Sleep and Health

What To Remove From Your Room Right Now For Better Sleep

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Sleep Meme

We have become a people consumed with media.

Whether it be our TV, our smart phone, or our tablet, we are like the Depeche Mode we just can’t get enough.

The problem with this is it has started to affect our quality of sleep.

In order for us to get the most out of our sleep, I am going to reveal the number one item that is in the majority of our bedrooms that we must remove right this instant to maximize our sleep quality.

Drum roll please………

Our television.

This should be a no brainer, however according to a national consumer study, nearly two-thirds of Americans fall asleep with the TV on.

This is insane!

We have become so attached to our TVs that the average household has more TVs than people residing in their home.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we need to throw out our TVs all together because I too enjoy watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead.

However, what I am saying is let’s enjoy our TV but not in the comfort of our bedrooms.

Our bedroom should only be for sleeping and connecting with our spouse (wink, wink).

There was a study done on two types of couples, those that have a TV in their bedroom and those that don’t have a TV in their bedroom.

It was discovered those that do have a TV in their room have sex half as often as those who don’t.

With that said, I now rest my case.

But wait there’s more.

Our TVs emit a blue light that tricks our brains into thinking it is day rather than night which in turn suppresses our bodies’ natural secretion of melatonin which is our sleep hormone.

By suppressing the production of melatonin it also throws off our circadian rhythm.

Whoa hang on there, you’re talking mumbo jumbo to me.

Let me explain.

Our circadian biological clock regulates the timing of periods of sleepiness and wakefulness throughout the day.

So, watching TV just before bedtime hinders our sleep because light is the main cue influencing our circadian rhythm, and this is turning on or turning off genes that control our organism’s internal clock.

Basically the artificial light from the TV over stimulates our brains tricking it to think it is day time.

Now let’s do a quick recap why having a TV in our bedroom is bad news.

1)  By having a TV in our room it leads to less sex with our spouse.

2) It throws off our sleep cycle confusing our brain into thinking it is day rather than night.

Hopefully this article has been helpful for you improving not only your sleep but also your relationship with your spouse.

If you have taken action removing your TV from your bedroom please let us know in the comments below as we would love to hear the wonders it has done helping you improve your sleep.

 

 

Coffee and Sleep… It’s A Love Hate Relationship

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coffee heart

Yaaawn…

You finally begin to wake up after hitting the snooze button one too many times and all you can think of is you need coffee NOW!

So, you stumble to the kitchen and pick out your favorite coffee and begin brewing.

Just the smell of your favorite coffee beans gives you a nice kickstart to your day and begins to give you hope that everything will be o.k.

The fresh pot of coffee is now nice and hot and the beautiful aroma of your freshly brewed Fair Trade coffee is now ready to be poured into your favorite mug.

You take a quick sniff just before you are about to take a sip and immediately a smile forms on your face, the first smile of the day because in that moment you feel like you are in heaven.

After a couple cups of fresh joe you’re ready to take on the day!

Nothing can stop you, because today you are going to change the world!

However, 2pm comes around and all that gusto to change the world has left you and you’re ready to crash right there on your desk.

So what do you do?

Well, if you’re like the almost 50% percent of americans then you have yourself another cup of coffee to give you that ”pick me up” you so desperately need.

So you drink a few more cups of coffee and now you’re set to finish your work day off strong.

But not so fast.

Because before you know it bedtime comes and you can’t seem to fall asleep.

You have this restless feeling and stay up all night tossing and turning before you finally drift to sleep.

Come the next morning you again struggle to get out of bed and wake up fully until you have your morning coffee.

This carries you to lunch and then of course you drink a couple more cups to get you through the rest of the day.

This now becomes the story of your life.

A vicious cycle has been created and if you are going to make it through the day you not only need coffee in the morning but also in the afternoon followed by more restless nights.

What’s happening here?

Coffee and sleep… it truly is a love hate relationship.

Did you know that the caffeine in coffee has a half life of about 6 hours?

That means that even after 6 hours of drinking coffee you still have half the amount of caffeine circulating in your body.

So when you drink that cup of coffee after 2pm by the time you go to bed there’s still at least half of the caffeine still running through your system.

How do you fix this?

Give yourself a coffee curfew.Try and stop drinking coffee after 12:00 p.m.

This may be difficult to begin with but as you wean yourself off the afternoon coffee you’ll set yourself up for success in the evening when it’s time for bed.

This can help your body to get on a regular sleep schedule which would help avoid that groggy feeling in the morning and the change in mood swings during the day.

No, I am not telling you to get rid of coffee all together because as you will see coffee can be a useful tool.

There are many health benefits to drinking coffee and as long as we respect the effects it can have on our body we can maximize the benefits.

Studies on drinking coffee regularly has shown that it can help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, liver cancer, liver disease, and may also help ease strain on the heart.

If you would like to read in more detail on how coffee can protect against these diseases I have included the sources at the bottom of this page.

Drinking coffee can also help improve your brain power.

The caffeine in the coffee acts as a brain stimulant and can help you think more freely. It achieves this by blocking the activity of adenosine which is a neurotransmitter that affects almost every bodily function.

By blocking adenosine, caffeine actually releases other neurotransmitters in the brain called dopamine and norepinephrine which help regulates our mood and behavior.

So here’s how sleep and coffee can be a very good dynamic duo.

First try to stop drinking coffee after lunch.

Then give yourself a good night sleep and after waking up feeling rested give yourself your favorite cup of joe to turn on your brain making you more productive and allowing your mind to think more clearly.

And if you want an extra boost with your coffee then try bullet proof coffee.

These changes aren’t difficult to make it just takes a little discipline.

And hopefully after reading this you’ll learn to use coffee and sleep to work together rather than against each other.

If you learned something reading this let us know by writing us a comment below we’d love to connect with you.

Or if you have tips on how you use coffee without the negative side effects we would love to hear from you.

 

References

i.https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247583.php

ii.https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270202.php

iii. https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/caffeine-and-sleep

iv.https://www.webmd.com/heart/news/20131120/does-caffeine-in-coffee-perk-up-heart-health

v.https://worldofcaffeine.com/caffeine-and-neurotransmitters/

The 3rd Pillar Of Health

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DSC_0941 Hey! It’s the New Year, which means a new you.

You have written new goals and on the top of the list, if you’re like most Americans is to get healthy!

I’m sure you’ve signed up for that gym pass promising yourself you’ll be good this time and will workout every day.

No longer will you give up on your resolution in February because this is your year.

In fact, you probably bought a juicer and stocked up on bags of organic kale and spinach.

However, what most people don’t realize is just working out and eating healthy won’t get you to your optimum health.

You may be able to reach your goal by just sticking to the two but it will take longer.

You can eat all the kale salads and drink all the wheatgrass shots you want but missing this key piece can make it tougher for you to get there.

Which means another year of being weighed down by constant fatigue or not being able to enjoy the great outdoors.

Or better yet, being stuck in a gym contract because you gave up too soon due to the extremely slow results.

You see, most people when they talk about getting healthy they only focus on two components to the formula for health.

What are they?

Diet and exercise.

But there’s more to the complete health puzzle and a vital piece is missing.

So what is this missing piece? What is this “so called” 3rd pillar of health?

Well, to give you a hint we spend a third of our lives doing this every single night.

Yup, you guessed it, it’s sleep.

Sleep is the 3rd pillar of health and it may be the missing piece to your getting healthy mishap.

So why is sleep so important and considered the 3rd pillar of health?

Here are a couple amazing benefits of the power of sleep.

Physical Benefits

Sleep is vital to our physical health. Duh no brainer right?

But how you feel when you’re awake depends a whole lot on what happens when you’re asleep.

You see, while you’re sleeping your body is at work repairing your muscles from exercise or just from the wear and tear the day brings.

Without giving our body the sleep it needs we hinder our body’s natural process of repairing our achy muscles.

Sleep is also connected to our eating habits.

I’m about to get a little scientific and use some weird words on you so please stay with me.

Getting good quality sleep helps us maintain a healthy balance of our hormones ghrelin (which makes us feel hungry) and leptin (which makes us feel full).

When we don’t get good quality sleep our ghrelin levels go up (causing us to feel hungry) and our leptin levels go down (leaving our stomachs feeling less satisfied).

So our constant hungry belly and late night munchies can be attributed to poor sleeping habits.

A study done by the University of Chicago showed that healthy adults when restricted to just 4 hours of sleep per night for a week some showed to have insulin and glucose characteristics to that of a diabetic.

Other studies have shown that consistent lack of sleep has been linked to an increase of heart disease, high-blood pressure, and diabetes.

With that all being said I think I should now go to bed. Oh wait never mind it’s only 2:37 in the afternoon.

Mental Benefits

Did you know getting good quality sleep can actually make us smarter?

How?

Because, when we are asleep our brain is getting things ready for the next day.

Our brain is actually “tiding up the house” storing the important things and getting rid of the stuff that would be considered brain waste.

Another amazing benefit of sleep is that each time we sleep our brains also clear up all the waste from the days junk.

Our bodies also do this and is done when we are awake using our lymphatic system.

But our brains don’t have lymphatic vessels so to accomplish getting rid of the toxin build up throughout the day the brain uses what is called cerebrospinal fluid which takes out all the toxins and junk in the brain to give us a fresh start the next day.

And this all happens in our brains while we are sleeping.

Ok, so now that your brain is overloaded with a lot of sleep information, let me see if I can help clear some of this up.

Let’s take a newborn for example.

Ever wonder why they sleep so much? I mean, how can they possibly be so tired?

All they do is nurse and make dirty diapers.

Well, the reason is because their brain is taking in so much new information.

So when they sleep their brains are helping them process and sort all the new information they have taken in for the day.

And if you keep a baby from her nap and deprive her of her sleep the baby becomes cranky and at times inconsolable.

Now there’s a little more to it than that but you get the gist.

So to put it simply, if we continue to sacrifice our sleep and rely on coffee to “fix it” we aren’t allowing our brains to do it’s job and we then become like the zombies from the walking dead.

This is why sleep is so vital to our mental health. Getting a good night sleep gives us a fresh new start each day.

So now that you know the 3rd pillar of health you can now finally cross off that new years resolution at the end of the year once and for all.

If you learned something reading this or have some questions share it with your friends and/or let us know.

References

i. https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep/transcript?language=en

ii. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sdd/why

iii. https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/diet-exercise-and-sleep

3 Activities To Avoid Before Going To Bed

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Sleeping in front of tv

Sleep is probably one of the most glorious acts we do each day. It is amazing how sleep helps us feel refreshed, restores our body, and relaxes our muscles.

However, approximately 30% of the population complains about sleep disruption.

To help you sleep better, I have listed three activities you must avoid doing before going to bed.

Exercising

No, this is not me giving you an excuse to quit your new year’s resolution of working out.

So please don’t go tell your spouse or your friends that you can’t workout because some mattress guy told you it affects your sleep.

So please do work out, just not close to bedtime.

The reason is two fold.

First it can over stimulate us and make it tougher for us to unwind.

Secondly, it can spike our core temperature and take it longer for our body to cool down which it naturally does when we go to sleep.

If you do exercise before bed and don’t think it interferes with your sleep try exercising in the morning and see if you notice a difference on how you feel throughout the day.

Watching TV

Have you ever stayed up late and watched something super random like Finding Bigfoot or The Lost Tapes of the Chupacabra?

No?

Well I have.

And just so you know it was definitely not worth it.

I don’t even believe in that stuff and yet there I was wasting away each precious moment of sleep as I sat in front of the TV watching one of those ridiculous shows.

Anyways, the point of the story is watching TV before bed time is bad.

It’s bad because the later it gets the worst we are at choosing a good show to watch.

And more importantly the light emitted from the TV suppresses our body’s natural production of melatonin which is our sleep hormone.

Taking a hot bath or shower

This is a tough one because a nice warm shower in the evening feels so relaxing.

However, If you are going to take a hot bath and then immediately after get ready for bed then this should be avoided.

Our body temperature naturally cools down in the evening to prepare us for sleep.

By taking a hot bath or shower just before bed we are fighting our body’s natural tendency and making it tougher for us to get a good night sleep because our body has to work harder to bring its core temperature down.

If you do take a bath or shower in the evening do so at least an hour before bedtime.

So in order for you to sleep like a boss then avoid these three activities before bed and you should notice improvements in your sleep quality.