Bad and Good Sleeping Posture

This is bad sleeping posture.

So what is good sleeping posture? We strongly recommend sleeping on your back as its easiest to keep the spine neutral as you sleep.

Your mattress and pillow choices can also help your posture.

From: https://physioworks.com.au/
Select a firm mattress or an ensemble that does not sag. If necessary, place a board under your mattress. You can also place the mattress on the floor temporarily if necessary. If you've always slept on a soft surface, it may be initially painful to change to a harder surface. Try to do what's most comfortable for you.

The human neck curves slightly forward (to sustain the weight of the head when upright), and it is very important to maintain this curve when in a resting position. If the height of the pillow is too high or low when sleeping, your neck is bent abnormally out of alignment, causing muscle and joint strain. You can even wake with headaches.

Poor pillow support can also cause narrowing of the air pipe, resulting in obstructed breathing, and sometimes snoring, which can hinder sleep.

Internal Health

Nutrition should not be focused solely on weight loss. Also, just because someone looks good externally doesn't mean they are healthy internally.

If you are working with a health professional who doesn't understand this and the mechanisms of how nutrition correlates with inflammation and internal health it's time to move on.

Nutrition should be focused on getting you healthy internally and reducing inflammation as that's how you truly get healthy. If you create a healthy internal environment then weight loss will be a welcome side effect.

Most people don't mind carrying around an extra 20-30 lbs on a regular basis, but if they get cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis for example their world is going to instantly change. We need to stop focusing on external weight and start focusing on internal health because that's where all health problems start.

A few factors to consider outside of weight:

1. How's your energy?
2. Do you have major energy swings after meals?
3. Do you get out of breath easily?
4. Are you flexible, can you get up off the ground quickly?
5. How's your sleep, do you get at least 6 hours per night?
6. What are your hsCRP levels?
7. What are your HbA1c levels?
8. What are your fasting glucose levels?
9. What are your fasting triglyceride levels?
10. What are your Vitamin D-3 levels?

Sleep Myths

New study looks at five sleep myths:

1. You can get by on less than five hours of sleep
2. Snoring is harmless
3. Booze before bed boosts sleep quality 
4. Watching TV helps you unwind
5. Snoozing your alarm isn't that bad for you

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news

Caffeine Effects In Coffee

Everybody loves a good cup of coffee.

But while you probably know that too much caffeine is too much of a good thing, do you think about WHEN you drink your coffee as influencing your health?

Caffeine has a half-life of six hours which means that half the caffeine you ingested will be left six hours later.

If you go to bed at 10:30pm, this should put your last cup of coffee at 10:30am. Drinking coffee later than that increases the difficulty of falling asleep or degrading the quality of sleep if you do.

Sleep Is When Your Body Heals

Sleep is when your body heals. The less you sleep the more pain you will have.

“The results clearly show that even very subtle changes in nightly sleep — reductions that many of us think little of in terms of consequences — have a clear impact on your next-day pain burden,”

1. Sleep more in the winter
2. Create a routine and go to bed around the same time each night.
3. Take magnesium before bed
4. Keep your room below 70 degrees5. Block out as much light as possible.

Link: https://neurosciencenews.com

Sleep Is a Crucial Part of Your Health

One of the keys to achieving long-term healthy living is setting small, attainable goals.

January's resolution: Go to bed by 10:30 pm every night.

Sleep is a crucial part of your health. Without enough sleep your body cannot heal and recover. Following the proper sleep cycle, our bodies should be ready for bed around 10 p.m.

Throughout the day our bodies go through a variety of physical and mental stressors, and sleep is the time to rebuild and repair our muscles and brain. Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. our bodies do most of the muscle repair, and after 2 a.m. mental repair takes place.

If you go to bed at midnight, you will miss two hours of physical repair potentially causing you to wake up feeling tired and even sore, as your body didn’t get to finish repairs from the night before.

The more you can do to get back in sync with the sun’s cycle, the better sleep you will have and the more energized and restored you will feel the next day.

Sleep Tips to Improve Your Health

Sleep is a crucial part of your health. Without enough sleep your body cannot heal and recover. Following the proper sleep cycle, our bodies should be ready for bed around 10 p.m.

Throughout the day our bodies go through a variety of physical and mental stressors, and sleep is the time to rebuild and repair our muscles and brain. 

Between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. our bodies do most of the muscle repair, and after 2 a.m. mental repair takes place. 

If you go to bed at midnight, you will miss two hours of physical repair potentially causing you to wake up feeling tired and even sore, as your body didn't get to finish repairs from the night before.

To get better sleep, try these tips:

• Wear a sleep mask, I use this one from Amazon
  
• Reduce light in the bedroom -- consider using black out shades, cover lights from alarm clocks, don't use night lights.
   
• Turn the thermostat down to 70 degrees or lower
   
• Shut down your computer and TV one hour before bed, use the f.lux computer software to reduce blue light for better sleep or wear blue light blocking glasses.
   
• Turn your phone to airplane or sleep mode at night to reduce disturbances -- even better, charge someplace other than your bedroom at night!
   
• Caffeine has a 6 hour half life, meaning that it takes 12 hours to completely get out of your system. If you want to go to bed at 10:30 pm, your last cup of coffee or other caffeine source should be at 10:30 am.
   
• Try a bedtime meditation to help wind down -- the app Headspace (40% off right now, and only $9.99 per year for students) has a lot of great options, or write down your to do list for the next day to help relax at night. 

The more you can do to get back in sync with the sun's cycle, the better sleep you will have and the more energized and restored you will feel the next day. 

Lifestyle Impacts Cancer

This study found that breast tumors actually send signals to the brain trying to cause disruption in sleep patterns and glucose metabolism.

The reason cancer cells do this is because they thrive when there is excess glucose in the body and minimal sleep. Sleep is when your body heals and when glucose levels are out of balance inflammation is increased and chaos follows.

Lifestyle can have a massive impact on many types of cancer:
1. Reduce and remove processed carbohydrates. Lots of veggies and berries are your best option, try to eat some sort of vegetable at every meal, eat more than you think you should eat.
2. Make sure you have the best sleep habits possible. Make it a routine, go to bed early, take magnesium, block out all light, make sure your room is below 70 degrees, etc.

Source: https://buff.ly/2BnqipK

Sleep Tips

Sleep is sleep is sleep.

There isn't anything else like it, and nothing can do what it does. Handfuls of vegetables can't replace the hours being missed every night, and an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill doesn't make up for being chronically sleep deprived.

"Yeah, but I do fine with five hours of sleep."

Try two weeks of at least 7 hours and see how you feel. "Doing fine" is usually just "becoming used to feeling terrible", and after a extended period of good sleep habits, people report improvement in most areas of life - from mental outlook to erased aches and pains to better productivity at work.

Some tips:

1. Go to bed by 10 PM
2. Sleep at least 7 hours per night
3. Take melatonin or Magnesium before bed if you have sleeping problems
4. Wear a sleep mask or use a sound machine
5. Do anything you can to reduce light an hour before sleep and in the bedroom - less screen time, blue light glasses and the "nighttime" function on your phone, blackout curtains, etc.

No Sleep Leads to Negative Thoughts

This study showed that the later people go to bed and the shorter they sleep the more negative their thoughts. 

Which makes sense because if you don't sleep, you have higher levels of cortisol and feel more stressed out which leads to negative thoughts.

1. Go to bed by 10 PM
2. Sleep at least 7 hours per night
3. Take melatonin or Magnesium before bed if you have sleeping problems
4. Wear a sleep mask or use a sound machine

Source: sciencedaily.com

Melatonin Levels May Lower Risk of Cancer

In a lab setting you gave give animals cancer by not allowing them to sleep for extended periods of time. Sleep is when the body heals and if the body isn't healing properly cancer will form. 

This study shows a direct correlation between prostate cancer and melatonin levels which is correlated with lack of sleep. 

"Higher levels of melatonin, a hormone involved in the sleep-wake cycle, may suggest decreased risk for developing advanced prostate cancer."

Get to bed and do as much as you can to get good quality sleep!

Source: sciencedaily.com