Sleep

Quality sleep is essential to good health. Bad sleep impacts all areas of the body including your brain, hormones, immune system, gut, HPA stress axis and more. Many things interact to cause the body to have good sleep including the levels of noise and light in your bedroom, the morning you had, the recent light signals entering your eyes, temperature cues, levels of melatonin, gabba, cortisol, progesterone, histamine and others which are in turn impacted by emotional, chemical and toxic influences, gut health, genetics, age, your weight, your airway anatomy, past injuries, allergies, the levels of key nutrients present such as magnesium and so much more. This is why sleeping tablets can’t achieve the same deep, refreshing quality sleep the body needs. Sleeping tablets instead provide a form of chemical sedation. A 2016 Taiwanese nation-wide longitudinal study found that chronic insomnia requiring sleep-inducing medications was associated with a 70% increased risk for developing an autoimmune disease! Read more about how sleep and autoimmune diseases are connected here.

The waste disposal system of the brain, the glymphatic system, is largely only active during slow wave, deep sleep. Imagine if the garbage collectors went on strike for 10 years, how would the streets look? How healthy would your brain be if you had bad sleep for 10 years? How would your blood pressure, gut health, energy levels, weight, mental health and overall vitality be without good sleep? You would probably be tired all the tired, and certainly not as mentally sharp or looking and feeling as good as you should. Improving sleep dramatically improves overall health, and good health produces good sleep.

A study found that Short Sleepers were 4 TIMES more likely to catch a cold. The researchers said “It didn't matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race, education or income. It didn't matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day.”

Sleep loss causes a key inflammation marker (CRP) to spike, this increases cardiovascular risk and causes damage to the body.

After being long considered as a hormone exclusively produced in the pineal gland of animals melatonin has now been identified in plants, insects, fungi and bacteria. Certain foods contain quite high amounts of melatonin and this impacts blood levels. The foods and chemicals we consume also impact our gut microbiome which has a big impact on our sleep and overall wellbeing.

At Evergreen Doctors we recognise optimising your sleep is essential to optimal health, and we will work with you using a holistic approach to achieve this.