SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 6)

Few weeks back, I remember telling one of my colleagues that our gut has about 4-5 pounds of bacteria and the total gut bacteria outnumbered the stars in the universe. He looked quite shocked and astounded. Does any of you folks realize that approximately 85% of our immune system consist of our gut flora? Your 'personal bacteria', are constantly at war with other bacteria and viruses over you. This is the same immune system that controls your metabolism and fertility, and is the key to the whole shooting match between light and health. But this whole battle only rages primarily at night, when you sleep. 

Every morning, the outcome of the war, predicts not only your immunity, fertility and weight but your mental health too. Our lives, you see, are not our own. We don't own our body, we are in fact, about only 10%, which is our physical body. Microorganisms (bacteria) own us, and we are symbionts, controlled by different life form with priorities of its own. 

When we are in the light, we pick up the light through our skin and carry its energy, in cells called cryptochromes, down to the symbiotic bacteria that live in our gut. They love light and they love sugar. These bacteria seem to love reproductive hormones too. The common observation that young people and elderly have weaker immune systems is actually a misinterpretation. The truth is that reproductive adults have stronger immune systems that the elderly and little children because the bacteria in our guts love sex steroids. When we reproduce or have sex, we make more 'shelters' for these little bacteria. That principle is the reason women often have diarrhea during a menstrual period, when their hormone levels are flat and the bugs are leaving a sinking ship. 

The mat of bacteria in your gut exudes endotoxins that control your physiology. The endotoxins exuded are cell-wall constituents that are sort of like pheromones or germ sweat. As the bacteria thrive over the course f the day, the endotoxins build. At a certain level, your immune system kicks in to take them down, so you continue to thrive. It is what known as host response.

We only go sleep when a substance called endotoxin LPS is exuded over the course of the day by these friendly bacteria in your guts. We go to sleep when LPS reaches a critical enough concentration in our bloodstreams to trigger an immune response. White blood cells called macrophages and leukocytes multiply and kill some of the bacteria in your system. It's well known that sleep is induced by an immune 'expression' or a cytokine called interleukin-2, which happens in response to the LPS put off by our gut bacteria.

These neighbors have become active participants in our entire immune existence as it relates to the spinning planet and all of its other inhabitants. There's more of them than us. They're everywhere. Our gut alone contains at least 1kg of bacteria. There's more in your mouth and on your skin. All evolving species had to evolve around, or more to the point with bacteria. They owned the joint way before any of us got here.

Our coevolution is just a case of domestication on both parts. over the millennia of symbiosis between them and us, our human immune systems have evolved in response to their orchestration. They gave us an immune system as a self-controlling mechanism and as defense for their turf. For us, sleeping is actually just 'thinning the herd'. Bacteria ranching is just like a successful cattle ranch operation, in which homeostasis is achieved by eating or selling off just enough of the herd to keep it manageable. Our domestication of bacteria works the same way. The herd and rancher both benefit.

The evolutionary tactic of sleep is just a sneaky adaptation that allows us to get to the edge on them, once every planetary rotation. The immune expressions, or cytokines, that ensue from high levels of endotoxins can act as neurotransmitters and literally take you down. By rendering you unconscious, they close your eyes. Closed eyes means, melatonin happens and later, at midpoint in the night, prolaction is secreted. Both these hormones mediate immune function through other cytokines called interleukins. Interleukins have numbers such as IL-1, IL-2 or IL-3. High levels of IL-2 are often found in sleep state, even those that result from illness. Once you fall asleep, the surging melatonin encourages white blood cells activity specifically designed to response to pathogens like the bacteria living in your gut. Well, I know I may sound a bit technical and alien here with all the unfamiliar terms, but bare with me here, you may want to do some research to understand further. 

Needless to say, whether it results from closed eyes or the sun on the other side of the globe, dark is dark, and the darker the better for melatonin production. Sick sleep is more intense and related to the phenomenon of fever through IL-1 and IL-6. You MUST sleep when you are sick, or you won't survive an onslaught by the 'other'. Sleep is when the melatonin and prolactin kick in to make white cells, T cells and NK cells. A gut 'out of whack' meaning, having too little or the wrong kind of bacteria punching a broken time clock. In other words, a seriously impaired immune system.

So, not sleeping on purpose, when it gets dark, means destroying an ancient ecosystem. Folks, do remember, coevolution means we're supposed to be dancing, not stepping on toes. These bacteria keeps you alive, granted, it's for their own purpose, but it's still life. All they ask, is a little sugar, a little light and maybe a few sex hormones to control your internal environment, which controls your external environment too.

We must realize that all of our hormones including melatonin, prolactin, cortisol, insulin and sex hormones too, are the interface between your central nervous system and the environment. The queries cycling in the 'big picture' between you, the bacteria and the environment boil down asking "Is it light? Is it dark? Is it cold? Is it hot? Where's the food? What's after me?".

All of the information relating to these queries is acquired through sight, hearing, taste, sound, touch and smell. The melatonin clocking the hours in 24, trips the prolactin timer to tell your brain what to have an appetite for. Insulin levels are synergistic with sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone for mating. All of these bytes of information are squeezed through the prism of your hypothalamus (timekeeper), the pituitary gland (sex controlling) and adrenal glands (stress meter). This HPA axis, serves as a built in timer, not unlike the one that automatically turn off your coffee maker every morning, except that HPA axis is turning on and off biological functions. This HPA axis acts in concert with the environment to synthesize and disseminate the translated 'rays' of information that have been gathered from environmental cues.

The hormones from these glands, your HPA hormones, are in turn called into play. These hormones run gamut from sex steroids like estrogen and testosterone to cortisol, human growth hormone and leptin from your fat base. These hormones throw the switches to turn vital functions on and off instantaneously. Hormones do this by locking on to promoter regions on strings of DNA called genes and throwing the switches that trigger genetic action.

Whether or not the gene produces its protein product is a function of whether or not it's turned on by a hormone, growth factor, the sun, or an electrical impulse. The proteins produced by these genes, when they are on, fit into receptors on all your cells, which then send the messages to the nucleus of said cell to throw other switches, and so on, and so on. Split second decisions are made by your hormonal network in response to environmental pressures. If any of these switches get stuck on or off, nature perceives you to be too sick to be part of the project.

It's when your switches are stuck, open or closed, that diseases happens. High, sustained levels of any hormone are instinctively adaptive to maintaining your balance on the board on that log. Any sustained hormonal note in the chemical symphony destroys the harmony. So, high estrogen without the progesterone chaser to turn it off, can indeed cause cancer. Ladies, do take note. Also, chronic day in day out, high levels of insulin lead to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer too. Because, once you lost the rhythm, you are out of step and you lose your balance. Then comes the fall, eventually premature death.

SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 5)

Busy, busy, busy. I have been bombarded with tons of programs, tasks, work and holiday season too. Today, I will try to squeeze in a short post as I have some free time. In Malaysia, during this period, it is holiday season, especially for Chinese population. I'm trying not to fall sick, as weather is hot and lack of sleep, as well as eating too much 'heaty' festive foods and snacks. Just did my TRX workout and finished shower. Felt great, feel like writing another post today.

Well, this post might not be super interesting, more of how we actually evolved and how the earth and nature influence our body and energy system. We are interconnected physiologically with every other life on earth. Life is a quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement are what physicists call a problem of 'perfect order'. Perfect order, is the theory that all matter is alive and connected through a continuous flow of energy. Everything is one. All of us together are then further connected to the sun, moon and stars by biophysics. That means that our biology is a product of photons, magnetism and gravity.

There are light sensitivity monitors built into the cells of our eyes, skin, blood and bones. We have always way back to the primordial ooze, registered the spinning of the earth as it circles the sun. Mammoths, man eaters, mice and microbes, all from the same humble beginnings, evolved physiologic controls based on light and dark. The plants and we are one. The molecule heme, that structures the fraction of our blood called hemoglobin, is the same molecule that structures the blood of plants, chlorophyll. We really are all one.

The energy the sun puts out, supports the biochemistry that is the foundation of the biological systems that are all of the life her on earth. Hence, biophysics. The energy of sunlight, as photons, the heat photons produce, and electromagnetic gravity we are subject to, controls every bit of energy metabolism and reproduction, on the molecular level here on the earth. The light, no matter what form it takes, a particle of wave, sparks massive cascading biochemical reactions, globally in all life, except at night, when all things rest from the light.

The big problem with canceling the night and winter is one of duality, yin and yang, up and down, here and there, left and right. Day needs night to exist. The first half of any equation rests in  the existence of the other half. In the universe, symmetry is all there is. Summer or winter, spring or fall, light or dark, black or white, hot or cold, man or woman, dead or alive, all have each other to thank for their existence. Cutting edge quantum physicists believe the universe is constructed out of energy in patterns that conform to an 'order of symmetry'. Come to think of it, it does make sense. 

All life as we know it rests on principles of biology that rest on the principles of biochemistry. In any biochemical reaction, the way molecules bond to other molecules or the way cells display polarity inside and outside all chemical reactions abide by rules of electrical attraction. The bonding and polarized reactions that are the hallmark of biochemistry are defined by the principles of the physics that they employ.

All that we are pointing out in our theories of energy metabolism is that in this hierarchy the sun is the generator of all basic energy and life. The sun is the principal controller of all life simply because of the structure of matter. Now, there are two main branches of physics, Newtonian and Quantum. Newtonian physics is concerned with mechanics, the falling apple always hits Newton on the head, and if you close your fist and punch something, there's an equation to measure the force of the thrust.

Quantum physics is more likely to explain Qi and telepathy. The theoretical difference between the mechanical predictions of Newtonian physics and the predictions in quantum mechanics is that the same experimental conditions can lead to a variety of very different final outcome in a quantum world, but never in a Newtonian world. Anyone who study physics will realize that. 

In string theory, all life emanates from the same fundamental structure, an extended string. Well, since we are part and parcel, down to our bones, just a small piece of this universe, which exists within a framework of laws like chaos and symmetry, our physiology and spirits must abide by them, too. This duality or symmetry exists for us as balance.

Harmonically, we are part of a larger song. The tune we sing is written by the natural rhythms in our environment. The only way to stay in the game or remain or remain stable is to be able to roll with the punches. All of the systems now in place to perform the constant compensatory actions necessary to survive were developed by adaptive 'intelligence' in response to environmental pressures over millennia. Living and staying alive is like standing on a board on a log. In this case, if you lose your balance, it's a long fall. And guess what? There are no survivors at the bottom.

Our viability as a life form means that our responsiveness to the seasons in terms of food supply and reproduction are really all there is on regard to ending up on top. That's why our genes have 'on and off' switches, controlled by hormones, that respond to environmental cues. We are finely tuned to survive by responding event to event, because the only sure thing in nature is changing circumstances. Life is a dance, sort of. We listen to the music and sway. 

The vibrations from the environment are picked up by the hormonal interface that we call the endocrine system.  This endocrine system is acting as 'software' that runs an organic computer we call the body or brain. the amount of light and gravity you are exposed to is the program that runs the software. Through the auspices of this hormonal software program, which throws switches on genes that control the machine nanosecond by nanosecond, you balance on the board on the log. 

This whole human sub machine is an integrated part of the larger machine of the environment or biosphere. Every living thing is an interactive machine or biocomputer programmed for adaptive intelligence. That means, the definition of life is the ability to learn and change in response to experience. The experience-based decision system allows each life form to change in response to every other life form, because hormones control your behavior and your genes. 

The elements in the environment control the hormonal processes in your body that program your brain to control your behavior and actions. So, a brain without a body is mindless, but a body without an environment is brainless. The fluctuating fat base on that body is really an immune response that protects and makes you viable in all seasons. Your behavior with regard to food cravings and appetite is simply an immune response too.

SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 4)

I have a good feeling, that I will write quite a number posts about sleep, circadian rhythm and all the good stuff about stress relation with sleep wake cycles, and how our body responds to them. Circadian rhythm and the cellular oscillators that underlie them are ubiquitous and for good reason. For most organisms, dawn means food, predation, and changes in all the geophysical variables that accompany the sun, warmth, winds, and so on. 

It's a big deal when sun comes up, and most living things time their days with an internal clock that is synchronized by external cues. Given this common and ancient evolutionary pressure, circadian clocks must have evolved early, and common elements are likely to be present up and down the evolutionary tree.

We and everything else alive, from plankton and fungus to elephants and ants, are synchronized to the orbit and rotation of the earth in and out of the sun's light to assure us the food supply. All things great and small have internal sundials that measure time with molecular clocks in every cell that switch enormous regulatory genes on and off. The light, whether a particle of a wave, always sparks biochemical reactions. Plants grow, we animals eat them and each other. We die and become fertilizer.

Now, do you know that when you raise your hands up to the window, cells called cryptochromes in your bloodstream pick up the blue spectrum light through your skin? These cryptochromes carry a piece of the sky all through you. That light energy and the carbohydrate (sugar) you eat even keep the symbiotic bacteria that live in the dark deep of you middle thriving.

We, and every other living thing on earth are truly beings of light. To make sense of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, you need to understand as well the connection between our physiology to the earth, sun and sky.

We were suppose to roam for food and sex, get some, and then head for the hills, when there were caves when it got cold, dark at night. It is not so complicated. Exactly the same scenario was lived out by the ancestors of the dogs and cats, and it's what mountain gorillas still do today. Put down your TV remote, sit down and think of it.

Do you see squirrels, snakes, birds or even monkeys doing barbecuing? On a planet inhabited by trillions of lifeforms, we human alone only can control the light. But guess what? We pay the price, and it is surely expensive. Owning the night did not come cheap.

The use of fire for protection, warmth, and cooking has left a mark on our reproductive and immune systems that requires human sacrifice to this day. By altering the rhythms of light and dark exposure, we who control the light never get cold, and fend off the night and any predators, human or animal, that might be lurking in the shadows.

We've abolished winter. Now only we, in the galaxy and the universe, stand still. Winter, or any period of chill, is a big deal in evolution. Adversity, in this case cold, is a prime motivator. Think about how you personally deal with being cold, you strive to stay warm. If your car breaks down in the snow, you find a shelter and wait for help, you then make a plan to fix it, figuring out way to warm yourself down a bit, and the memory of that incident sticks with you, changing your behavior forever. If all of those changes occurred in you because of the one time inconvenience of your transportation break down, imagine what millennia of ice and snow did for our species intellectually.

All of our evolved physiology and intellectual is, literally, geared to light and dark, hot and cold. Just as mineral content in our bones identical to stardust, testifies to our extraterrestrial origins, the photoperiodic cells in our blood tie us to the sun and the moon. We are always, every minute of every day of our earthbound existence, a complete part of it all.

In the last century, after surviving many many ice ages, we began to live on a planet with multiple 'suns', instead of eclipse's darkness at noon that drove them mad, however, we've created morning at midnight. It's driving all of us mad! All life forms must go dormant to survive the dark and cold, or they lose the ability to plan and adapt.

During long cold periods, our ancestors dozed off and on for weeks at a time in dark caves, slowing down metabolic functions to save energy, when food was scarce. This system mirrored, during one revolution around the sun, the same game plan that we use every rotation in and out of our sun's light. In fact, day and night, are the short version of summer and winter.

Over the millennia, we evolved hibernational and gestational periods that always ended in the spring, when food was fresh and plentiful. Our first encounter with 'energy control' or what we call as fire, changed all that forever. The light from the fire was enough to create summer in our ovaries (women) all year round. The minute all of those flowing sex hormones for mating kept us awake all winter by suppressing melatonin, we left earth's family, never to return.

Right now, I need to hit the bed. It's late and I'm exhausted. Stay tuned and sleep well.

SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 3)

Lets continue from where we left off last post about sleep, why is it so important. Your appetite, is but one symptom of this deathly dsyfunction, just as obesity is correlative with heart disease, but in fact, it is not the real cause. The real truth is that the urgent need to sleep, is also the cause of the  Type II Diabetes. All diseases that are not caused by contagion and injury are born of immune dysfunction by way of metabolism. 

Let's see. Your immune system is governed by two hormones, prolactin and melatonin and guess what? Both of these substances are controlled by light and dark cycles. Seasonal variation in daylight. and intensity of daylight, control budding, growth and dormancy in plants and in animals too, with seasonal changes in ambient lighting control hibernation, migration and breeding. To expose ourselves to the unremitting glare of artifical lighting for more hours than it is actually daylight is asking for trouble. 

Back in 1920's, where most people could only afford to keep the lights on for a couple of hours at night after sunset. People at that time spent up to about 14 hours a night, depending on the season, in the dark. But, by late 1920's, expensive machinery in factories were built and running around the clock with sudden boom, and night shift work brought more money in countless ways. 

Now, to understand why carbohydrates are the instrument of death, we need just a little science. Anyone who know or read about chronic hyperinsulinemia would be able to connect the dots, and figure this out. It actually means chronic high insulin made in your body. This can only occur, when you chronically consume carbohydrates. You could NEVER chronically consume carbohydrates in nature. Trees and plants fruit only in one season and flower in other. Living on sugar for more than a month or two in a row, would not be possible unless you were preparing to hibernate for a darn long winter nap.

The media doesn't talk much about insulin unless it's reporting on Type I Diabetes, so most people known insulin as a medicine for Type I Diabetics, which is known also as autoimmune disease. Insulin is at center of both forms of the disease because it controls blood sugar by binding to cell receptor sites like a key opening a lock. Once the 'gateways' are open, the blood sugar can enter and energize all of your cells. Insulin resistance is the body's inability to respond to the insulin that you normally produce because receptors have treated to save your life. Every function of your body, from basic molecule to molecule communication to complex operations like appetite control or temperature regulation, is in a tight zone called homeostasis. I think I did explain abit about this is my other posts. 

We now have more and more younger people suffering from insulin resistance, and entire population is aging in 'fast forward' mode. We are as addicted to low fat diet high sugar diet, as alcoholics are to alcohol, because high insulin levels create the same brain state as alcohol does. Alcoholics sleep it off after rounds of 'bottoms up' night, not only because the alcohol itself has a drug like effect on their opiate receptors but also because the huge carbohydrate load of the grape, grain, potato, cactus, rum, sugar cane in the drink literally put them to sleep. Folks, remember this as you go for that glass of wine at dinner.

Is our extinction imminent? The odds against our extinction aren't good. It happened more then once, and it can happen again. Whatever the cause, the historical record verify the signs, and the signs are everywhere. From declining birth rates to escalating diabetes and cancer, a lot of us are not 'fit' to live. When you change the environment, the environment changes you, and that if, you genes allow it to.

All our current genetic makeupe evolved in a time before we had the ability to bring light to the blackness just because we wanted to, unimaginable as that might be. Shorter nights meant less melatonin. Less melatonin meant more estrogen and testosterone, more cortisol and of course, more insulin. Those of us who genetically adapt to live with less sleep, more carbs, and the increased fertility that brought lived on, but I would say not many of us. Those who couldn't adapt died, unfit to survive in the new modern environment.

The next great 'death nail' was the mass human extinction that we feel must have followed close on the heels of the coming of agriculture. We were born, like very animal, to hunt in the light, whether it be for fruit and fish in the summer or wild boar and bark in the winter, and to rest in the dark. Cultivating grain near our living sites changed all that. The relatively sudden change in the concentration and timing of our carbohydrate food supply polished off more than a few of us by tipping the balance of our nutrition from 90% protein to 80% carbohydrates, which primarily is sugar.

For all previous human lifetime, although carbohydrates were available in the months from spring to late fall, we never craved it until the hours of sunlight changed. Agriculture meant that we suddenly living on an ever increasing amount of carbs or sugar, for even more of the year due to our ability to control the growing seasons. After making it through hundreds of millennia and a couple of Ice Ages without sugar out of season, the suddenness, in terms of evolution, of its arrival caused the same kind of death we are seeing now.

Our most recent unspecified and general collapse began with the discovery of electricity. Our first innocent manneuver was to carry away glowing coals from lighting strikes. Next, we managed to to learn how to reanimate coals that had gone cold. We've also learned to recreate the lighting that gave us the magic of hot coals. Harnessing the primal energy of lighting gave us the keys to the kingdom. Now, we are going to pay!

We can't really fight the future, but we sure can stall it. By truly understanding all of the turning points and synergistic meachanisms of life here on earth, it is possible to work the knobs and dials to stave off extinction. Right now, there's no hope of control because we are suffocating and ultimately dying under layers of incoherent information. Tons of contradicting and misleading health information! You must be wondering, why is that so? The TV drones on all day, program after program, about how to lower your fat intake and increase your exercise. A typical 'weight loss' program, which I'm generally against this idea.

Remember this, nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of nature. Imagine a bouncing ball of light (photon), is a wave of energy. The light wave left behind can be heat, brightness, or vibrational energy, depending on the rhythm of the bounce. Light, temperature and gravity controls the metabolism and reproduction on the molecular level in every venue here on earth. Therefore, they control your health and your very existence. 

SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 2)

Every year, thousands of people in my country go on  so called 'diet'. Millions of Americans go on some sort of dieting plan in United States alone. The amount of weight they lose isn't even at issue, because up to 95% of them gained all back (plus additional pounds) within five years. Then what? We have been steadily decreasing our consumption of fat and cholesterol, and yet increasing our incidence of obesity, disease and death. 

Since the turn of the century, sugar consumption has skyrocketed, increased by 150%. As sugar became a cheap preservative, it became an additive in almost all processed foods, and as we know, consumption of processed foods all over the industrialized countries have increased exponentially over the last 50 years or so. 

Back in the 1950's, only about very little people were receiving visible radio waves. Now, the average family has two adults employed full time and eats out at least 4 times a week. Well, I could be wrong, it is just my rough estimation and observation. Imagine, a mum works all day in the office, and comes back home needing to prepare and cook dinner for the family, and when done with the dishes, by the time mum finishes her shower, it is probably past 11pm. By the time mum try to finish off the remaining household chores, it easily hit midnight and she has yet to crash the bed. If this happens for years and years, day in day out, regular chronic exhaustion and late night sleep, a recipe of insulin resistance and cancer is boiling, awaiting for the time to come, sooner or later. 

The disastrous slide in the health of many civilized people, my country, and the rest of the developed nations, correspond to the increase in light generating night activities and carbohydrates consumption. Besides a steady increase in heart disease and obesity, statistics already show that diabetes and cancer are on the rise. Food plays a huge role, but sleep wake cycles definitely play a crucial role as well. It's been predicted  for years now that reducing dietary fat would decrease cancer, but cancer statistics show us an increasing incidence of colon cancer. For breast and prostate cancer, both increased incidence and increased death can be seen too. 

Medicine admits that the so called 'improvement' in cancer statistics is derived from early detection, not from treatment or prevention. But early detection only extends the time of awareness, the victim knows sooner that he or she is going to suffer and die. Early detection NEVER saves lives, more often it only prolongs them long enough to skew the numbers. Guess what? All these numbers proved that we were on the wrong course! 

Food is part of the equation, but not the whole picture and total answer. the answer, lies in circadian rhythmicity and evolution. The answer is to eat real food, eat right, move like how humans suppose to move, and sleep and reproduce in sync with the spin of the planet or go the way of the dinosaurs. The long hours of artifical lights that confuse your biological ancient regulation system also destroy the lining of your heart. You subconcious has, over the course of evolution, been conditioned and fine tuned to believe and act on the following when the lights stay on too long. 

The light responsive instinct has been the basis of our feast-or-famine metabolism and ultimate survival for at least 3 million years. All the effects of chronic light exposure and the carbohydrates consumption that follows that exposure would have, in another place and time, prepared us for the worst, for no food and for the shorter, darker, colder days of less sun. 

Bear in mind, we have always feasted to endure famine, that always followed until now. Unfortunately, the truth in our time is that we eat carbohydrates now and die sooner. Your body translates long hours of artificial lights into summertime. Because it instinctively knows that summer comes before winter, and that winter means no available food, you begin to crave carbohydrates so you can store fat for a time when food is scarce and you should be hibernating. 

Remember these few important key facts:

- Long hours of artifical lights = summer in your head

- Winter signifies famine to your internal controls

- Famine on the horizon, signifies instinctive carbodydrates craving to store fat for hibernation and scarcity.

Meanwhile, this storage is accomplished by:

1) Increasing carbohydrate consumption until your body responds to all the insulin by becoming insulin-resistant in muscle tissues.

2) Ensuring that carbohydrates taken in end up as fat pad

3) Prompting the liver to dump the extra sugar into cholesterol production, which will keep cell membranes from freezing at low temperatures. 

Now, if you sleep at night for the number of hours, it would normally be dark outside, you will only crave sugar in the summer, when the hours of light are long. It is the 'perennial adaptation' or the chronic, constant intent to hibernate, that causes overconsumption of carbs and obesity and its attendant high blood pressure and inevitable heart disease.

Step 1, 2 and 3, also correspond to the hormonal potrait of Type II diabetes, a disease that in truth, is the end result of excruciating fatigue from 'light' toxicity, although faulty signaling of leptin is another factor as well. Well, what I can say is although the instrument of destruction may be food, the cause of death is something much more insidious. Stay tuned. 

SLEEP : Why is it so important for us? (Part 1)

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.

What did you have for dinner?

Happy New Year. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday and set your new year's resolution in place for 2012. Lose 20 pounds in 6 months? Or perhaps get a body transformation before end of 2012? Or reverse Diabetes Type II without the help of prescription drugs from doctors? Well, there are tons of new resolution for 2012, but, if you do set a goal, what is your plan, and how are you going to achieve it? Is it a realistic goal? Or will you still be the same old out of shape, overweight, weak, sick and depressed human being?

Today, I will share with you guys again, about how we could eat, primarily REAL FOOD for your daily meals. I still have tons of people asking me what am I going to eat? Who needs McDonalds, KFC, Pizza, Nasi Kandar and any other fast food meals? This is another sample of dinner meal which any of you could prepare and eat. The key here is eat 'real food', mainly whole organic foods.  Avoiding as much processed foods and pesticide and chemical laden foods is a priority here. We are suppose to eat according to how we have evolved, according to our metabolic requirement, eating for energy. Most of us have been treating our body as an amusement park. Always feel bloating, flatulence, indigestion and low energy levels? Maybe it's time to change the way you eat, putting less digestive stress and respect your body. 

By the way, below are the food list on the attached photo. Try it out, small changes make a big difference! By the way, I've also consumed a serving of whey protein and a handful of organic raw goji berries just before my meal, after an intense workout session. No artificial flavor, sweeteners (contains stevia), and free of antibiotics and hormones. 

- Organic free range grass fed beef (stew) (200gram, approximately 60-65g or protein)

- Organic raw baby tomatoes

- Organic four angled beans

- Organic kiwi 

- Papaya (1 bowl)

- Organic apple

- Quaill eggs (4 eggs)

- Organic free range chicken eggs (2 eggs)

- Organic cucumber (half)