as I've said before that will then give your body that time to allow its core temperature to get back down to the normal levels where we would like it to be for a good rest that night so it's very important and not anything that can suppress melatonin is taking melatonin supplements even though they're natural when we take melatonin supplements we're actually taking the work off our glands to do their own production of melatonin so you're kind of given your your body's natural melatonin a free pass to not do anything so you think you oh I'm getting more melatonin I'm gonna have better sleep well actually you're doing more damage than good for them by taking that supplement a better approach would be to try some of these more natural hacks to get melatonin working in your favor and that comes back to a big one that I'm seeing a lot lately with people everybody wants the aesthetics everybody's looking for fat loss even though the people even the people that say they're not they are everybody's looking for some sort of body that they can be proud of so what I'm seeing is people are exercising like lunatics even late in the evenings when when you work out later in the evening what do you do you're increasing your core does all level which is your stress hormone and you're coming back to me saying the scales has not moved the scales are staying the same well let me tell you it's because you're putting your body under so much stress so late at night and then on top of that you're not getting your melatonin release for a good quality of sleep so just take a few of these into account I would prefer you went for a long walk in the evening or practice some yoga or meditation and you may think oh well that's not burning as much calories well you're right it's not but in the end at the end of the day on by the time we get to where we want to be you'll see that that type of training has proven to be more beneficial and overall you have lost a lot more body fat so the calories are not the issue here it's the body fat that we're trying to take control of then so we spoke about sleep times yes the sleep time studies have shown that if you get to bed and I spoke about this in the last one but I like to reiterate all of this just so it sinks in a little more that if you get to bed between the hours of 10 and 12 p.m. at night you're going to get your optimal sleep there so you basically get a double dosage of good sleep when you get to bed at them times as I said I try my best to get to bed at 10 p.m.
every night just to get those optimal sleep hours and because I want to perform at a higher level I want to be at the top of my game I want to be the best and therefore I can bring the best to all of you guys so I've got to take care of myself if I'm expecting you to take care of yourself um just back to melatonin again melatonin is mostly produced in the gut so as we had said the other day people think it's created in the brain 400 times more melatonin is created in your gut therefore we need a healthy gut that means less carbs and sugars which we know and processed foods damage our gut lining and our intestinal wall they suppress and kill off a lot of our good bacteria so what we're looking for is to improve the gut health more healthy bacteria a wider variety of healthy bacteria and we want to introduce introduce more like yogurts and kefers, sauerkraut pickles, pickles anything is pretty good for you and also the prebiotics so really quick what's the difference between prebiotics and probiotics probiotics contain the bacteria prebiotics feed the bacteria so your prebiotics since a lot of you I know will love to hear this um prebiotics in wine yes wine another reason why it's good for you honey uh asparagus and there's a few where there's um most a lot of green vegetables will have prebiotics in it so it's important that we're keeping our good health very happy and running in order to help get that melatonin going out and doing what it needs to do also I spoke about um this kind of goes hand in hand between good fats and hydration I spoke about last week or the other day how when we go to sleep our brain shrinks by 60 percent and that then allows our brain to do all the repairs and cleans and remove toxins and so on as you go on so when we are hydrated we have more function our cells function a lot better our hormones our glands function our brain cells everything functions a lot better when we are hydrated when our body has plenty of water because water pretty much is it makes up 90 plus percent of our body so it's important that we're staying hydrated and especially for our brain and brain functions help fight off dementia and Alzheimer's and forgetfulness and vaccine good well I just don't remember things as well as I used to well you know that can be prevented um and combining hydration fats and sleeps is the key way to help prevent all of those kind of brain issues as aging sets in so when one we're getting more hydration it's going to allow our brain when it does shrink when we are asleep to get use that water to flush out more toxins and get the cleaning done but then also um the water is going to help transport those good fats that you've had into the cells that needed and we know that good fats are brain food so very very important and when you have brain food it enables your brain to function a lot more and create new brain cells which are very important because a lot of brain cells is what results in a lot of these brain disorders that we're seeing um and my grandmother has dementia and it is very very very sad and I do not want to get that and I wouldn't wish it on anybody so just incorporating some sleep some hydration some fats into your diet is going to play a huge role I came across um a read or study researchers had found that sleep deprivation reduced the higher order of the brain and created excessive response in the more primitive part of the brain so what is our more primitive part of the brain well it's survival so this brings us back then to sleep and weight loss and turning off certain cells so that the main survival cells will activate and function better so the study showed there was more activation in the amygdala so this is the area associated with you wanting to eat um so when we're sleep too deprived then our survival instincts are turned on so we're going our brain is telling us go look for food we need to survive so it's going for its quickest fix and you have no say in the matter so because a lot of the time our primal instincts are a lot stronger than what you would like to call willpower so just keeping that in account as well if you're looking for a better functioning brain and of course fat loss then um taking into account that when you're not getting enough sleep or your sleep the private or your quality is not as good then this primal part of the brain has been activated and kind of controlling you um and then lastly I want to talk about sleep positions because I get this a lot to the best sleep positions for when I don't advocate pillows at all because pillows put your spine in this unnatural position which can block airwaves can affect posture and can prevent blood flow to your brain so if you're lying on your back and you have a pillow propped under your head then you're taking your neck into flexion and it's going to be inflection pretty much all night we'll say if you don't roll over but in this position you're also putting pressure on your airwaves so you're closing off some of your airwaves your tongue will roll backwards and also then this can result in snoring in some people and sleep apnea um in a lot of people as well but in saying that there are so many positives to sleeping on your back I do prefer to sleep on my back um I will not have a pillow so I'm just on the mattress so my spine is in perfect natural alignment my mattress is not too hard not too soft um then because I don't have a pillow there's none of this pressure being put on my neck but also for you ladies that when we're sleeping face up there's nothing rubbing off our face there's less chance of breakouts and wrinkles being formed so let's just keep that note in our head then the next one is lying on your stomach so there's been a lot of debate over putting babies on their stomach and not and this is just one of these debates that goes back and forth every year lying on your stomach can be very beneficial but what you want to do is we want to bring one knee out to the side and up so we can open up those hip flexors and take a rotation across our spine just to give more of a free flowing effects to our blood, neurolymphatic system and everything like that and again without a pillow when you are on when you use a pillow um sleeping on your stomach you're putting your neck into this hyper extension position all night all night you're basically thinking that you're walking around all day looking up at the sky that's the position your head is supposed to be in all night so obviously not the most beneficial or natural position and then sleeping on your side sleeping on your left side has been shown to be very beneficial especially for people with sleep apnea and people that suffer with digestive issues like heartburn, acid reflux, some digestive issues of sleeping on your left is going to be a bit better and to prevent that numbness in your lower arm what you could do is try pull that arm forward upwards bit just to keep that blood flow going. That's it I know I've missed a lot because there's so much to talk about but if you've any questions drop a comment below or reach out to me my website is Shameen's Model Health my email is there and other ways you can contact me right there I hope that's clarified a bit more for you and how the great veterans day everybody and watch out for next Mondays podcast okay bye