Sleep: The Foundation of Health
For most of my life, sleep has been a nuisance. I yearned for all that I could accomplish in that time spent in slumber. As I’ve aged (and come to respect the value of 40 winks) my sleep quality has become a non-negotiable in my routine. That night time, melatonin-fueled semi-coma carries it’s weight in value for our lives. To avoid getting too in-the-weeds with the jargony bits of sleep science, consider this a high level understanding of all the systems invested in your good night’s sleep.
Digestive Health
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it right here: your tummy is your brain’s brain. Our gut plays host to more microbes than the earth does humans. Each of our microbiomes is like a fingerprint, made up of a unique assortment of organisms specifically related to our current lifestyle and genetic factors. Digestion is a star player in the regularity of our circadian rhythms. As such, when our sleep is disturbed, our gut senses that and starts to make plans to adjust accordingly. Additionally, when
Our gut influences our sleep influences our guts in a lot of ways (see more here). Suffice it to say, though, that there are a few easy-peasy ways you can cultivate mindful habits that support sleep health through diet. These include:
Eating within the same time blocks throughout the day.
Avoiding eating within two hours before sleep time.
Following the 1-2-3 rule for fruits and (especially) veggies: 1 with breakfast, 2 with lunch, 3 with dinner.
Minimizing consumption of overly shelf-stable foods or highly processed, densely saturated foods.
Cognitive Function, Stress, and Regeneration
We need adequate sleep in order to replenish our brain stuffs after a day of being “things that think”. Our brains utilizes upwards of 20% of our energy resources to continue to conduct all of our bodily processes day-in and day-out. The byproducts of thinking get flushed out through the “glymphatic system” (the lymph of the central nervous system). This is an incredible feature and a high value mechanism that sleep enacts. Life without proper sleep is a lot like continuing to drive your car without an oil change. Its inefficient and sludges up the engine, rendering the vehicle a risk. Speaking of vehicles, scientists have studied the effects of poor (or no) sleep on cognition and have equated sleepless driving to driving while under the influence.
When we are stressed, though, our relationship with sleep gets even more complex. For instance, the stress hormone, cortisol, mobilizes stored glucose into the circulatory system to provide working muscles more readily available energy resources. If you’re into this shit, you’re into it and already know it. If you’re not into it, or you’re not interested in knowing more about it, don’t worry. Again, the bottom line is that sleep is intended to be a regenerative moment for our bodies to process out it’s waste. The efficacy of those processes is dependent on our circumstances. Because we exist in a hyper-active, hyper-productive world, that’s not always easy. When push comes to shove, if sleep is becoming a problem due to stress, there are a few measures we can take before calling our primary. These include:
Having a bed time routine. We are not immune to Pavlovian response. Put a few key actions into sequence to trigger your brain into “power down” mode.
Reduce or eliminate blue light after 8pm. Blue light stimulates receptors in the eyes to produce more cortisol.
Be observant of the effects that fluctuations on your emotions have on your relationship with sleep. Anxiety begets anxiety, how can you notice those feelings arise without feeding their flames?
The Short of It
We are not exempt from the natural law. Without adequate, quality regenerative time, our bodies run on fumes eventually breaking down from lack of resources. Prioritize that rest time, lean into feeling recovered, and live better for it!
