Everything you need to know about SLEEP and how to make it BETTER.
If there is one thing our busy, 24/7 culture often neglects, it’s sleep. Its been Reported that around 50-70 million Americans already have a sleep disorder.
Risks of Poor Sleep
Poor sleep raises your cortisol, the stress hormone. This can lead to weight gain, lowered immunity and increased diabetes risk. In fact, just one night interrupted sleep can actually affect your blood sugar for 48 hours.
Cortisol also makes the fat cells get bigger. When this happens, you’ll get increased inflammation, there’s heightened pain sensitivity, as well as increased risk of stroke.
Have you also noticed how you tend to overeat or crave more food when you’re sleep deprived? That’s because sleep directly affects leptin and ghrelin, two hormones that tell you when you feel hungry or full.
Chronic sleep loss and sleep disorders have been associated with Increase risk of depression, obesity, hypertension, heart attack, and stroke. It has also been linked to increased accident risk and impared cognitive performance.
Why You Can’t Get a Good Night’s Sleep
Caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. All of these stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brain, which lead to a form of excitability. Don’t be fooled into thinking that alcohol is a sedative that will help you fall sleep; it will often do just the opposite.
Shift work: Work nights or rotating shifts can lead to poor sleep because these disrupt your body’s internal clock or circadian rhythm. The National Sleep Foundation compares this to having a continual jet-lag where the circadian system doesn’t get the chance to fully adjust or catch up.
Repression of feelings: Repressed feelings and thoughts can keep you awake at night. Not surprisingly, excessive worrying and anxiety are also causes of poor sleep.
Medications: Decongestants, MOA inhibitors, SSRIs, steroids, chemotherapy, calcium channel blockers, beta-agonists, and theophylline can also cause you to have interrupted sleep. If you’re on one of these medications, talk to your doctor about it if it’s affecting your sleep.
Sleep Hygiene
Sleep hygiene is the concept of making sure you’re putting yourself, your environment, your mental state, and everything else around you in the position for you to have a good night sleep. Environmental factors like noise, temperature, and light.
Things that you can do to improve sleep hygiene:
Avoid: screen time a few hours before going to bed. Exposure to blue light from screens, from just a couple of hours before sleep, can affect your sleep cycles.
Avoid:TV screens, computer screens, cellphone screens for at least a few hours before going to sleep.
Avoid: large meals and exercise before you go to sleep. There are only two activities that you should be doing in bed and one is sleep. I think you probably know what the other one is.
Get everything out of your head onto paper. Make lists before you go to sleep, so you don’t go to bed thinking and worrying about what you need to do the following day.
Develop a sleep ritual. Establish relaxing routines that you can do each day before going to bed. An example would be to take a shower, and then to read a book, and then to enjoy some herbal tea, and then to show love to your loved ones. Make it a sequence of events and follow it every time you go to sleep. This will program your body and your mind to get into that sleep-inducing state, so you can get the rest you need.
Herbs, Minerals, and Vitamins
Several herbs, minerals, and vitamins have been reported to help with sleep. These are:
Melatonin: You’ve probably heard that melatonin and L-tryptophan, which is a pre-cursor of melatonin, are beneficial for sleep . You have also probably been told that when you eat a lot of turkey, you get sleepy because of L-tryptophan. That’s because melatonin regulates your sleep and wake cycles.
Magnesium:Unfortunately, almost everyone is magnesium-deficient. It is one of the supplements that I recommend everyone to take. If you’re having trouble getting to sleep or you’re trying to optimize your sleep, magnesium three and eight is the one that you should get. This allows the magnesium to penetrate the blood brain barrier and to get into the brain.
Zinc: Found to have antidepressant and calming effects, which can help you sleep better.
Herbs. The following herbs are great for sleep: Valerian, chamomile that you can take as a tea, passion flower, lemon balm, lavender as oil aromatherapy, and bioactive milk peptides.
It’s important for all of us to be continually optimizing and improving factors that affect our health. In terms of nutrition, we should always be choosing higher quality ingredients. The same thing goes for sleep, we should make it a priority and continuously improve it.
Sleep is something that we often ignore, but it’s important that we look at sleep from an objective perspective.
From a physical perspective, we need it for our bodies to completely be rested. From an emotional perspective, when we are stressed and when we’re not getting enough sleep, we’re not able to handle emotional crisis the way we normally would.
Intellectually, our brains are able to focus and think clearer when we’re getting quality sleep. And then spiritually speaking, we have to realize that this regeneration of our body and our mind that happens when we sleep is important for our spiritual growth, because it allows us to be able to connect in a way that is easier because we are not stressed. Take a look at sleep from all these different perspectives.
What is Full-Spectrum Hemp Oil….Explained
Why is this stuff something to look at?
I’ve been doing tons of personal research about Hemp Oil (Not the stuff that get’s you “high”, but the Hemp Plant and it’s great properties.
Check this out.
Full-spectrum hemp oil refers to when the pure oil extracted from hemp contains all the same cannabinoids and compounds found in the original hemp plant. Unlike isolated or synthetic cannabinoids, full-spectrum hemp oil contains an array of cannabinoids, as well as many essential vitamins and minerals, fatty acids, protein, chlorophyll, fiber, flavonoids, and terpenes.
Why is Full-Spectrum Hemp Oil Important?
The health benefits of full-spectrum hemp go beyond it being a source of CBD. The array of cannabinoids and other natural constituents found in full-spectrum hemp oil work have been shown in studies to work together in what’s referred to as the “entourage effect.” Together, these compounds work harmoniously to magnify their therapeutic properties. The complex mix of cannabinoids, essential nutrients, protein, and healthy fats work synergistically to encourage homeostasis and balance in our health.
Take a look at our body’s need for: Essential Fats and Protein
Hemp oil is a healthy source of protein, which is instrumental in building and repairing tissues. Health officials recommend refraining from regularly eating red meat because it’s higher in saturated fat, but hemp oil is a heart-healthy source of all 20 amino acids, including the nine essential amino acids that must be provided through the diet.
Essential fatty acids are necessary for maintaining heart and cardiovascular health. The two primary essential fatty acids — Omega 3 and Omega 6 — are ideally consumed at a ratio of around 3:1. Unfortunately, in the typical American diet, that ratio is close to 25:1. Full-spectrum hemp oil offers the two essential fatty acids in the optimal 3:1 ratio.
Here’s a breakdown….
Cannabinoids
Full-spectrum hemp oil contains dozens of cannabinoids. The most abundant cannabinoid found in hemp oil is cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound shown to have many benefits in studies. CBD makes up over 90% of the cannabinoid content in full-spectrum hemp oil.
Hemp oil also contains the cannabinoid cannabidiolic acid (CBDa). In live hemp, CBDa is more abundant than CBD. Often times hemp oil will undergo a heating process called decarboxylation, which changes CBDa into CBD and offers those seeking the highest levels of CBD a more ideal product.
Vitamins and Minerals
Extracted full-spectrum hemp oil also contains a wide list of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals. Present are vitamins A, C, and E., and well as B complex vitamins like riboflavin, thiamine, and niacin. Hemp oil is also a source of vitamins that are commonly not sufficiently present in many diets, including beta-carotene.
Minerals are essential for a variety of bodily functions, nerve function and metabolic processes. They’re also important for building strong bones and the health of our blood, skin, and hair. Full-spectrum hemp oil contains minerals like magnesium, zinc, potassium, calcium, phosphorous, and iron.