Change Your Sleep, Change Your Life!

#1. Sleep can help you with your other health goals with NO EFFORT

We’re not lying when we say that sleep is the easiest way to make progress toward your health goals. Here are some examples:

• Weight loss: A full night’s sleep keeps your hunger hormones in check and prevents large blood sugar swings. Insufficient sleep increases your cravings for calorie-dense foods and ramps UP your hunger hormones.

• Anxiety: A full night’s sleep puts the brakes on the area of brain that processes fear. Insufficient sleep removes the brakes and causes anxiety, frustration, and higher stress.

• Building strength or endurance: A full night’s sleep helps your muscles recover from exercise and makes them stronger for the next workout. Insufficient sleep leaves you feeling fatigued, sore, and less motivated to workout due to low energy levels.

• Heart Health: A full night’s sleep reduces your risk for heart diseases as it allows time for the heart to recover from the day’s strain. Insufficient sleep results in higher daytime blood pressure especially in middle aged people in high-stress jobs. Further, poor sleep triggers chronic inflammation which damages blood vessels. People who sleep less than 7 hours have an elevated risk of heart failure.

• Improved Relationships: A full night’s sleep lowers irritability and reactivity and improves your ability to navigate conflict with loved ones. Insufficient sleep makes us pessimistic and lowers our ability to tune into our partner’s emotions.

#3. Certain lifestyle tweaks can improve your sleep

There are many ways to improve your sleep, which improves your health, which improves your sleep, and so on!  You can try the following:

• Get outside in the morning sunlight for 10-15 minutes to strengthen your circadian rhythm. This bright light resets your clock so you’ll get sleepy slightly earlier

• Avoid bright light at night (screens, TV, overhead lighting). Bright light at night keeps you more alert, which can be helpful if you need to stay up, but horrible if you need to sleep.

• Get in daily moderate intensity exercise (this can be walking!). Exercise is known to make it easier to fall asleep and can improve deep sleep quality.

• Use meditation to help you manage stress, which often keeps people up at night (“I just can’t turn my brain off”)

Perhaps the most helpful tweak of all is to PRIORITIZE sleep. You’ll be a better parent, a better partner, a more powerful worker, and most important, you’ll FEEL like a healthier, happier person from head to toe.