I just recently had a chat with one of my colleagues, he's one of my clients in my program too. His mum has been having problem trying to sleep and not getting quality sleep for quite some time. Insomnia, would describe her symptoms, and today, again, I would like discuss abit more about proper sleep. Everyone knows getting 8-9 hours of sleep is good, but question is why?
I know I've wrote a couple of posts previously about sleep and circadian rhythm, but I hope to add in more valuable information for all of you whoever is reading this right now. First of all, let's start off with going back to the past, how human evolved, millions of years ago before even light bulb is invented. Does any of you know how our circadian rhythm works? How about our sleep wake cycles? We need to rewind back ages ago, to find out about how human evolved, understanding our biological clock function, and from there, we trace back what went wrong, particularly our lifestyle, and with that, we tackle the root cause and try to fix or improve the condition of our body and health. Again, deep dive and find out the root cause, not suppressing the symptoms.
Once upon a time, our primal ancestors aka caveman, survived and lived in an environment without lights, particularly artificial lights. Their biological clock functions with the sunrise(light) and sunset(darkness) cycle, and that is primarily how our hormones are secreted and regulated. What other modern environment cues are triggering ancient survival switches?
Imagine, you are working late at night, under bright lights after dark, or watching your favorite tv series, or you could be playing your usual online games or surfing the net all night long. You could even be hanging out late with your friends or clubbing intoxicating yourself with booze or just sipping away that coffee or tea. It doesn't matter! All of these, register as the long days of summer to your inner environmental controls. What this means, is your brain will force you to seek energy for storage by eating sugar. Sugar or carbs is the only path to insulin release, and insulin job is to store excess carbs as fat so you have something to live on when summer is over.
The abdominal fat pad common in insulin resistant, high cholesterol heart patients and Type II Diabetes would, in another time and place, have served to keep internal organs warm and would have been utilized as energy during normal famine. Increased intake of carbs or sugar, is always dumped into increased cholesterol production too, because carbs lower the freezing temperature of the cell membrane. In the real world, you would never have access to that much sugar unless it was summer before winter. We, don't live in the real world.
Now, if next time your doctor says your cholesterol is too high and you should cut back on the fat and exercise more, tell him he is mistaken! No? Well, most people do not have the guts to throw opinions to doctors because they think doctors know what they are doing and they have to trust Mr. Doctor. Again, although most people do not have degree in medicine science, it doesn't mean your doctor is always right! Would you put total faith and trust on a single doctor on your health and life?
When you exercise day and night to stave off the weight gain, your body and mind crave, you kick in your 'stress response'. The message you are sending to those systems is " God! Famine is coming and there is a tiger chasing after me!". Sound ridiculous? Well, keep reading.
I think I did mentioned once in my earlier post about exercise and last nail in the coffin. Sounds crazy? The stress response enacted when you run for your life on that treadmill causes your cortisol levels to rise. The longer you run, the more cortisol your adrenals produce. I would say it is alright if you do it once a while, couple times a month but not every single day or regular running/jogging habit. But if you exercise like a maniac or a runner addict, especially at night, the nigh cortisol levels resulting from all the chronic exercise actually mimics the stress of mating season, when the long hours of light and the competition (especially for males), kept cortisol at yearly highs. Mating season would come to naught without a fat base to nourish a pregnancy through the winter. So, it's no coincidence that carbs craving to put on fat, and high cortisol and high sex hormone levels all coincide.
When you thought that you could lose some weight by hitting the gym late at night after work, the moment you step on that treadmill and play your ipod favorite tunes, or hop on that stationary bicycle or maybe the elliptical machine, what's gonna happen? Couple of bazillion watts of artificial lights shinning right into your eyes and all over your skin, and guess what? Your adrenals are pouring out loads of stress hormones cortisol with every minute your run or jog or exercise. Blood sugar mobilization, your adrenals are taxed, as well as increasing the odds of becoming insulin resistant in the process of doing whichever exercise which you think it healthy and will help your so called 'weight lost' goal.
Chronic high cortisol also skews your time perception, making you feel continually rushed. It's the altered time perception that fosters much of the late night stalling before bed, while you stay awake under the impression that there must be more to do or that you haven't finished your work. Then what happen? You stuff yourself with more sugar because you just can't fall asleep and your insulin level is sent even higher. This alone, WILL make you fat and sick!
So now, get what I mean by exercise blindly, it could be the last nail of the coffin? Still not convince, why not try it out yourself running on that treadmill 45 mins 5 days a week at night and see what happens? Well, of course you have to try that out for months to experience the consequences. Give yourself few months on that experiment and I wish you good luck. Till then, stay tuned.
Once upon a time, our primal ancestors aka caveman, survived and lived in an environment without lights, particularly artificial lights. Their biological clock functions with the sunrise(light) and sunset(darkness) cycle, and that is primarily how our hormones are secreted and regulated. What other modern environment cues are triggering ancient survival switches?
Imagine, you are working late at night, under bright lights after dark, or watching your favorite tv series, or you could be playing your usual online games or surfing the net all night long. You could even be hanging out late with your friends or clubbing intoxicating yourself with booze or just sipping away that coffee or tea. It doesn't matter! All of these, register as the long days of summer to your inner environmental controls. What this means, is your brain will force you to seek energy for storage by eating sugar. Sugar or carbs is the only path to insulin release, and insulin job is to store excess carbs as fat so you have something to live on when summer is over.
The abdominal fat pad common in insulin resistant, high cholesterol heart patients and Type II Diabetes would, in another time and place, have served to keep internal organs warm and would have been utilized as energy during normal famine. Increased intake of carbs or sugar, is always dumped into increased cholesterol production too, because carbs lower the freezing temperature of the cell membrane. In the real world, you would never have access to that much sugar unless it was summer before winter. We, don't live in the real world.
Now, if next time your doctor says your cholesterol is too high and you should cut back on the fat and exercise more, tell him he is mistaken! No? Well, most people do not have the guts to throw opinions to doctors because they think doctors know what they are doing and they have to trust Mr. Doctor. Again, although most people do not have degree in medicine science, it doesn't mean your doctor is always right! Would you put total faith and trust on a single doctor on your health and life?
When you exercise day and night to stave off the weight gain, your body and mind crave, you kick in your 'stress response'. The message you are sending to those systems is " God! Famine is coming and there is a tiger chasing after me!". Sound ridiculous? Well, keep reading.
I think I did mentioned once in my earlier post about exercise and last nail in the coffin. Sounds crazy? The stress response enacted when you run for your life on that treadmill causes your cortisol levels to rise. The longer you run, the more cortisol your adrenals produce. I would say it is alright if you do it once a while, couple times a month but not every single day or regular running/jogging habit. But if you exercise like a maniac or a runner addict, especially at night, the nigh cortisol levels resulting from all the chronic exercise actually mimics the stress of mating season, when the long hours of light and the competition (especially for males), kept cortisol at yearly highs. Mating season would come to naught without a fat base to nourish a pregnancy through the winter. So, it's no coincidence that carbs craving to put on fat, and high cortisol and high sex hormone levels all coincide.
When you thought that you could lose some weight by hitting the gym late at night after work, the moment you step on that treadmill and play your ipod favorite tunes, or hop on that stationary bicycle or maybe the elliptical machine, what's gonna happen? Couple of bazillion watts of artificial lights shinning right into your eyes and all over your skin, and guess what? Your adrenals are pouring out loads of stress hormones cortisol with every minute your run or jog or exercise. Blood sugar mobilization, your adrenals are taxed, as well as increasing the odds of becoming insulin resistant in the process of doing whichever exercise which you think it healthy and will help your so called 'weight lost' goal.
Chronic high cortisol also skews your time perception, making you feel continually rushed. It's the altered time perception that fosters much of the late night stalling before bed, while you stay awake under the impression that there must be more to do or that you haven't finished your work. Then what happen? You stuff yourself with more sugar because you just can't fall asleep and your insulin level is sent even higher. This alone, WILL make you fat and sick!
So now, get what I mean by exercise blindly, it could be the last nail of the coffin? Still not convince, why not try it out yourself running on that treadmill 45 mins 5 days a week at night and see what happens? Well, of course you have to try that out for months to experience the consequences. Give yourself few months on that experiment and I wish you good luck. Till then, stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment