Top 10 Tips for Quality Sleep & BLUblox SALE

I want to make sure my boys get quality sleep because children’s brain health suffers with lack of sleep! Not to mention their emotional health! Believe me… no one wants to hang out with this cute kid when he’s sleep deprived!

But let’s talk about weight gain and sleep deprivation. Are you having trouble losing weight or are you having high morning blood sugar despite eating keto? Too often I see clients that are doing everything right for weight loss except they are ignoring the importance of quality sleep.

This is why people often GAIN weight in the summer! We often THINK we are going to lose weight because we are more active in the summer. But, do you lose weight? OR do you gain weight?

Many people gain weight in the summer and one main reason is that they skimp on sleep. It is easy to get 8-10 hours of sleep when it gets dark out at 4:30pm in January, but who wants to go to bed when it is still light out?

I work with a lot of gastric bypass patients and in the past, we use to think that they had sleep apnea after they gained weight BUT we now know that the lack of sleep = leptin resistance = don’t feel the sense of feeling full = over eating = weight gain! bad bad bad.

Summertime can be challenging when it comes to sleep. Longer days with more sunlight are great for activities and getting outside, but it can also interfere with our sleep. Especially in northern climates like we are in Wisconsin, it doesn’t get dark until after 9PM and is getting light out at 5AM. Add to that all the summer activities and your sleep could suffer.

Many studies connect a link between sleep and the hormones that manipulate our eating behavior; which are ghrelin and leptin. Have you ever experienced a sleepless night followed by a day when no matter what you ate you never felt satisfied? I hate that! This is the outcome when leptin and ghrelin get out of balance. Leptin and ghrelin work like a “checks and balances” that manage hunger and fullness. Ghrelin, produced in the stomach, increases appetite, while leptin, produced in fat cells, sends a message to our brain when we are full. A lack of sleep causes ghrelin levels to increase and your leptin levels to decrease. This imbalance causes us to intensely crave food and never feel full. The worst part is that we don’t crave broccoli, we crave high calorie sweets and starchy foods. Over time, this imbalance can easily lead to long-term weight gain.

In a Chicago study, doctors analyzed leptin and ghrelin levels in 12 fit men. They started by charting their normal levels of appetite and hunger. The men were assigned to two days of sleep deprivation followed by two days of limitless sleep. Doctors supervised hormone levels, appetite, and activity level. The men had considerable changes. When sleep was restricted, leptin levels went down and ghrelin levels went up. As expected, the men’s appetite also increased; the desire for high carbohydrate, high calorie foods increased by a shocking 45 percent.

Sleeping less also affects changes in our basal metabolic rate. When you are sleeping, your body produces human growth hormone; the stuff celebrities are now injecting to look young and feel young. Human growth hormone helps preserve our muscle and keep our metabolism firing at night. So an inadequate amount of sleep will keep this highly desired hormone from kicking in. Another thing to remember is that our human growth hormone doesn’t kick in if we eat 3 hours before bed.

When you get a good night’s rest your body has adequate time to repair and rejuvenate.

As we have talked about many times, blocking the blue light (and certain green light wavelength) is so important for allowing your body to naturally generate melatonin, our bodies natural sleep hormone. It is important to get a quality pair of blue blocking glasses to ensure you block all the wavelength of blue and green light that can interfere with melatonin production.

Many cheaper glasses will only block blue light making them less effective. BLUblox block all wavelength of blue and green light that have been shown in studies to interfere with the bodies natural melatonin production. And many cheaper glasses you don’t want to been seen wearing around your friends. BLUblox not only block out all the right wavelengths, but they are stylish too! They come in many styles and shapes.

TOP 10 TIPS for QUALITY SLEEP

1. Avoid sugar and foods high in carbohydrates, like popcorn, chips, and ice cream, especially in the evening hours. It causes low quality sleep and it stalls our metabolism. When blood sugar rises too much, it falls too low, causing you to wake up because of low blood sugar and hunger.
2. Add in salt before bedtime. When people start the keto diet, or start to do longer fasting, sleep often suffers. One reason is because lack of sodium levels in the evening really interferes with quality sleep!
3.  Follow a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and rising at the same time. I know I sound like a loser, but I’m usually in bed by 8:30pm and rise at 6am.
4. Before bed do something to relax your muscles and your mind (meditation, gentle stretching, yoga or deep breathing exercises).
5. Reduce or eliminate caffeine (chocolate has caffeine, so beware). Despite working at coffee shops since I was 15 years old, I cut out all coffee and caffeine and never felt better!
6. Darken your bedroom with heavy drapes. We have black-out blinds.
7. Turn the heat down. We often sleep with the windows cracked open even in the winter; I sleep the best at about 57-60 degrees.
8. Try cold therapy before bed. I do cold therapy nightly to cool my body down to help with mitochondria health and increasing sleep.
9. Women: Get your progesterone level tested. I often see women that can fall asleep, but wake up in the middle of the night. I have helped copious amounts of women get good sleep with natural supplements to help with hormone health.
10. WEAR BLUblox glasses! I usually put my BluBlox glasses on around 5pm. Yep, 5pm! It is best to stop blocking all the blue light about 2-3 hours before bedtime to allow the body to naturally produce melatonin. With stylish blue blocking glasses you can start wearing them in the evening while still hanging out with friends. They even make a good conversation starter! You are biohacking your sleep. 🙂

Click HERE to get yourself a stylish pair of BLUblox glasses! 

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