wellness tips

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I just finished reading the most fascinating book called Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival   by Wiley and Formby, which discusses how light pollution is damaging the health of animals and humans alike.

You may have heard how the frogs and toads have been disappearing from swamps near lit soccer fields.  It has also been documented that during solar eclipses, animals go to sleep, thinking it is night time.  

When you return to nature by going camping, have you noticed how you tend to crawl into the sleeping bag soon after it is dark, as there isn’t much else to do when you can’t see anything.  

We too, are beings that evolved living by the rules of nature, and to be healthy, we still need to live that way.  It is not that long ago that the lights were turned on in our cities, and our physiology has not yet adapted to this new reality.  

Our bodies work in complex system of feedback loops that act like checks and balances. When systems get out of balance, our bodies don’t function optimally physically or psychologically.

Today’s modern lifestyle means we can keep the lights on all night, sugar is always available to us to eat, and things like sitting in traffic jams can cause our stress hormones to go through the roof, so hormonally most of us are WAY out of balance.

Just like the frogs, every cell in our body is light sensitive, and hormones are activated or deactivated and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine are released daily according to the light or lack of light sensed by our cells.

The hormones that depend on a lack of light to function tend to be our “rest and repair” hormones, and the hormones that are activated by light tend to be the “coping with stress” hormones.

When we stay up too late at night with the lights on, long after the sun has gone down, we don’t get enough hours of tissue repair and immunity building.

And on the flip side, with the extended hours we spend in the light, the stress hormones that are supposed to be active during the day only, wind up working overtime.

There is no balance in the daily cycle between the day hormones like cortisol, insulin, and the night hormones like the antioxidant melatonin and the immune builder, prolactin. So we are stressed and tired, in a weakened state with poor immunity, and therefore we are sitting ducks for sickness and disease.

And when any hormone is overly elevated for long periods of time the receptors that take in that hormone become resistant, which leads directly health problems. The example I gave a couple of weeks ago was insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes.

In this case, treating the high blood sugar by giving insulin is not helpful, as the problem is not the lack of insulin, but rather the lack of sensitivity of the receptors. Balancing the hormones through adequate sleep, darkness time, and eating foods that do not raise blood-sugar levels would be a more successful approach.

The western medicine approach to dealing with the hormones that are too low, would be to supplement. Taking melatonin supplements (your night time repair hormone) each evening would unfortunately eventually result in your pineal gland shrinking and your body being unable to produce its own melatonin.

Dimming the lights and wearing rose-coloured glasses in the evening can increase melatonin production, but the bottom line is to get the critically important hormone balancing as well as the tissue repair and immune improvement, we need to get to bed in complete darkness at a reasonable hour, such as 10pm.

Any light leaks will shut down melatonin, which in turn, will shut down prolactin. In the summer when the light is long, we can stay up a little longer, but once the sun goes down, bed should soon follow.

Related Tips:
Is Going to Bed Too Late Making You Fat?
Sleep, the dark of the matter
Early to bed, early to rise…

www.wellnesstips.ca

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Now that sounds like a disgusting topic, doesn’t it! But apparently our pillows are a perfect breeding ground for fungi. We put about 20 gallons of sweat into our beds over the course of a year in addition to old skin cells and of course, there are the dust mites, all of which provide food for the fungi. And our beds are toasty warm, so it is a perfect medium for fungi to grow. According to a preliminary study by Dr. Ashley Woodcock, a respiratory doctor from the University of Manchester, there are a large variety of fungi growing in our pillows, and the older the pillow, the more the fungi. The most common fungi found was Aspergillus, which can worsen the problems of those with respiratory disease like severe asthma or sinusitis, and it can be infectious to those that have very suppressed immune systems, such as leukemia, transplantation, and AIDs patients. Because of the close proximity between the pillow and the respiratory tract, it is possible that pillows can be the source of fungi infection.

Synthetic pillows and quilts, even though they are frequently sold as hypo-allergenic, actually cause more allergen problems than feather pillows, possibly because the feather pillows require a higher quality cover in order to keep the feathers inside. The covers of synthetic pillows tend to be more porous, perhaps allowing more allergens in.

Am I suggesting we all throw out our pillows? No. Those with severe respiratory disease or those that are immuno-compromised may wish to get plastic covers for their pillows. As for the rest of us, more research is needed to give a definitive answer, but most likely, just as our immune system is strengthened by contact with bacteria, it might also strengthened by contact with fungi. If you are freaked out by the idea of fungi in your pillows, you can change them every six months or so.

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In order to get a good night’s sleep, you need to sleep in complete darkness.  If there is a street light outside your window shining into your bedroom, you will sleep much better if you get light-blocking drapes. Use night lights with red bulbs so if you need to get up to go to the bathroom, you can do so without turning on the lights, which would result in the shutting down of your sleep hormone melatonin, making it harder to get the rest you need.  Our bodies are very sensitive to light, and any light shining on any part of our skin makes our body think it is morning, resulting in the hormone cortisol being released to help give us the energy we need to begin our day. This is not the best situation if it is 2 AM! So go to bed turning out the lights by 10h30pm at the latest, sleep dark and sleep well.

For more information on the effect of light and our sleep patterns, please enjoy the book Lights Out! by Formby & Wiley.

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Yes, there is truth to this old saying by Benjamin Franklin. We were meant to get up with the light of dawn and to go to sleep at nightfall, our hormone levels adjusting to the rise and fall of daylight around us. Now, in our modern world we can fool our hormonal system with artificial light, which has a big impact on our health. Staying up late with bright lights shining in our eyes keeps our stress hormone cortisol high when it should be diminishing, and suppresses our sleep hormone melatonin, when it should be rising, which has an impact on our ability to deal with stress, lose weight, physically and psychologically repair our tissues, feel rested and be ready for the new day. So, try to get to sleep in a very dark room by 10pm, and marvel at how much better you feel! For more information on how artificial light affects our health, read Lights Out! by Formby & Wiley.

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Okay! I succumb. After days of denial, I must face the truth that I’ve caught a cold.

I just don’t get sick. Usually I can navigate through weeks of sickness, with people dropping like flies all around me, and I remain fine. Sure, I take the usual precautions like washing my hands frequently, taking Echinacea and huge doses of vitamin C to at least satisfy my mind that I am doing something to protect myself from all the sickies around me.

I’m not sure what happened this time. Maybe it was the sugar I consumed last week. I’ve worked hard to eliminate sugar from my diet, but I was at a wedding last weekend, and … well … there was chocolate fondue for dessert. I could have simply chosen the fruit, but no, that wasn’t enough. When I saw that huge bowl of molten chocolate, I knew what I had to do. I brought my coffee cup up to the buffet table, and filled it with that yummy liquid dark chocolate, and much to the surprise of those at my table, proceeded to drink it.

Well, no matter what the cause, the result is that I have joined the ranks of the sickies, and am arming myself like a sicky, with my pants pockets bulging with paper towels to help absorb the interminable nose drip, and a crushed, damp white flag held tightly in hand prepared to surrender to the inevitable big sneeze explosion.

For me, the worst part of a cold is the cough. I don’t seem capable of doing those nice little polite coughs that no one really notices. Oh no. My coughs are like gun shots – loud and frequent. The more I try not to cough, the more I cough. And usually when I lie down, the cough gets much worse, which means that nobody gets any sleep.

So yesterday afternoon, I found myself in a pharmacy trying to choose a cough suppressant in the hopes that we might get some sleep that night. The irony is that I’ve been trying for well over a year to reduce the colourings, flavourings, preservatives, hormones and drugs I consume by eating organic food, putting a filter on the tap to take out chlorine and other contaminants, etc. and here I was eagerly looking to purchase a bottle of chemical soup filled with all the stuff I’ve been trying to cut out. But if it stops my coughing so I can sleep, I’ll take it. Amazing how primal the shift in focus is. When breathing and sleeping might be compromised, I am suddenly okay with blue and red colouring, hydrogenated oil, saccharin and whatever else these unpronounceable and probably very unhealthy ingredients might be.

Last night, like a good sicky, I took my dose of chemical soup and went to bed. As soon as I lay down, the coughing started in earnest. My ribcage was bouncing off the bed so high I was giving myself whiplash. My lungs felt like they were on fire. I could feel the sizzle of the red hot embers on the tips of each branch of the bronchial tree. Each cough would ignite the embers brighter. I kept trying to imagine waves of water dousing the flames, but that did not seem to work. And the ruckus! I’m surprised we did not get a call from the neighbours.

Finally after an hour or two of continual coughing, my partner came in and found me propped up in a semi seated position, sleep mask on, but quite awake. He handed me a mug and told me to drink. I felt a burning as the liquid touched my throat, but instantly the urge to cough died. I couldn’t believe it. Bourbon, grated ginger and a little water was the formula. Fight fire with fire. I slept for about three hours until the coughing started to overtake me again; I drank some more of the fire liquid and slept through until morning.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is. I can’t say I would advocate Bourbon as a healthy cough remedy. That said, I’ll be tossing the chemical-soup cough syrup, and relying on Bourbon to get me through the worst of this cough. I figure being a slightly drunk and cough-free sicky is better than being a sober and coughing sicky. It’s going to be a fun weekend.