Following in the footsteps of nutrition expert Robb Wolf, I read a book called Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, Survival every winter. The book delves deeply into sleep-deprivation: its causes, effects and possible solutions. Sleep deprivation is correlated with increased insulin and cortisol levels (and therefore obesity), hormone dysregulation, androgen derangement, digestion problems, depression and many other ailments. It also significantly increases autoimmune problems. But most of us probably don’t need to hear this. We want improved sleep habits and just want to know how to get there.Lights Out recommends a period of ketosis each year–a lower carbohydrate diet between October and May. It also recommends a TON of sleep. Like 9.5 hours of sleep (or as close as you can get to that without getting fired or divorced.) The closer to this you get the more melatonin production and immune system (and neurotransmitter) restoration you get.
How do you kick start tons of sleep after years of sleep deprivation? Here are some suggestions to experiment with.
- Complete darkness is helpful. It is hard to stay awake with the lights out. And darkness includes covering blinking lights and windows. Try it for yourself for a week and see if you feel more well rested. When I was living in Tucson, I could never afford flame-resistant blacklight curtains. A Bucky mask was my best alternative. We do what we can.
- Getting ready for bed for an hour or so ahead of time by turning the lights low and finding a way to relax or unwind is often helpful. Listening to soothing music or meditations (which I’ll list resources for during this blog series) works well for some. Simply turning off the TV and computer (and avoiding action movies, horror stories and the news in particular) may be all it takes.
- Lowering your carb intake, especially in the winter, might be something to experiment with. Much has been written about staying away from grains (or at least presoaking them to neutralize the phytic acid, and limiting them to post-workout windows) and this is definitely something to try for a month or so and test the results.
- Going to bed at the same time every day, while sometimes unrealistic, is at least a good habit to strive for.
- Some find a contrast shower useful–alternating between hot and cold shortly before bedtime. For me, a lukewarm bath is far more effective.
- Herbs, supplements and essential oils. I will cover these more in depth in this blog series.
That’s it for now–I’m going to bed!
Both of us worked at night for years and two years after quitting our night shift jobs we still have problems adapting to a normal schedule. Since we work for ourselves and can pick our hours we stayed on the night mode for a long time, trying to shift gradually back to normal without success. We seem to be doing ok now, but what worked for us was sleeping later day by day rather than getting up earlier day by day. Within a week we had slept our way forward on the clock to a normal schedule.
Nice article, people aren’t aware of the health effects of night work and sleep deprivation, most of us have it to some degree.
My boyfriend had the same problem–for years–after working the night shift while putting himself through grad school. I don’t think any herb could help with the problems of shift work. It causes serious endocrine dysregulation and sleep debt. I’ll tough on this a little more sometime this week or next. Thanks for the comment. And I agree that more hours of sleep is a good first step before adjusting time of sleep.