Sleep Science: It’s Nothing to Snore About

Sleep- we see it happen to others, but we’re unconscious when it happens to us. What exactly is going on with and while we sleep? Knowledge is power, and a brief overview of the chemistry of sleep might be just what the doctor ordered to drive the value of sleep home for those of you who leave your sleep health wanting.

Gut and Neurotransmitters

The gut is often referred to as our primitive brain because, before we had a brain, we were simply an anus. When embryos develop, the first thing to form is tube that runs from mouth to anus. While the brain has clearly presented itself and evolved into who it is today, the gut continues to be the man-behind-the-curtain, shouting cues, directing the whole operation. Our stomachs are the primary production site of several neurotransmitters and the home to gazillions of microbes.

The neurotransmitter, serotonin, is one of these aforementioned transmitters that heavily influence the cadence and quality of our sleep. Serotonin is most well known as a “happy hormone”, mostly produced in the gut (90%), that plays a role in temperature regulation and sleep health. Serotonin is a byproduct of essential amino acid tryptophan (popularized by the post-thanksgiving siesta), only accessible through the foods we eat. When we’re not eating right, our sleep quality diminishes as well. This contributes to lower immune health and increased vulnerability to all sorts of dis-ease.

Glymphatic System

Sleep is so important for us to get in proper amounts because we “thinking things”. The act of thinking is an effortful process (for some more than others) that results in waste byproducts that need to be cleared out of the brain. In Ayurveda, this waste elimination system is called “ambu vaha strotas”- it is the waterways of the body that clarify the waste, circulate the vitality, and keep us operating on all cylinders. Of the fluid systems in our bodyes, the “lymphatic system”is our liquidy-juiciness that transports nutrients, immune response, and nuerotransmitters.

Our central nervous system has it’s own specialized lymph to clarify built up waste product- called the Cerebro-spinal Fluid, part of the “glymphatic system”. At night, when we sleep, this system awakens and flushes our brain and nervous tissue so that we can wake up fresh and ready to go the next day. Long term, low quality sleep contributes to neurodegenerative diseases and cardiovascular disease.

The Pineal & Adrenals

Finally, the enigmatic pineal gland and the energetic adrenals, our internal metronomes. Through sensory input processing of light received via the visual cortex, our pineal gland excretes sleep promoting hormones. Low spectrum to no light, soft sounds, neutral temperature, satiated gut are all signals. These send a cascade of messages out to downshift the system, we are fed and safe, prepare for sleep mode. Blood pressure drops along with body temperature, excretory functioning slows down, and our body goes into phases semi-paralysis.

In the morning, wake-promoting hormones begin to pour into our blood. Digestive processes are energized back into life, the heart beats with a little more razzle-dazzle, and our sense perception eagerly receives the world around it. In stressful times, that energy spike is exacerbated, spiraling into persistent states of unrest while crowding out deep, regenerative rest opportunities.

Heavily stimulating activities in the hours just before sleep are a recipe for underwhelming sleep. Shocking a system in need of repair is burning the candle at both ends, unwittingly taking years away from your life.

Learning and Consolidation

There’s too much reality to face before expecting perfection in any wellness ritual. Systemic and systematic disruption to access to basic needs will always be part of our lives. That said, why wave the white flag and succumb to those habits when you do have those glimmers of “you” time? In the name of true self care, any effort toward your healthiest future is a worthwhile endeavor. Each choice to do so is a vote in favor of your life.

Self-Efficacy and Other “Best Kept Secrets” to Success

How often do you steel a quick glance around of your peers to pass a judgment on their progress in relation to yours? While there is no way that we can know what other folks have going on, inevitably we measure ourselves to our perception of their accomplishments. To imply otherwise is, in my opinion, a lie. The intention can be there, right? “Don’t look at what others are doing”. “Just focus on your path”. The energy sent out to “read the room” could have been used to keep progressing your journey. Yes, comparison is the thief of joy. It also happens to be a very normal, human thing to do nonetheless.

When we pop our head up during an exam to note the temperature of the room at large (is everyone else sweating profusely, too?) it either affirms or upset our current progress. In the real world, though, we’re surrounded by a bunch of folks masking their real experience as a way of maintaining social norms. It’s all cool and great, but somewhere along the way we might feel further behind because the masks that we see mute the internal screams of panic that everyone else is also screaming.

Through these same masks, coaches tout their methods- affirming the value of buying into their particular program. Let them tell you how to live and you’ll certainly end up looking just like them*.

With great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, the coaching industry’s exponential growth moment has not come with regulation. As a result, we’ve ended up with harm done and poorly researched information disseminated. The coaching industry can be highly toxic at it’s worst. Because we don’t make money when you don’t spend money on us, coaches are likely to retain you through disempowering practices that keep y’all feeling incapable of “going at it on your own”.

Below, you’ll find a quick list of real, results driving practices that are free to explore and readily a part of your self-preservation toolbox already :)

Self Efficacy

Self efficacy is a belief that you can persevere. We are able to adapt through the constant process of learning, failing, recounting, and realigning to attempt better outcomes. When we are inundated with imagery that reflects the oxymoron that everyone else is okay and succeeding alongside the impossibility of making ends meet in this current capitalist culture, the essence of self efficacy is harder to adopt.

Us believing that we can persist, regardless of past failures, is a manifestation of “the american dream”. As an institution, America was founded on the backs of othering, subversion, and abuse. The American dream was established for the folks who reaped the rewards of the systematic subjugation and abuse of anyone else who didn’t fit that mold. Due to the deep seated fractures in our current state of things, self efficacy became a privilege only affirmed for the few that were given the advantage of believing that they could.

The brain constructs its reality based on continually confirmed behaviors by the folks who rear you and the community that you’re brought up in. These realities create a unique system of optimization for resources that the command center needs to survive each day. At this point in late-stage capitalism, we are all targeted by strategic marketing boosted by research that has proven the mechanisms for human behavior. Us believing that we can persevere is something that disrupts the system enough- not all can, otherwise the system will collapse. It wasn’t built for one-for-all.

When your systems optimization methods don’t quite mesh well with practices that will yield positive results, it takes an extra effort to unlearn and relearn in a new way. Humans who are categorically kept from equal access are immediately at a disadvantage from believing that they can. It’s exhausting. Now that megacorporations have the research and the tools to keep us looking away from the “man behind the curtain”, our global sense of self-efficacy feels at-risk.

To recenter yourself and your outcomes, consider all of the trials you’ve overcome so far. When you find yourself in a rut, return to examples of times that you’ve felt the same and ended up with a positive outcome. Persistence doesn’t have to be grandiose, it can be simply getting up and completing the intentions for the day when you were particularly dark, ya know? Wins are wins, you’ve made it this far, and you can keep making it onward as a result.

Agency

A sense of agency, I believe, is our easy act of revolution. Agency is our sense of self-determination. When we feel “agency”, we see ourselves in the driver’s seat. We are the director, the performer, and the audience determining the success of the performance. Our agency is taken from us when we’re constantly inundated with messaging that leaves us feeling helpless. Whether it’s content that we directly engage with or the sounds, sites, and sensations that surround us regularly, it’s easy to have taken when we’re most vulnerable.

Us reclaiming our sense of agency is us returning to our roots, serving our needs, and standing in our power. We aren’t ideal consumers when we are in our skin, on our feet, and thriving. We are sold on dreams that we’re told to have, and encouraged to match and outdo our peers in the rat race for attention. Not only do we need to carry the burden of the daily stress of showing up right, we also end up exhausted in our pursuit of some ideal that we believe we need to experience.

We can begin to reclaim our sense of agency from within. Our thoughts become our words which are spoken into action which persist as habits and we leave this earthly form by way of the legacy that those actions have left. When I’m feeling particularly disempowered, I’ll imagine my perfect day. “Your Perfect Day” exercise is meant to inspire the steps necessary to get you from the moment you’re in and to motivate you towards just where you can go. Imagine your perfect day, take note of the sounds, the locations, the feelings, and (most importantly) the actions that you take to make that day most perfect. How do you get there? What can you do this month, this week, this day to realize that dream? That’s action, that’s agency. Uncontrollables aside, knowing just how much you can influence your outcomes is addictive.

Simplicity

Finally, and one of my hardest pills to swallow: Simplicity. The quality of being easy to understand or to do except as it pertains to personal growth. Everyone has an opinion and, if you open yourself up to those opinions, you may be at risk of having your own opinions elbowed out. For those of us who can’t quite accept things at face value and who worry that the simplest solution might, in fact, be the most negligent, accepting simplicity is scary.

For a broader system that gives all voices something like a platform, elevating the most clickable and provocative voices, simplicity isn’t sexy so it’s unworthy of amplification. Other than the clickbait-devoid-ness of simplicity, the hyper-productivity driven information economy relegates simplicity to the margins, unworthy of a second glace. That’s it, that’s the post. Simplicity doesn’t play into the narratives that want confusion in order to facilitate buy-in for the solution.

When we’re just setting out on a fresh day, there may be a million things we want to do, there may be a handful of things we need to do, and there may be the grey area tasks that we neither want to nor need to do (but that we might be more than happy to use to procrastinate). It’s useful to map out this brain clutter into a handful of buckets: high priority, low priority, exciting, distracting. Categorizing the mish-mash in our brains is a helpful way to simplify, to clarify the intentions of our actions, and make the choices that will most efficiently get us where we need to go so that we can exist how we want.

All in all, and if you’ve gotten this far, remember that you are the driver of your life. You have all of the tools, they just may take a bit more practice than you expect. Believe in you, advocate for your best interests, and watch your energies shift :)

Proper Fueling

The fitness industry is notorious for being at the center of harmful practices regarding weight and body composition. Often times, the things that seem too good to be true are just that. Fast fixes and trendy workouts have historically come with a slew of side effects or counterproductive outcomes.

While I feel confident that the industry is moving toward sustainability and true well being, capitalism continues to center the sexy thing- whatever grabs attention regardless of bodily implications. That being said, I continue to explore ways to peel my clients and my practice away from the myths that pop fitness have cultivated. Instead, my purpose is to lean in to the simplicity of self-awareness as well as the agency of self-determination in my personal and my client’s programs.

The Myth of Calories in/Calories out

I’ll start by (hopefully) debunking the toxicity of this one- energy balance. Myths, like conspiracies, proliferate because there may be even a nugget of truth within. Yes, consumption without utilization yields surplus. The urge to reduce nuanced functions in the body is a capitalist tactic to simultaneously commodify and maximize profits off of our inadvertent ignorance. It’s predatory and, when weaponized against humans simply trying to live better, harmful to success.

Instead of focusing on calories out/calories in, a high level understanding of nutrient function can be a powerful resource in your toolbox for planning fuel practices. This doesn’t have to be complicated. The quality of those calories-in matter more than the quantity- something we’ll discuss a bit more shortly.

In fact, the body has safeguards in place for lean-time energy management. Like a squirrel gathering nuts in for the lean winter months, the body will likely retain more of it’s energy sources when it’s uncertain that it’ll be fed fully and properly. Metabolism is suppressed and resources are used as efficiently (and minimally) as possible. This is diminishing returns.

Eat food with joy when you can, that returns in dividends simply because the body can appreciate and accept the associate state of mind.

Nutrient Timing & Quality

Nothing hard is ever successfully accomplished all at once. Success, instead, comes from first putting one foot in front of another. Our desire for change mixed with the easily accessible, generic content on the internet makes for a melting pot of high expectations paired with low effort output. It’s an equation for failure. The Cliff’s Notes summary of Nutrient Timing and Quality is as follows: Eat food, eat a bit of all kinds of foods, and try not to over eat.

Nutrient Timing

When we don’t eat, our metabolism is suppressed. When that happens, we break down and assimilate food stuff much slower than we would otherwise. Our bodies are smart and economical with resources. The body identifies lean time and behaves as such. It’s goal is to best assist operations with the resources it has and, without sufficient resources, the body goes into “saving mode”. Eat food that’s the message. More on timing to follow.

Nutrient Quality

Fats, proteins, and fibers digest slower than sugars. Please note, sugars are efficient and easy sources of energy- eat those. To avoid the negative experiences associated with frequent and intense spikes in blood sugars, eat sugars with fats, proteins, and fibers. Juices, smoothies, and easy-to-grab snacks tend to lack most, if not all, of those things. As a result, your sugar spikes. When sugar spikes fast, insulin spikes fast, too. Without a readily available use for those sugars, they get stored in the liver, the muscles, and the adipose (fat tissues).

There’s an interesting stigma around fruits but, for general populations, fruits are sugary with quality micronutrients that assist most all of the body’s processes. Vegetables are typically high in fiber and lower in sugars, but are still considered carbs, they’re just more likely to flatten that spike. A bit of toast with butter? a fat on a carb. Berries in yogurt? A fat, protein, and carb. Quality nutrients, no matter their composition, will win out of poor quality, highly manufactured foods- aim for those :)

Fasting 101

To end on a buzz-word, I’ll leave you with a brief note on intermittent fasting (time restricted eating). Intermittent fasting does not mean eating less. Fasting is eating your food within a restricted window, not restricting your intake. Folks that starve themselves until 1pm, eat a sandwich, have a salad for lunch, and snack on a handful of Oreos by 8pm aren’t going to reap the same rewards that someone who’s fueling properly will. For the person who fasts until 10am, eats 2-3 full meals within the window, and stops eating at 6pm? they’ll be nourished enough for the fast that they won’t end up on an insufficiency binge.

Fasting has shown to reduce inflammatory factors on the body which, in turn, increases what I’ll call “vitality” or a climate for “longevity”. You might be familiar with the unpleasant feeling of going to bed on an overly-full stomach or getting so hangry late in the morning that you develop a hypo-glycemic headache. You fast fully nourished like a squirrel with it’s nuts in the winter, so that the lean window does not lead to depleted resources.

All of this said, behavior change is hard. Identifying, vetting, and implementing change can be uncharted territory. When in doubt, reach out! Try a few things, hit up your friendly neighborhood wellbeing professional, and prioritize the things that feel great and empowered. Life’s too short to do otherwise.

Learning Behavior Change

Being healthy and cultivating a long, full life can feel like a Sisyphean feat in the world that we’re living in. The world in which we’ve readily become “Human Resources” for a productivity driven, output hungry, insatiable machine. Not only is our work-life harmony more like a cacophony- what little free time we do have is consumed with advertisements and low-hanging, low-quality gratification. Everyone is trying to sell you something and, even if they don’t make the sale, they’re profited off of monopolizing your limited attention resources.

Each year, we’re provided a small handful of “change moments”- holidays or key moments to get excited about “beginning again”. The New Year, a birthday, a new semester, Mondays- all examples of the “start” that we crave when we’ve decided that we’re ready to make a change (just not ready enough to do it right then). Inevitably, if we do step up to the “start”, we do so ready to capitalize on the collective enthusiasm to carry us through the perceived “finish line”.

So often, though, the wave fizzles out and we’re left to paddle onward. Without some form of planning and preparation, our compass malfunctions. If we haven’t charted the course, we’re left to paddle aimlessly, hoping to catch the next wave going in the “right direction”. The energy lost in the confusion could have been a valuable resource on the path to achievement. All of that to say this: behavior change is a series of skills practices until they become automated.

We perform best at tasks that we don’t have to think so hard about. We love a “path of least resistance”, especially in our society. That’s why we’re so easily sold on quick-fixes which, in turn, leave us jaded about the whole journey anyway. So let’s, for a moment, reframe the behavior change process as a skills practice.

How Memories are Made

When experience events, our senses perceive a handful of tidbits about the environment. From that initial encounter, we retain a smaller handful of tidbits that we then either synthesize or toss away. From short-term memory, the elite few get to stick around in the long-term memory, ready for recall at a moment’s notice.

Our brains can store so much information the way that it does because it categorizes elements of experience and connects them through relationships. The more we feed any given category, the better established it’s complexities become in our understanding. We build new skills that are considered procedural memory- we get better at them the more we do them. Though it might feel defeating to practice the habit at it’s outset, the demonstrated process of “learning until expertise” is undeniable. As a result, changing behaviors requires the simplest and most specific approach possible so as to leave no margin for error.

Getting SMART

This is why SMART goals are such a pervasive part of organizational development. Goals need to have specificity, there needs to be some sort of measure of success. They need to be achievable, relevant to the big picture, and set to be timely with deadline. The whole of my twenties was saturated with nonspecific goals that left me adrift over and over again. Setting goals without SMART-support is a resource-drain- it’s the well-intentioned friend offering to help without really intending to help, ya know? It’s that well-intentioned friend that’ll reach out while your floundering to offer support- “just let me know what I can do”.

We can set ourselves up for better success by taking big goals and making them small and by taking the small goals and making them smaller. When we get granular on our goals and values-in-action, we provide ourselves an exponentially larger toolbox of small steps to pull from. Getting miniscule means that, within the grains, you’ll be better prepared for challenges before they’ve come up, as well.

The practice of getting SMART, though, takes focus, patience, and resilience. The noise of commercials and gurus, along with the typical drags of the workday, distract and numb us from turning in. So getting SMART also involves finding and filtering out the noise that keeps you from accomplishing what you set out to do.

Learning to Love Learning

Most coaching certifying bodies that I’ve seen leverage the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) framework. TTM is a model of behavior change that follows stages of change from “pre-contemplation” (no awareness or intention to change) all the way through “action” and involves both “maintenance” and “relapse” phases of making change.

We don’t know what we don’t know until we do. Once we’re irrevocably aware of the circumstances that need a shift, our inertia (precontemplation) is enlivened with potential energy (contemplation). The vigor of what comes next is big and daunting. Preparation is fun! But when you’re unsure where to start, seeking resources to inform and educate your path is your strength. While the internet may be bad for many things, it’s certainly a great way to access any bit of known knowledge at super speed. This is where coaches come in- they assist with the planning process if your process isn’t cutting it for you. Once you’ve got your prepped list, you’re ready to take action.

Practice makes permanence and those actions need to happen regularly and with fluidity to adjust as necessary in order for a behavior to really stick. If not, we lose steam quickly and revert to our former pathways. This consistency is a learned skill all the same. As such, it’s important to plan for relapse with grace and purpose instead of letting it snag you. Reframing “loss of direction” or “falling off the wagon” as “discovering doesn’t work” is one way to begin to break the cycle.

Learning can reliably be disappointing- that’s what makes the successes so sweet. Taking steps to facilitate growth and change in your life is the highest form of self-regard. You’ve got to look out for your future self, even just a little bit, in order to realize the vision of who that future self is to you, ya know?

The Power of Protein

In this age of information, it’s not hard to find research that corroborates any belief. Influencers and capitalism dictate which content you’re more likely to see and fund which research you’ll be fed. As a result, nutrition- something quite simple in it’s foundation- becomes overwhelmingly complicated.

For most people, the complexities of nutrient timing aren’t nearly as relevant as nutrient quality and quantity. As you embark on your personal health journey, it’s important to tune out the nonspecific cacophony and tune into the basics.

Protein is pivotal in recovery/regeneration, glucose regulation, and ultimately makes up most of our structure-stuff, so it’s worth investigating a bit more.

As Building Blocks

There’s a reason we consume animal tissues in order to intake and assimilate protein. We are a network of collagen fibers. Fascia encapsulates the muscles and holds us together inside the skin. Fascia proliferates as it stretches and moves. Muscle is replenished and rebuilt stronger with adequate protein intake. The skin, the largest organ on the human body, depends on this sinewy protein to keep it all together.

As we age, our mechanisms for protein synthesis diminish. This results in the dread sagging skin and muscle wasting of old age. Proper functioning of both of these responsibilities is directly correlated to positive outcomes pertaining to longevity.

As Blood Sugar Support

Healthy muscle tissue not only contributes to over all strength and functional movement, it also serves as storage for glycogen. High muscle volume assists with blood sugar regulation.

When we intake carbs, the liver and the muscle tissue are the primary store-houses of any resultant free-circulating glucose. Our bodies tap into these reserves during physical activity to varying degrees dependent on the specific type of physical activity. When we’re relatively inactive, the stored glycogen goes unused. When we’re inactive and also continue to intake disproportionate amounts of carbs, what remains to be store is taken up by the cells that are associated with fat tissue.

It is important to me to qualify the mechanisms in action here because this one specific process gets all sorts of warped and distorted across platforms. Adequate protein intake not only typically blunts glucose spikes, it also supports musculoskeletal health which, in turn, aids in sugars regulation. That’s it. Please, for the love of God, eat carbs, they’re fuel. Just keep in mind the physiology that processes and stores the carbs, and use them to your advantage :)

Major Take-Aways

Much of our fast-and-easy food stuff is devoid of fiber and choc full of carbs. While carbs are essential to our health and operations, too much without enough of the other stuff can distort our energy management systems. Prioritizing protein intake benefits our regeneration and sugar regulation. Protein intake is generally recommended to be thereabouts 0.75g/kg of body weight. If you, like me, live within the imperial system, you’d take thereabouts half of your weight in pounds and remove a quarter of that. That’s it.

From there, you can identify plant, animal, and supplemental sources of protein to fill in the amount. Keep in mind that plant and animal-based proteins come with the added benefit of fibers, vitamins, minerals, and all the goodness that wholefoods have to offer. When investing in protein supplementation, do your research- some sources make you gassy, some are bulked up with non-protein content, and some may just be downright nasty tasting.

A high level understanding of protein (or really any nutritional building block) is likely to yield results for most normal people. You may find that you have increased satiety (feeling of fullness), that your body compositions shifts a bit, or that your energy levels change. If you’re looking for specific guidance for how much and how often re: performance goals or condition management, please reach out to a Registered Dietitian. Nutritionists (like me) are qualified to educate and inform, not prescribe or diagnose. Make smart choices, and make choices in favor of your future self, y’all :)