Mother Nature equipped you with two kinds of processors (brains): rational and emotional. Throughout the evolution, emotional one was the first to develop, followed by the thinking brain. They’re in the constant battle with one another, the battle of head and heart.
The thinking brain. One of the greatest nature’s gifts we were given is neocortex. Its located It’s a “thinking” brain that allows us to think about our feeling and ideas. Without it we won’t get to experience love and parent-child connection.
The feeling brain. Small part of the brain is dedicated to Amygdala. Withoutit we would loose recognition of feeling, as well as feelings about feelings. Our lives would seem meaningless, without the need to compete or cooperate.
Amygdala and neocortex are at the the hardware that runs our emotional intelligence. They both are designed not to just process incoming information from our sensors, but to also store it for future use. Strong emotions and experiences, particularly negative ones are being picked up and stored in amygdala. The stronger and more intense the experience, the longer it will be stored in the brain. Amygdala constantly scans the environment for events and experiences, constantly comparing them to the ones it has stored in the memory from the past. In case or reoccurring situation, it makes sure we react to it, exactly the way we did in the past, trying to keep us safe. When it comes to live or die situation, amygdala works faster that a flash, not giving us a chance to rationalize and think about what actions to take.
Neocortex on another hand allows us to make sense of the information we receive and lets us to choose how to respond to it. Speed is the weakness of it as it takes longer to processes information. Did you become sad after your dog died? Did you feel happy winning a competition? Did you get angry over the comment someone made about you at work? Neocortex is at work.
Self-awareness
Being aware of your own feelings and emotions is the keystone of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is the skill that if developed, allow you activate your neocortex to monitor the emotion. It lets you to step back and and gain control over what is happening. The only way to becoming more intelligent emotionally is through self-awareness.
Self-awareness means being aware of your mood and thoughts about your mood.
After you recognized the emotional sensation, once you registered it with your neocortex, you gain control over it by deciding to change your outlook, therefore your mood.
There are three types approaches commonly used by people to manage their emotional lives:
Self-aware. These people are aware of their moods as they’re having them. They are typically in good psychological health and tend to have a positive attitude towards life. They are able to get out of bad mood easier.
Engulfed. These people feel overwhelmed by their emotions and feel helpless in taking control over them. They’re not aware of how and what they feel and makes them loose perspective over the situation.
Accepting. These people are aware of their feelings and they accept them. However they don’t try to change the way they feel. In case of being in a bad mood, they simply accept the condition they’re in and doing nothing to get out of unpleasant feeling.
Alexithymia
This is a condition which described by phycologists as inability to identify and express or describe one’s feelings. People with such condition are unable to speak clearly and openly about their feelings, not because they don’t want, but because they simply don’t know how they feel feel at the first place. When they experience strong emotions, they often feel overwhelmed and try to escape that feeling as soon as possible.
Inability to prioritize
There are people that have no sense of priority. They get lost in every small detail, and everything seems equally important to them. The main cause of it is poor self-awareness. Person don’t know what he feels about the decisions he makes.
Strong emotions have significant impact on our health. Negative emotions and toxic relationships are strongly correlated with chronic diseases. The ones who learned to manage their emotional lives calmly and mindfully are on the path of living more healthy lives.
By properly managing our emotional lives, we can not only cure decease, but prevent it from occurring at the first place.
We all know know how important strong immune system for our well-being. It defends us against viruses, bacteria and cancer. There is been shown a strong link between the central nervous and immune systems as well as correlation between stress and its harmful impact on our immune resistance.
Toxic Emotions
No doubts, emotions impact out bodies physically. A lot of surgeons report that if the person scheduled for surgery, comes to the procedure panicked and scared that day, they bleed much more than people who came in calm. Anxiety and panic increases the blood pressure, causing serious complications during the surgery. People who experience chronic anxiety, long periods of sadness and pessimism, hostilities, suspiciousness – are in the risk of doubling such disease as: asthma, arthritis, headaches, heart disease. Smoking and eating fast food equally decrease your chances of living a long healthy life. Therefore being a pessimist is no better that being a smoker.
Anxiety
One of the most harmful emotions for your body. The right amount of anxiety can help us to prepare for upcoming danger, however when if becomes chronic, it ramps up the stress levels causing medical problems. Anxiety weaken the immune system, making you more susceptible to catching such viruses as flu or herpes. Studies has shown that people who rated their stress levels moderate or high, were 47% more likely to get sick – direct evidence that stress and anxiety weakens the immune system. In additions to lowered immune response, anxiety harms the cardiovascular system, making people more susceptible to heart disease.
Depression
As mentioned before, depression harms your body. In a study of 100 patients who had their bone marrow transplanted, 12 of the 13 who were depressed died within the first year of the surgery. 34 of the remaining 87 were still alive two years later. Also, in patients with kidney failure, those who were diagnosed with serious depression were most likely to die within two years. Therefore depression impede medical recovery and dramatically increases the risk of death. Depression predicts how long we live.
It’s clear that anger, anxiety, chronic stress and depression shorten our lives. Optimism on another hand, can not only speed up the recovery from a major surgery, but also reverse certain medical conditions. 122 men who had their first heart attack, were evaluated on wether they were more of an optimists or pessimists. After 8 years, 21 men out of 25 most pessimistic ones had died vs 6 out of 25 most optimistic. One way to explain such positive impact of optimism on our bodies is that pessimism essentially leads to depression, which lowers the immune system, greatly reducing our chances to fight disease.
Value of Relationships
Social isolation – a sense that you have no one to share your private feelings with or have a close connection – double the chances of sickness and death. Just let it sink in, feeling lonely, lost and isolated kills you at the same speed as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and lack of exercise. In fact, smoking has less negative impact than social isolation. In the study of a 100 bone marrow transplant patients, the ones that felt they had support from their friends and family, had 54% more chance of surviving than people who were left alone. Another study, that was done on 752 middle-age Swedish men, who were born in 1933 went through a free medical exam, then retested seven years later. 41 of them had died. The others who reported highly stressful lives and lack of emotional support had 3 times greater chances of mortality in the following years. Men who reported having meaningful connections in their lives – wife, close friends – showed no correlation between high stress and death rate. By simply having someone to talk to, to ask for help or advice, protected them from life’s trauma and deadly effect of stress.
Stressful life events are associated with high mortality in middle aged men. Men with adequate emotional support seem to be protected.
Rosengren, A (1993, October 30)
By learning basic emotional intelligence skills and how to manage upsetting feelings – anger, anxiety, depression, pessimism, social isolation and loneliness – we get the power to prevent disease. If you are facing a medical condition and battling disease, it is crucial to keep the positive attitude and have emotional support from close friends and family, as in some cases it predicts you live or die.
References:
Rosengren, A., Orth-Gomér, K., Wedel, H., & Wilhelmsen, L. (1993, October 30). Stressful life events, social support, and mortality in men born in 1933. Retrieved December 25, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8251807
Students who are anxious, angry or depressed don’t learn. People who experience these feelings don’t absorb information efficiently, struggling with remembering information and solving complex problems.
Marshmallow challenge
In 1960, psychologist Walter Mischel performed a study on impulse control and its impact on our lives. The experiment was done on 4-years old kids who were placed in a room with two marshmallows in front of them. The rules were simple: if the kid could wait until they get a good to go, they can eat both treats, but if they can’t wait, they can have only one marshmallow – right then. After the challenge those kids were tracked as they were graduating high school. Those who were patient enough and resisted a temptation to have a treat right that second, showed to be more socially competent, personally effective and able to better cope with the life’s challenges and frustrations. They were less likely to regress under stress, they embraced the challenges and had things done, regardless to complexity of the task. They were less likely to give up in the face of difficulties, they showed to be more confident, trustworthy and initiative. Those kids were able to delay gratification in pursuit of their goals. On the opposite side, the kids that couldn’t resist the impulse and ate the treat were more likely to shy away from social interactions, they were more likely to get upset and frustrated when things didn’t go as wanted. They also showed the tendencies to think bad about themselves, saying they are unworthy or “not enough”. They would often overreact to situations in life and would easily get into the argument or fight.
Goal-directed self-imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of goal, wether it be building a business, solving an algebra equation, or resisting temptation to eat the marshmallow.
Walter Mischel
This experiment shows how important emotional intelligence in determining how well or how poorly people are able to use their mental capacities.
Mental performance
Worry and anxiety have damaging effect on mental performance of any kind. Even slight mood changes will impact your thinking abilities. The number of worries that people report before or during an important exam, is a great predictor of how poorly they will do on it. Worrying is essentially drains your mental energy, leaving you empty to perform an important task.
Good moods – improve the ability to think. People that are feeling good, find it easier to solve complex problems. A good laugh is extremely beneficial, especially when it comes to solving creative problems.
Hope has been found to give students a great advantage in performing good in schools and then later in their jobs. Students that hold hope for performing good, set themselves higher goals and work harder on them. Hope does not only mean seeing everything through the rose glasses and believing everything will be good, but believing you have both the will and the way to accomplish your goals. Having hope helps to push through anxiety and depression when faced difficulties or challenges. People with hope are less anxious and experience less emotional challenges.
Optimism is similar to hope in a way that it focuses on thought that things will turn out well, despite setbacks. Optimistic people respond to challenges by formulating plan of action, reaching out for help and advice, they see a challenge as the opportunity. Pessimists feel themselves as victims, assuming there is nothing they can do and often do nothing about the problem. Self-efficacy – is the belief that one has mastery over the event of one’s life and can meet challenges as they come up. People’s beliefs about their abilities have profound effect on those abilities. People with a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from set-backs more easily, they thinks in terms of how can I handle the problems, instead of worrying about what con go wrong.
The flow state
Hundreds of rock climbers, surgeons, soccer and basketball players, engineers and mangers described being in the state of flow, when they outdid themselves at the chosen activity. The ability to enter the “zone” is emotional intelligence at its best. Attention becomes so narrow and focused that you loose the sense of time. There is no worrying or anxiety in a state of flow. People are completely absorbed in the task at hand.
There are few ways to enter the flow state:
Intentionally focus a sharp attention on the task. A highly concentrated state is the essence of flow
Have the task that slightly higher than your ability
If there is too little demand, you get bored. If there is too much for you to handle, you get anxious. Flow occurs in that small zone between boredom and anxiety. Intense concentration is the key.
Three main pillars of good health are: nutrition, exercise and sleep. This post discusses the importance of sleep, why you are experiencing difficulties falling/staying asleep and how to fix it.
Good night’s sleep helps you to:
Fit back into your favorite jeans. It helps you to maintain healthybody weight. There is a strong correlation between poor sleep and obesity. By poor sleep I mean less than 6 hours a night. In short, not adequate amount of sleep messes up our hormonal systems. Ghrelin and leptin are being affected which causes us to overeat;
Keep your heart and circulatory system healthy;
Be happy, positive and energized. Poor sleep = depression, anxiety, bad mood and negative emotions. Doesn’t sound too appealing to me;
Stay cancer-free. Especially strong correlation has been shown between poor sleep and breast cancer;
Have a strong immune system;
Detoxify and cleanse your body. During the day we accumulate all kinds of toxins in our bodies and brains. A good quality sleep activates a system for removing waste: theglymphatic system. This system is 60% more productive when we sleep than when we are awake. (some studies shown that it work better by simply sleeping on your side);
When you don’t sleep properly, you don’t work properly.
According to the most recent (October 10, 2018) survey done by Statistics Bureau of Canada, there is a correlation between poor sleep, stress and mental health:
How much do I need to sleep?
Enough. You should be sleeping just enough, not more or less. Every person is different, so is the need of sleep.
Sleep needs change over lifetime and as we get older, the need of sleep is declining.
Are you actually sleepy or fatigued?
Sleepiness and fatigue are different things and its important to be able to differ one from another, as the treatment is not the same.
In describing fatigue, I will use the phone battery analogy. When the battery is low, your phone lets you know that its time to recharge it by turning the icon red or putting the exclamation point next to it. Unfortunately our bodies are not equipped with such feature, so we have to use other senses to determine what’s going on. When you’re fatigued – your body’s energy is low, it might feel like your strength was drained away. You can try to go to bed, but you won’t fall asleep. This is the red light your body gives you.Fatigue can be caused by million of things. Iron deficiency, Anemia, Low T, Depression are only few possible reasons.
Falling asleep during the presentation at work, while driving, when trying to read your favorite book? You are sleepy and you need to get some rest. Sometimes you can compensate for the reduced sleep quality by quantity. A nap of an extra hour of sleep in the morning could be very helpful here. However you can’t always fix the sleepiness by just sleeping more. You need to get to the root cause of the issue, and most likely it lays in the sleep quality.
“Sleep Deprivation Impairs Ability to Interpret Facial Expressions”, Blue, A. (2017, March 22)
Sleep Stages
You sleep consists of three stages: light sleep, deep sleep and dream sleep.
Light Sleep. It is the foundational stage and works like a bridge between being awake and dead asleep. You spend about half of your sleep in this stage.
2. Deep Sleep. This stage occurs at the first half of the night. This is the most restorative sleep and it makes you feel rested in the morning. Not to mention, the precious growth hormone is produced in this stage. Growth hormone injections are widely used by bodybuilders chasing muscle growth. You can get your dose of it without needles and pills – get a gooood night rest.
“Both sleep and exercise induce the release of human growth hormone. Experts estimate that as much as 75% of human growth hormone is released during sleep. The major period of HGH release occurs during the first period of Stage 3 sleep stage (Deep sleep) during the night, about an hour after you first fall asleep. Deep sleep is the most restorative all stages of sleep. During this stage of sleep, HGH is released and works to restore and rebuild your body and muscles from the stresses of the day”, (Tuck Sleep, 18 Feb. 2018).
3. Dream Sleep (REM). This is where you dream. It comes in 20-40 minutes cycles 4-5 times a night. The longest and deepest cycle usually comes in the second part of the night or right before your alarm goes off. Still the purpose of this stage is poorly understood, however some studies has shown the links between memory processing, attention, concentration, mood, etc.
“These are the first data to show that an extended bedtime in mildly sleepy healthy adults, which resulted in increased sleep time and reduced sleepiness, reduces pain sensitivity”,Roehrs, T (Dec 1, 2012)
Circadian Rhythms
I bet you heard this term before and have a general idea of what this is, so I am not gonna go into depth into it. I’ll just say that its a basic built-in mechanism in your body that dictates pretty much everything you do, including when you get sleepy or awake without a watch or signals from the outside environment. It’s easy to brake your circadian rhythm and as a result your sleep.
Major things that brake your circadian rhythm:
Jet lag. When you travel across different time zones, day and night cues outside the window confuse your circadian rhythm which causes a lot of unpleasant symptoms.
Some of the symptoms are:
Sleepiness and difficulty sleeping;
Digestive problems;
Mental fog & reduced motivation;
Impaired concentration.
It’s not easy to recover from jet lag and it takes time, for ones more, for others less. There are some jet lag calculators that based on your location, sleep schedule and the destination you travel to, can give you and estimate of how long it should take for you to recover your circadian rhythm.
I used Jet Lag Rooster. It is free and it provides you with the sleep plan to follow upon arriving to your destination or a few days before departure to smoothen the transition. For example, traveling from Toronto, Canada to Kiev, Ukraine I will be crossing 6 time zones. According to calculator I will need around 5 days to readjust. To minimize negative effects of jet lag I will take proactive approach and begin readjusting my sleep schedule 2 days before departing.
Let’s look at the guidelines provided by the calculator:
Light ideal means try to get as much light as possible. Spend time outside in sunlight (even if it’s cloudy) or near a bright window. If it’s dark out, seek bright artificial light, preferably from a portable light box. Intermittent light works, but try to stay in light for as long as convenient.
Dark ideal means avoid as much light as possible. Your bedroom must be DARK, really dark. Turn off all the electronics and close curtains, or wear a sleep mask..
Sleep ideal means that sleep is ideal during this period. On days with no suggested sleep times, sleep as needed.
Beginning 2 days before departure I will be shifting my bed time 30 minutes earlier than the night before and waking up 30 minutes earlier respectively. It is important to get yourself exposed to the bright light for at least 3 hours right after awakening. When arrived, I’ll be going to bed at my normal times, from 9 pm to 5 am, but I’ll be playing with light and darkness, tweaking my body’s exposure to it. The first morning in Ukraine I wake up at 5 am and restricting my body’s light exposure to 2 hours, until 7 am. My second night of sleep begins again at 9 pm, but instead of limiting my light exposure for 2 hours, the next morning, I’ll reduce it to 1 hour, which will be followed by 3 hours of bright light. My bed time doesn’t change on the third night either. The only thing that changes is that I am not limiting my light exposure after awakening and allowing myself to have at least 3 hours of bright light from the moment I woke up.
Thats it! Only by the third night after departure I sleep like a baby, waking up energized and refreshed.
Few tips for the time of travel:
Drink a lot of water(no tea, no coffee, no alcohol!);
Eat healthy, nutritionally rich food (a lot of fruits and vegetables). Plane food is far from ideal, so will be best to bring your own food in a sealed container;
Make sure to take ear plugs and an eye mask with you;
Take a contrast shower upon arrival to refresh your nervous system;
If feeling really sleepy, it is ok to take a short, 20-30 minutes, nap at the new place;
2. Shift work.
Firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, factory workers, and office cleaning staff have in common one thing – broken circadian rhythm. You probably didn’t know, but shift work in United States considered a sleep disorder! and even has its own diagnosis code: 307.45. According to National Sleep Foundation, the symptoms of shift work disorder include:
Excessive sleepiness when you need to be awake, alert, and productive;
Insomnia, or the inability to sleep when you need to. This can mean trouble falling asleep, or waking up before you’ve slept sufficiently;
Sleep that feels unrefreshing or insufficient;
Difficulty concentrating;
Lack of energy;
Irritability or depression;
Difficulty with personal relationships.
It is simple to say that you need to stay away from shift work. However I understand that people not always choose to work nights and working shifts is the only way to make the living. If you one of those people, here are some tips to reduce the harm that shift work does to your body:
Try not to work a number of night shifts in a row. If possible, limit night shifts and schedule days off in between;
Avoid frequently rotating shifts. If you can’t, it’s easier to adjust to a schedule that rotates from day shift to evening to night rather than the reverse order;
Keep your workplace brightly lighted to promote alertness;
Limit caffeine;
Avoid bright light on the way home from work. Try wearing dark sunglasses and a hat to shield yourself from sunlight;
Ask those around you to limit phone calls, visitors and noise level during your sleep;
Buy yourself blackout blinds or heavy curtains to block sunlight when you sleep during the day.
Sleep Hygiene
The bed is for sex and sleep
Now you know what sleep stages are, what ruins your sleep, and you understand why sleep is so important to your well-being. Next I will teach you how to get the mosts out of your sleep without drugs, shamans, or crazy expensive piece of technology. I will explain how to implement the knowledge about sleep you already have and give you guidelines with actions to take in order to sleep like a baby.
Sleep hygiene is the act of implementing and controlling different practices and habits in order to have good nighttime sleep quality. You can’t control every aspect of your sleep, but there are certain things that you can, and certainly have to.
Make your bedroom DARK, really dark. Eliminate any light sources, that include cell phones, laptops, tablets, TV, even that crack under your door and digital clock etc. I suggest that you don’t keep any electronic devices in your bedroom and leave them in the kitchen. Also limit your light exposure close to bed time by keeping your environment dim. We all need to sleep in the dark;
2. Invest in your bedding and buy the nicest things you can afford. Go wild and creative with your bedroom setup, keeping the goal in mind: to make your bed as comfortable as possible. You should love your bed;
3. Wear less. Ideally I suggest to sleep naked. Let your body breath;
4. Expose yourself to green spaces and nature. According to the most recent research:
“We found that spending time in, or living close to, natural green spaces is associated with diverse and significant health benefits. It reduces the risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature death, and preterm birth, and increases sleep duration”, (University of East Anglia. 2018, July 6).
5. The bed is for sex and sleep. Only! Not for watching Netflix, not for working on your laptop, not for talking on the phone or scrolling the Instagram feed. Sleep and sex. Period;
6. No pets in the bedroom. I love my dog, but when it comes to sleeping, he knows he’s not allowed in the bedroom;
7. Avoid stimulants. Cut down on tea and coffee in the second part of the day. Eliminate nicotine and alcohol. If you can’t get rid of it completely, reduce consumption to minimum before bed time. My experience shows that as little as one glass of red wine before bed ramps up my resting heart rate by 5-8 beats, making me feel like crap in the morning. If you wear Fitbit or similar HR tracker, do the wine experiment yourself and measure your RHR before and after wine consumption. I promise you will be surprised;
8. Stop eating two-three hours before bed time. In addition, foods rich in protein tend to keep you up at night, while high GI (glycemic index) foods could shorten time to fall asleep. Some foods contain high amount of melatonin and have potential of promoting good night’s rest. Some of those foods are:
Walnuts;
Tart cherries;
Game meat;
Chickpeas;
Kale;
Chamomile and passionflower teas;
9. Exercise. It’s good to exercise any time during the day, but particularly morning exercise in the bright light promotes the positive effect on sleep. Be consistent with your morning exercises and you will be sleeping like never before. Also try some relaxing exercises like meditation, breathing, gentle yoga;
10. Reduce your core temperature. The ideal temperature for falling asleep is in the mid-60 degrees Fahrenheit – between 60 and 67 degrees. Find the temperature that works best for you.
“The body’s core temperature needs to drop by about two to three degrees to initiate sleep. If our core temperature is too high, the brain cannot easily make the switch from being awake to being asleep, or create the best quality sleep”, (REDDY, S. 2016, February 24).
Final tip. If you can’t fall asleep for 20-30 minutes, get up and do some slow, quiet activity until you feel sleepy. The more you try to force your sleep, the more stressed you get which certainly won’t help you. Even resting without sleeping is good for you., it’s not the waste of time.
If 10 stepsI outlined above seem like too much work, let me remind you of what sleep deprivation does to your body:
It makes you fat;
It leads to heart failure;
It may cause breast cancer.
Should I continue? I think thats enough to start putting a bit more effort into improving your sleep and implementing tips I shared with you.
What’s the single most important advice for achieving quality, refreshing sleep?
Pick a wake up time and stick with it
Train yourself, every morning, regardless of day of the week, waking up at the same time. If you chose your wake up time to be 6:00 am, no matter what happens in your life, you still wake up at 6:00 am sharp. There is no good or bad wake up time. Every person is different, some are larks, others are nights owls. We all also need different amounts of sleep. Don’t take the magazine article that says everyone should be sleeping not less than 8 or 9 hours, as a dogma. Those numbers are averages and you should be sleeping not more or less than your body requires.
Napping
To begin with, I am not a huge fan of napping from the approach that people use it to make up for lost night’s sleep. I think that adding naps reduce your drive to sleep at night. So the excessive amount of naps leads to inability to fall asleep later at night. However napping can be okay if done wisely.
“A nap is not meant to make up for lost sleep when the sleeper had the opportunity to sleep, but didn’t”, (Winter, W. C. 2018).
But let’s say it’s a lunch time and you feel really sleepy and you think you desperately need to catch a little snooze to make it through the day. Do it! But do it’s best if you do it earlier in the day, rather than closer to the bed time.
“An early nap adds to the previous night of sleep, but a late nap subtracts from the upcoming night of sleep”, (Winter, W. C. 2018).
Naturally we all feel a little sleepiness after lunchtime. Researchers believe that this is not only a great time to nap, but also an evolutionary mechanism. Duration of your nap is really important. Ideally you want to keep it short, not longer than 20-30 minutes. Keeping it this short will give you a boost of energy without making you feel dull, fuzzy or even having a headache. In addition, the nap should always follow a schedule. It means that if you decide to include it in your days, it has to be taken at the same every time you take it. A quiet, dark place, where you won’t be disturbed is ideal. Get comfortable, hug your favorite pillow, maybe even put a blanket over, set the timer for 25 minutes and fall into the world of dreams.
Snoring & Apnea
You definitely have a friend or relative that snores like a train at night. One third of people over 30 snore.
Sleep apnea syndrome is when an airways are closing off and you’re not getting enough oxygen. Our brains are highly dependent on oxygen and using as much as 20% of your body’s oxygen. How much oxygen your brain is getting has a strong correlation with how much sleep you’re getting. Sleep apnea disturbs your breathing, giving your brain a choice to make: stay asleep and let the suffocating continue or wake up and catch some breath. Guess which option your brain will choose?
If you ignoring your snoring, you essentially sacrificing your sleep quality and as a result shortening you life. Sleep apnea is killing you slowly by causing:
High blood pressure;
Weight gain;
Hight blood sugar/diabetes;
Mood disorders, depression;
Increased risk for heart attack and heart failure;
Stroke;
If you noticed you wake up every morning with a headache, you pee much more at night than during the day, consult with your doctor as you might be experiencing the sleep apnea.
Restless Legs Syndrome
According to National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (NANDSC):
“Restless legs syndrome (RLS), also called Willis-Ekbom Disease, causes unpleasant or uncomfortable sensations in the legs and an irresistible urge to move them”, (NINDS, May, 2017).
The legs are not the problem here – the brain is. There is a lot to do with your hormones, specifically with dopamine. Dopamine is not only important when it comes to pleasure, but it also plays a huge role in keeping you awake. It has the opposite effect to melatonin and promotes the muscle activity, keeping you alert. This is a serious condition and has to be treated by professional, so go to the doctors as soon as you start suspecting the symptoms.
Narcolepsy
According to Winter (2018):
Narcolepsy is a condition of excessive daytime sleepiness in which the individual loses the ability to properly stabilize his wakefulness.
In other words, people with this condition can quickly fall asleep or experience some aspect of sleep while being fully awake and conscious. Here are some symptoms of narcolepsy:
Excessive daytime sleepiness and sudden sleep attacks;
Hallucinations as you are falling asleep or waking up;
“Cataplexy” – suddenly becoming weak when experiencing strong emotions;
“Sleep paralysis” – awakening and being conscious, but maintaining the paralysis;
Disrupted nighttime sleep.
There are some medications that reduce sleepiness and cataplexy attacks. Xyrem is commonly used and most effective drug for curing this condition.
Conclusion
Sleep is a skill and it takes years to master it. Every person deals with sleep problems from time to time and its important to have tools and tricks to be able to take care of yourself before the problem gets worse. This post touched on some basics of sleep that every health conscious person should be educated on. It provided you with some insight into your own sleep and gave you some ideas of how to increase the quality of your night’s rest. There are thousands of books and articles on web, that go more into depth of the science of sleep. But before you dig deeper, nail your basics.
References:
Blue, A. (2017, March 22). Sleep Deprivation Impairs Ability to Interpret Facial Expressions. Retrieved from https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/sleep-deprivation-impairs-ability-interpret-facial-expressions
Roehrs, T. A., Harris, E., Randall, S., & Roth, T. (2012). Pain sensitivity and recovery from mild chronic sleep loss. Sleep, 35(12), 1667-72. doi:10.5665/sleep.2240
“How Sleep Affects Your Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Levels.” Tuck Sleep, 18 Feb. 2018, www.tuck.com/sleep-hgh/
Symptoms ofShift Work Disorder. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2018, from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/shift-work/content/shift-work-disorder-–-symptomsUniversity of East Anglia. (2018, July 6). It’s official — spending time outside is good for you. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 3, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180706102842.htmREDDY, S. (2016, February 24). For a better night’s sleep, you’ve got to really work on that core (temperature). Retrieved November 3, 2018, from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/health-wellbeing/for-a-better-nights-sleep-youve-got-to-really-work-on-that-core-temperature/news-story/34fa8c4fa2a795d0cc447cabc24d9606
Winter, W. C. (2018). The sleep solution: Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it. New York: Berkley.
National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (NANDSC) (2017, May). Restless Legs Syndrome Fact Sheet. Retrieved November 3, 2018, from https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Fact-Sheets/Restless-Legs-Syndrome-Fact-Sheet
Long-Term Low-Carbohydrate, High-Fat Diet Impairs Performance and Subjective Well-Being in a World-Class Vegetarian Long-Distance Triathlete
The aim of this case study was to report on the performance outcomes and subjective assessments of long-term low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet in a world-class long-distance triathlete who had been suffering from gastrointestinal distress in Ironman competition. The lacto-ovo vegetarian athlete (age = 39 years; height = 179 cm; usual racing body mass = 75 kg; sum of seven skinfolds = 36 mm) changed his usual high carbohydrate (CHO) availability diet to an LCHF diet for 32 weeks (∼95% compliance). He participated in three professional races while on the LCHF diet, but acutely restored CHO availability by consuming CHO in the preevent meals and during the race as advised. The athlete had his worst-ever half-Ironman performance after 21 weeks on the LCHF diet (18th). After 24 weeks on LCHF, he had his second worst-ever Ironman performance (14th) and suffered his usual gastrointestinal symptoms. He did not finish his third race after 32 weeks on LCHF. He regained his usual performance level within 5 weeks back on a high CHO diet, finishing second and fourth in two Ironman events separated by just 3 weeks. Subjective psychological well-being was very negative while on the LCHF diet, with feelings of depression, irritability, and bad mood. In conclusion, this long-term (32 weeks) LCHF intervention did not solve the gastrointestinal problems that the athlete had been experiencing, it was associated with negative performance outcomes in both the half-Ironman and Ironman competitions, and it had a negative impact on the athlete’s subjective well-being.
Since about March 2020, I’ve been using food to cope with stress. I ate when I was not hungry. I ate much more than I needed. People who knew me always admired my “clean eating” habits. They thought that I had a very strong discipline to keep myself away from the sugar. Yes and no. I simply did not crave anything sweet. My diet consisted from whole foods with almost no sugar. I could easily sit in front of the desert table and not having a single bite. I simply didn’t want to.
My addiction began from a small candy here and there. Nothing serious. I would often eat my regular meals to the point where I was overly full. I would justify such binging as the need for energy to fuel my trainings. By the end of spring, things got out of control. I got laid off; I no place to stay; I failed to purchase the house (the owner died the night before closing)… I was stressed out of my mind to say the least. Guess, how did I cope?
If I had something sweet or tasty I would lose control. I could not stop until I ate the whole peanut butter jar or the entire box of candies. I was not hungry. I was not starving, but I kept eating and eating and eating… Like a pig, I would stuff myself to the point, where it was uncomfortable. I started going to fast food places. “WTF are you doing?”, I would ask myself in my mind, but I couldn’t stop. In the middle of the night, I would find myself in the drivetrough of McDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell etc. This is when I clearly realized that I had a full-blown sugar addiction. I got worried about myself.
Despite 2-3 hours of hard daily training, the weight started to come on. No matter how hard you work out – you can not over exercise a bad diet. This added more stress. I realized that I needed to do something about it, so I started analyzing my addiction.
I read a lot. I watched and listened to a lot of smart people. As always, I was trying to solve the problem with my mind. It took me about nine month! to realize that I could not break this addiction with my brain. I needed something different. I kept searching.
By the way, around September, my body weight had reached 75 kg. I was shocked. This was 10 kg over my typical weight… Holly sh*t Sasha!
I was trying to break my food addiction with the thing that created it – my mind. I read, I listened, I watched. I took notes. I meditated on it. Nothing had worked and it made me realize how strongly I got hooked on food… sugar in particular.
Throughout my research I learned a ton about myself. I analyzed my actions and triggers in-n-out. I am very good at analytics.
I knew exactly what was going under the hood of my brain, however it did not make my life better. All this knowledge came to be useless after the fridge door opened…
Books I read
“Experiments with Intermittent Fasting”
BY DR. JOHN M. BERARDI WITH DR. KRISTA SCOTT-DIXON AND NATE GREEN
I am the fattest that I have ever been in the past three years. It bothers me. Not so much the weight but the psychological side of things. I realize that the problem is much bigger than eating less and exercising more.
Like many others, I am going through some hard times. Coronavirus pushed me way out of my comfort zone, so my mind had to figure out how to cope with high levels of stress and anxiety. It didn’t take long to fall back into the old, proven coping method – the food.
I could force myself to lose weight. I’ve done it before. Using the brute force of willpower, I lost 40 pounds in less than 2 months in the spring of 2017.
It took a toll on my body. I messed up my hormones and gallbladder. I got away with it, just because I was young enough to handle such abuse. This is not the route I want to pursue again and it won’t be the solution. It will not address the root cause, because the problem is not the extra weight itself, nor the food. The problem is in my head – I am addicted.
I want to fix the issue, not the symptom. I want to get to its core, so I never have to come back to it again. I want to get out of this endless cycle of gaining and losing. The cycle of abundance and restriction.
I’ve been thinking a lot… I’ve been analyzing my past. I’ve been asking myself a lot of uncomfortable questions. I’ve been studying literature and talking to others. By figuring out my own problem, I feel I could help others. My strength is analysis. I will use myself as a guinea pig and try to solve this puzzle. I will write about my path to breaking food addiction.
Money, clothes, cars, houses… I need, I want, I have to… It is toxic. Everything goes in and nothing comes out from living a such self-centered lifestyle. Dude! The world does not revolve around your persona. No one cares about your looks or possessions. All the people care is themselves and how they feel around you. Thats the way things are and that’s how they will always be, with or without you. Stop chasing your tail and trying to impress others. How much do you need to fill that hole inside of you? How much do you need to say – enough? Me-me, more-more…
The more you take, the less you get. The hole grows and sucks everything in and leaves you unfulfilled, at the minimum. Continue down this path and you will end up with depression. “Cranky train” will take you places you don’t want to be in.
Turn the tables. Pull emergency stop handle.
What if instead of taking, you begin giving?
Run the experiment. No matter what you have or where you at in life – start giving. “I don’t have anything to give” – bullshit. At the minimum you can give a smile to a stranger. You don’t need to wait until you make a billion of bucks to start donating money to charity. The life is short and most likely you will never hit that threshold for money where you say – enough, I don’t need anymore. You will never be enough.
Giving is receiving. However giving to receive is stealing.
Give unconditionally. Give without expecting anything in return. However if returned – don’t shy away from it. Learn to accept.
COPE Mental Health Program of Community Care Durham is a community-based program that supports mentally challenged adults. I volunteered my time to go through eight week training program and became certified to work as a group facilitator with emotionally and mentally challenged adults. Considering my passion for active lifestyle and interest in yoga, me and another volunteer developed the 8-week course which is aimed to help mentally challenged community members to become more mindful and healthier through the body movement and exercise. Every Saturday we meet for two hours, where we volunteer as yoga instructors. Each class is broken down into two parts: first hour is physical health through yoga practice; the second half is the mindfulness piece. I put together the slides and present the information about the nutrition and healthy living. We just finished our second week out of eight and I think we’re doing great! People are engaged, they show interest in doing different yoga poses that often seem to be challenging. During my presentations they often ask questions and make the discussion flowing. I feel that I am doing something really meaningful and valuable. I’ve been challenging my class with the balancing yoga pose – the tree. Only few people got it in the first class, but more than half of the class got it as soon as one week later. They were excited to see that quick improvement and I felt fulfilled, because I contributed into this. I felt fulfilled when the lady came up to me after my presentation and genuinely said: “Thank you Sasha”.
“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”, Winston Churchill.
Past Saturday I decided to bring Mr. Blake with me into the class. I thought he would be a great addition to my yoga teaching and indeed he was! Everyone absolutely loved him and couldn’t help but smile seeing Me and him doing our yoga tricks.
In fact, this wellness program is doing so well that got so popular that community center hit attendance threshold. 27 people step into our center every Saturday for a yoga class and wellness talks. It is really nice to see people coming back. I look forward to the next week’s session and excited to share with others my time and energy. I never felt comfortable talking on public and giving speeches, but now I am even looking forward to giving presentations on the subjects of health & wellness.
I wonder what will come out of it? There is only one way to find out…
Why volunteer?
Stop thinking about your own problems and focus on someone other than yourself. In return your stress levels will decrease. You will be more satisfied with yourself and your life.
Dealing with a mix of personalities you step outside of your comfort zone. You improve your teamwork, leadership, problem-solving and people skills.
Volunteering, gives you the chance to contribute to the community and world you want to live in. It gives you the opportunity to be apart of something bigger than yourself and use your own skills and knowledge to empower the people you serve.
Volunteering shifts your lenses and changes how you see the world. This shift in perspective opens your mind to what is truly important, and helps to become more empathetic.
Every person volunteers for his own reasons. No matter what the reasons are for you, remember this: Giving is receiving. However giving to receive is stealing.
For the past several months I’ve been experiencing serious performance decrease in my sport, especially in cycling. Trying to find the root cause I stumbled on such an interesting term as RED-S. According to Wikipedia:
“… an athlete’s bone density may decrease, but may not yet have dropped below her age-matched normal range. These signs can be considered “occult,” as no one symptom may be severe enough to seek medical attention, leaving the Triad to go unnoticed or untreated…”
Sounds pretty serious. I needed to rule out the possibility of having a low bone density so I went ahead and booked an appointment for the DEXA scan. Why DEXA?
A dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan is a low-radiation x-ray that accurately measures how much of your body weight is made up of fat, muscle, and bone. It also measures the bone density. Tt tells you your total body fat, muscle, and bone, and breaks it down by body part. I cared less about the body fat and muscle – just tell me what’s my bone density.
I did my test at the place called Studio Athletica in Toronto. I would recommend this place for the several reasons:
Location – 5 Stars
Customer service – 5 Stars
Overall experience – 5 Stars
Pricing – 5 Stars
Eye Opener
I did get the number I was looking for, however I also got a lot of other very interesting information about my machinery. Let’s dive in!
Below you see three pictures of me:
Bone (left)
Muscle (middle)
Fat (right)
Lean Mass
According to the readings, my lean mass is 138 lb (63 kg), while total weight is about 156 lb (70 kg). Lean mass is the sum of all the muscle and soft organ tissue (internal organs, ligaments, connective tissue, etc.). What makes the rest 20 lb? Not the poop – Fat. Fat mass includes all the fat found within the organs of the body as well as the subcutaneous fat found under the skin. 8.8% of Sasha is made out of fat. Below is a breakdown:
This is the off season and I gained about 2-3 kg of my typical weigh. Even considering that 8% seem to be on the edge of health/performance. Below is the picture of me one month before this DEXA. I was about 2 kg lighter then, therefore I would assume that my body fat was 1-2% lower. However, to give you an idea of what 6-8% body fat looks like:
RSMI
Next screenshot shows the more precise body fat percentage as well as RELATIVE SKELETAL MUSCLE INDEX (RSMI). What that is? RSMI helps to determine your risk for sarcopenia.
Sarcopenia is a disease associated with the aging process. Loss of muscle mass and strength affects balance, gait, and the ability to perform daily living tasks.
It basically tell how old you are. Not too old yet, according to the readings. Also, with such a low body fat %, I might need to consider putting on some weight, as 8% is almost critical for my sport.
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
This is interesting, as it shows how much energy your body needs just to keep you alive. This energy is just enough to maintain your body temperature, heartbeat, and keep you breathing.
My machinery requires about 1,700 calories a day not to die. This makes me wonder, how would that look in terms of food?
1700 CALORIES worth of FOOD
Salmon Filet 1,9 KG
Oatmeal 455g
Sweet Potatoes 1,5 kg
Avocado 1 kg
Ok ok, I got distracted here… Basically, what I showed you is that to simply stay alive, mine and yours bodies require quite a bit of food. Try to eat almost 2 kilograms of salmon or 1,5 kg of sweet potatoes! Then multiply in by 7 to estimate the weekly intake. Also consider the thermic effect of proteins vs carbs and fats… I definitely underestimated the energy requirements of my body.
Muscle Balance in Body
This is a comparison of my body’s right to left muscle mass symmetry. Despite the fact that I am right-handed, left side of Sasha appears to be stronger. Abnormally big heart, bigger left arm, leg, runk… everything is bigger on the left side:
Main Takeaways
Bone Density is within good range. It’s not included in this report, however I got the results separately.
Resting Metabolic Rate is 1,700 calories/day, which is a lot of food.
I might consider putting on some weight, as 8% body fat is pretty low – almost critical for my sport.
