Sleep better methods that work....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-19-2016

1.  Introduction:

Enough good sleep makes you feel better, enables your body to repair itself including building exercised muscles better than they were before – and of most importance, it literally enables your brain to clean itself.  (We now know your brain actually shrinks and the cleaning channels between the parts open up to facilitate this cleaning during deep sleep.)

The growth hormone release that does all the other repairs happens most during deep sleep. 

So you want to get enough deep sleep each night you can do so for both reasons.

This cleaning substantially prevents Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia we now know. 

If you get less than 6 hours of sleep a night or average much less than 6 and a half hours, this doesn’t work as well.

If you have trouble falling asleep when you go to bed it doesn’t work as well.

If you have trouble staying asleep it doesn’t work as well.

Or if you sleep poorly with too little deep sleep, it doesn’t work as well.

Worse, if you feel this is happening when you can’t control it, your mental health and your sleep suffer for it.  You don’t feel as good as you would like.  And you will have poorer health.

Worse yet, if you take the hypnotic sleep drugs all this gets worse instead of better.  And worst of all, they are addictive and hard to stop taking plus your chance of dying goes up enormously from dying while sleep walking to much higher chances of cancer and more.

2.  The much better news is that there are an enormous amount of effective things you can do to solve these problems and sleep better.

a)    Exercise that is vigorous and early in the day.

This can be a brisk 7 minute walk.  It can be 9 to 21 minutes of high intensity cardio, either with rests in between for you to catch your breath or an easier pace so you can,  It can be a 10 minute to 30 minute session of slow rep strength training.

And, to make it easier to do almost every day, there are ways to do most of these or all of these at home.

This causes your body to release BDNF which grows new nerve and brain cells and makes repairs. 

And the data show that your body automatically assists this process by causing you to fall asleep much faster and more easily most of the time and to get more deep sleep also.

b)  Cool off as much as you can at bedtime.  Even a small cooling effect at bedtime helps people fall asleep quickly.  Conversely, if you body doesn’t cool off this may delay going to sleep. 

Turn down the heat to as low as 60 degrees as much as a half hour before going to bed.  Wear less to bed initially or use much lighter covers.  And if you can, use air conditioning or a fan or heat proof your bedroom so you can have your body cool enough at bedtime.

If you wake later and are a bit cold, that’s a good sign; and you can put on more bedclothes or add blankets.

c)  Avoid blue light from computer or TV screens after about half an hour before you go to bed.

If you can, have your bedroom really dark.  Get blackout curtains for the windows if you can.

  

 d) Find ways to watch less TV in general and in the last hour before you go to bed for sure.

AND, never have a TV in your bedroom!

e)  Write down what is bothering you or has your mind racing.  Plan when you will DO something constructive next about these things AFTER you are rested from sleep.  Visualize hitting an OFF button vividly.  And if you aren’t drowsy yet, close your eyes and think of a fun or pleasant day dream of some kind.  If you stay a awake a few minutes it’s enjoyable. But usually you fall asleep after just a bit of such daydreams.

f) If you are jet lagged or are over about 45 or 50 take a sublingual melatonin lozenge about half an hour before bedtime.  This induces sleep and cutting the light and blue light helps your body turn on melatonin itself.

Also, take cherry extract each morning and about half an hour before bedtime.  This boosts your natural melatonin release

-- AND by actual test adds a full hour of sleep each night even for people with bad insomnia

g)   The herbal supplement valerian has a double positive effect on sleep.

Because it can cut anxiety and severe stress it has value allowing you to sleep even if you are quite stressed; but the active ingredient has a very pungent almost stinky smell. 

I had some I was saving for really bad situations only.  And, I had the supplement bottle in a larger jar with a lid I could close when I wasn’t taking it.

(The Jews and other people in Europe during World War II took Valerian to be able to sleep with continuous war zone and bombing threats.  So it does work for that!)

THEN I found out that taking Valerian at bedtime much increased the amount of deep sleep you get and the growth hormone you release!  Now I take two capsules at bedtime every night.

Exercise works for this also.

And, another supplement that may help among many is to take 100 mg a night at bedtime of a supplement called GABA.  Most of the effect is in the first 100 mg and larger amounts can cause side effects.  So I think 100 mg or 150 mg of GABA each night is enough to get a useful amount more deep sleep without side effects.

h)  The new information I got from the sleep doctor that I was able to do AND which has worked!

Since I began using it every day, I HAVE slept better and had less daytime sleepiness!!

It’s not complicated but it DOES work.

Caffeine and alcohol in moderation do have value.  And many people including me and maybe including you, LIKE their effects.

But if you have to much of either too close to bedtime you sleep less, have more restless sleep, and get less deep sleep!

None of that is a good idea!!

Here are the two things she told me to do.  I’ve found them doable AND effective!

*Drink any caffeine you use before 1:30 pm or even better before Noon.  This includes tea, green tea, Oolong tea, and coffee.  These are wonderful for mental alertness and proven effective.

But they take something like 6 to 8 hours to wear off!  So, if you stop them every day that early, by bedtime they won’t keep you from falling asleep, wake you up early, or prevent you from getting deep NOT restless sleep.

**Drink any alcohol you drink, preferably just one or two BEFORE dinner only.  Your body can process about one an hour.  And by only drinking before dinner, you drink less overall but still enjoy the effects at dinner.

AND, by the time you go to bed 90% of their sleep disruptive qualities are gone!

I never thought the first one was needed.  And I didn’t think the second one was either.

But I found each of them surprisingly easy to do.

Best of all, they are EXTREMELY effective!  Do them; and you WILL sleep better in every way.  

Morning exercise gives you much better sleep....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-12-2012

Regular exercise has an astounding list of benefits and NOT exercising at all has an equally frightening and even more scary list of harms that it causes.

One of the benefits long known for exercising most days of every week is that people who get such regular exercise, go to sleep more easily and reliably and get more restful sleep than people who don’t.

There are many reasons why morning exercise is so valuable.  It helps you wake up and be more productive later that day all day long.

The most important reason is that exercising first thing in the morning happens almost always BEFORE the other demands of the day.  So you skip far fewer days of exercise AND the chances of you continuing get regular exercise at least double. 

(My own records show this too.  I exercise at least for a few minutes 7 days a week in the first part of my morning. I do at least some exercise something like 360 to 364 days in a 365 day year.  I also do a short session of a different set of exercises on Monday and Wednesday night.  Some months I miss one to three of my eight possible evening sessions.  I get home too late or I need to go somewhere important that night.)

A few days ago I got an email from Dr Oz and Dr Roizen quoted a study of brain waves during sleep and found that:

“Compared with midday or early evening workouts, hitting the pavement, the pool, or the bike around 7 a.m. will help you spend 75% more time in deep sleep and let you cycle through the four stages of sleep more often.”

That’s huge!  Such good sleep allows you to be more alert and mentally sharp and effective.  It relives stress better.  It is thought to trigger more growth hormones and repair in your body.  There’s even evidence that too little quality sleep tends to make you fat and more likely to get things like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

And you’ll feel better.  Either you’ll feel good instead of blasted or you’ll feel somewhat sleepy and a bit blasted early in the day instead of badly blasted all day long.

That likely also means that morning exercise is more effective as an antidepressant.

Best of all, you can fit exercise in and great benefits by doing at home strength training and/or interval cardio most days of every week.  And, by doing this at home in the morning and by having no travel time to add, you can fit in 6 to 30 minutes of exercise into a schedule that has little time available to exercise.

If you have a bit of extra time two or more mornings a week to go to a gym that can also work well for you.

Last, but far from least, because morning exercise helps you sleep that much better, if needed, you can even get up 20 or 30 minutes earlier to fit in morning exercise.  In fact, because regular exercise is so valuable and morning exercise makes it so much more reliable, it may be a really valuable strategy to do so.

(If you sleep less than 6 and half hours a night now, that may not be as good and idea.  But if you sleep a good bit more now, you may be more rested and refreshed by your sleep if you do just that.)

Sleeping pills have an extremely high death rate....

Today's Post: Thursday, 3-15-2012

Last Monday, 3-12, Jenny Thompson of HSI sent out an email about a new study published in the British Medical Journal.

Researchers studied 10,500 people who took sleeping pills, from hypnotics like Ambien to sedatives, during two and a half years and compared them with 23,600 carefully matched people who took no sleeping pills at all.

The higher death rate in that time period of the people who took the sleeping pills was so much higher it was truly scary!

The people who took sleeping pills 11 times a month or more were FIVE times as likely to die during that time.

The people who took less than 11 a month but at least 18 a year were four times more likely to die.

People who took 18 or less each year were more than 3 and a half times more likely to die.

A. Why is this happening?

1. The study found one reason for this. The people who took the hypnotic drugs got more of many kinds of cancer during the time period. That was particularly true of the people who took them every week.

2. Another reason is that one of the main reasons people have really serious trouble sleeping is when they are extremely stressed. And, that level of stress tends to be almost that harmful. The list of demographic characteristics the researchers matched for didn’t appear to have included that difference. The death rate for severely stressed people is elevated too.

3. A third reason is that the most mentally healthy people, Dr Martin Seligman found, think of most bad things as temporary for various reasons that are usually true. They do NOT over-generalize and see most things that severely stress them or trouble sleeping occasionally as continuing to happen forever or completely out of their control.

The people who think the opposite are far more likely to self limit themselves and be depressed. They also have MUCH poorer health most of the time.

So when the mentally healthy people see the things that stress them as temporary or fixable and see any trouble sleeping as fixable and temporary, they rarely will ask a doctor for sleep drugs.

4. The hypnotic drugs by themselves have killed people also. One man who had taken a hypnotic sleep drug went sleep walking in his light pajamas and went outside. Unfortunately for him, it was mid-winter and below zero. They found his frozen body in the morning. People have also driven and died in accidents in their “sleep” while taking hypnotic sleep drugs or eaten poisonous things and died.

In real sleep, your brain induces a kind of paralysis. That’s why people wake up from nightmares sometimes. They try to escape or stop the scary thing in their dream and find they can’t move and wake up terrified. It’s happened to me on occasion.

The sleep induced by the hypnotic drugs somehow fails to start up that effect. So at any time people taking those drugs could die in exactly such a “sleep-walking” event. Unfortunately some have been reported to have just that happen.

B. Things that help you sleep that do not require you to take drugs to do it.

Jenny Thompson in her email listed several things that people can do to sleep better that do not require drugs.

1. The best one is regular and vigorous exercise almost every day. People who do that kind of exercise have much higher stress tolerance ability. And, they fall asleep more quickly and sleep better once asleep.

She also notes that many years ago, when she was having trouble sleeping herself, she bought a new and better quality mattress and took the television out of her bedroom, and the quality of her sleep improved immediately.

2. An uncomfortable mattress can make it harder to fall asleep and the extra discomfort can cause you to feel pain or more tired when you wake up. So getting a new good quality mattress can help.

3. But the really huge thing she did was to get the TV out of her bedroom! Late night TV news is mostly about bad things you can’t do much about. Even good TV shows you like can cause you to go to bed too late in the day. And, the extra light from the set tends to prevent your body from releasing the natural sleep hormone melatonin. (Doing other things to make your bedroom dark also helps your body release melatonin.) This is also better than a new mattress because it’s cost no money to do.

4. And, there are some foods and supplements that can help too.

a) If you have a raw vegetable and a healthy OK protein snack and maybe some fruit, the hunger that might have kept you up is gone and you will fall asleep and sleep better. (Just keep the amount light and try to eat it an hour before bedtime.)

A couple of broccoli florets and a single string cheese and two or three strawberries would work.

I eat the broccoli florets first. Then if I’m still hungry, I have a spoonful or two of nonfat cottage cheese and unsweetened apple sauce. Then if I’m still hungry, I’ll have a single spoonful of almond butter. I’m trying to lose weight, so I don’t let myself have the almond butter often. One man I know did well with lowfat yogurt and blueberries as a night time snack.

b) You can also take melatonin about an hour before bed. A single one milligram or half of one will work. So will taking 3 mg; but you may be groggy and too laid back the next morning if you do that. That happened to me once. Try the lower amounts first!

c) There is also a safer way to calm yourself when you are super stressed. Taking the herb valerian works. People in Europe took it during World War II when their lives were in danger day after day.

But save that for really heavy duty stress and sleep problems. Valerian quite literally stinks. Worse it’s the calming compound in the valerian that smells bad. I tried it once and decided to pass unless I was under incredibly high stress. And, in that event I’d try to get sealable jar or box to keep the bottle of valerian in when I wasn’t taking it!

The good news though is that valerian does work and is safe otherwise.

d) If you take a drug every day, also check on Wikipedia or with a pharmacist to see if the drug you are taking causes insomnia.

It turns out many people taking Lipitor get insomnia. There is a genetic test you can get for about $150 to see if you are one of the minority of people statins help. Most people are in the larger group that get better heart protection from niacin than from statins.

Or you may get the same heart protecting effect but no or less insomnia with another statin.

For those two things of course, you’ll need to work with your doctor.


But for most people most of the time, it looks far safer to stick to these methods and NOT take sleeping pills at all.

Prevent mental decline, sleep better, have more energy, help prevent cancer too....

Today's Post: Thursday, 7-21-2011

In a recent news article the most worried-about health risks were cancer and memory loss in a survey of baby boomers.

That was in my last post.

Earlier today I got a comment on how getting enough B12 could improve and protect your health on one of my other posts.

It seems that vegans, people who take metformin, people who are over 50 who begin to digest food less well sometimes and people who take anti acid drugs for reflux (heartburn) or ulcers can have too little B12 if they don't get enough B12 somehow.

And, B12 is valuable enough to so many aspects of good health and good quality of life that it makes sense to get an optimum amount in a way that bypasses digestion problems.

One doctor says that the best way to get B12 initially if you are deficient is to get vitamin B12 shots. But many doctors don’t do this. And, it’s an expensive and time consuming way to go.

If you have time and money and reason to believe you are deficient, it might be worth finding a doctor who practices integrative or preventive medicine who works with patients in this way.

But the link in the comment has a great deal of information on B12 and, of course advertises the solution of the sponsor.

This is adapted from my follow up comment after I published her comment.

The text available at http://products.mercola.com/vitamin-b12-spray/ --

contains some very well done information about B12, what it does for you, what often prevents people from having enough, AND an ad for a fast acting spray.

That way you can get enough B12 even if you are a vegan or your digestion isn't getting it into your blood stream.

That's important for people over 50 and those taking anti acid drugs for reflux (heartburn) or ulcers.

It's also important for type 2 diabetics. The only safe drug I know to lower high blood sugar is metformin. And, metformin also prevents the high blood sugar left over from harming you it was recently discovered!

But, if you take metformin, you would be far safer, if you also used this B12 spray (Dr Al Sears also makes one.)or if you use a chewable or sublingual tablet of 1,000 mcg of B12 once a day.

(I take anti acid drugs for reflux and know someone who takes metformin. We both take the chewable or sublingual tablet of 1,000 mcg of B12 once a day that is called Brain B12 that NOW makes. chewable or sublingual tablet of 1,000 mcg of B12 once a day. But for times I feel fatigued or want to ensure a good night’s sleep, I’ve considered getting one of these B12 spray products.)

Why should people who take metformin or have reasons to want extra B12 do this?

Here's a quote from the text at Mary's link.

"Studies suggest that 10% to 30% of patients taking Metformin show evidence of reduced vitamin B12 absorption."

I also knew that getting enough B12 helps you have enough energy. It helps with alertness and prevents fatigue

What I did not know until I read the text at this link, is that because B12 helps your body make melatonin, B12 gets part of its energy boost by helping you sleep better!

Getting back to the concerns about avoiding cancer and preventing mental decline we started this post with, getting enough B12 helps do both.

Separate studies have found that B12 deficiency can cause confusion and impair memory and thinking. In fact, some people with these symptoms stop having them or have less of them once they get enough B12.

In addition, the things that B12 does, sleeping better, feeling less fatigued, and having more energy all help you avoid or stop depression.

And, since mental decline is higher in people who are depressed, that’s significant.

But there’s more. People who get enough B12 along with enough folate and folic acid from vegetables and supplements (and who avoid tobacco smoke) have lower levels of homocysteine.

The tests of lowering homocysteine to help prevent heart disease in short term treatments have shown little benefit. I think that’s because this research was done after the people studied had accumulated years of damage from too high homocysteine before the studies.

But the research on homocysteine shows that people who have high levels of it also are more likely to get some kind of mental decline.

So B12 indeed looks important for preventing mental decline in several ways.

But there’s news on the cancer front too.

There are two kinds of research that fit.

People who have strong and effective immune systems tend to destroy early cellular defects before they turn into cancer.

It seems that getting enough vitamin D3 (at least 4,000 iu a day) and getting enough B12 are two key ways to keep your immune system strong and effective. The news

Second, having low melatonin levels predisposes you to getting cancer. The research I saw studied this in researching ways to prevent breast cancer.

Your body releases melatonin once it gets dark. But most people today have their lights on in the evening after it gets dark outside and still have a good bit of light in their bedrooms once they go to bed.

There are 3 ways to have more melatonin.

The best two ways are to

Have your bedroom dark by using blackout curtains and covering small light sources. (Having a reliable flashlight where you can it reach it easily at night and keeping it there when not in use is a good idea if you do that!)

Take enough B12 to ensure your body makes its own melatonin well.

You can also take melatonin. But this may cause your body to make less on its own. And, the dosages sold in health food stores are often high enough to cause you to get so much, you have trouble waking up and having energy the next day.

One solution is to buy 1 mg or 3 mg tablets and chop them in half and just take a half a tablet half an hour before you go to bed. (Another temporary way to use melatonin supplements is to get a spray version and use that. That way if you have crossed a time zone and need to go to sleep a bit early you can make it much easier to fall asleep. I’m told it works in less than 15 minutes. See Native Rest at http://www.primalforce.net/catalog/ for Dr Sears’ version.)

But if you sleep well without supplementing with melatonin directly because your body makes its own since you keep your bedroom quite dark and you supplement B12 AND you exercise regularly, you may do fine without melatonin supplements.

(It also helps if you protect your heart without taking statins as at least one kind is a known cause of relatively severe insomnia.)