Hints For Maintaining Your Weight During the Holidays Part 4

Here's another tip to avoid eating more. Get plenty of rest. Sleep is critical for you to produce leptin, which is a hormone that helps increase your satiety. In other words, you feel satisfied with less food.

If you are sleep deprived, your body produces ghrelin, a hormone that tends to make you hungry. So your tendency when sleep deprived is to eat more because you feel more hungry.

So get lots of rest!

Healing Power Of Sleep

We do need our sleep. But there is a lot of controversy out there as to how much sleep do we need. The youngest among us need the most. Toddlers need 12-14 hours of sleep a day. School age children need 10-11 hours per day. Teens need 9-10 hours per day. Adults need 7-9 hours per day.

Sleep is important to our health. Usually when you come down with a cold, you have had some sleep deprivation. But there is research that has shown a decrease in sleep may add to the body's overall inflammation, increasing the risk for heart disease and stroke. Getting just 1 extra hour of sleep can decreases the risk by 33%. So you can see how important sleep is to us.

Give your body a rest, if you can't get your 7-9 hours a night, take a nap or 2 during the day.

Keep Your Immune System Healthy

What's most important for your immune system is to keep it strong and healthy. In this day and age we are bombarded on a minute to minute basis with free radicals, viruses, stress, and multiple other things that can weaken the immune system.

So taking care of the immune system becomes crucial. One way to do that is to get plenty of rest. Make sure that you get your 7-8 hours a day of rest. This is a time when your body is able to actually rejuvenate it's army, the immune system.

Also, as with any army, you need to feed it. Eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables as these contain antioxidants which help strengthen your immune system. Supplementing with a good multiple vitamin and mineral supplement is also advisable since our food source have lost a great deal of their nutritional value. Eat organic - these items are really better for you because they contain more of the nutritional value needed by the immune system.

The Art of Breathing Part 3

Today I want you to lie down on your back and let your body just assume it's relaxed breathing rate. Now as you exhale, count the length of your exhalation. Don't force an exhalation or inhalation, just breathe as you normally would in this relaxed state and once again count the length of the next exhalation.

The first exhalation that you counted should be shorter than the second exhalation. If it is not, you may be an overbreather. As a test try to shorten your inhalation. If that causes you to feel distressed or stressed or uncomfortable, you are probably an overbreather. Since it is hard to not manipulate these tests, you may want to have somebody count for you when you are not aware of your breathing.

This particular piece is important as far as sleep goes. If you are having trouble going to sleep, become aware of your breathing and consciously make the exhale longer than the inhale. before very long, you will be asleep.

Some Final Thoughts About Sleep

Some other questions to ask yourself about your sleeping patterns, do you take medication to help you sleep? How long does it take you to fall asleep? How long do you sleep before you waken and can you go back to sleep? How do you feel in the morning and do you have trouble staying alert during the day?

Taking prescription medication to sleep is not the best thing to do. Yes, most of it will put you to sleep, but it does interrupt the nature sleep biorhythm. This is one of the reasons that many people become dependent upon medications. If you are using a sleeping medication, I would strongly advise you to wean yourself off of it. I know that many of them say they are not habit forming, but in fact they really are because of the chemical changes that occur in your body.

For many of you the problem will be that you can't turn off your brain to go to sleep. Try telling yourself a story of where you would like to be or some peaceful scene that you can play in your head. You can also use relaxation tapes/iPods to help you focus into a relaxed state.

For those who go to sleep the minute their head hits the pillow, the problem may be that you sleep for a while and then waken and can't get back to sleep. Again the relaxation piece can be helpful to get you to focus on relaxing.

Remember that you will want to be shooting for that 7-8 hours of sleep each night.

More on Insomnia

The second thing you want to ask yourself about sleep is what is the environment you try to sleep in. What I mean here is do you turn off the lights, TV, stero? Is your bedroom actually ready for sleep? The bed should be comfortable, the room cool, dark and quiet.

If you're going to bed with the TV or the lights on, you will wake up earlier than you want and even though it may be considered a white noise, you may not be getting down into the lower levels of sleep. If you are only in levels 1 and 2, you can easily waken, just by turning or moving, or if there is an increase volume from the TV as with what happens when a commercial comes on. Because you have not gotten down into deeper sleep, you may think that you have not even been asleep.

When I had some stress issues and cuold not turn off my brain at night, I found that listening to a relaxation tape would help me drift off easily. With the advent of iPods, it is even easier today to listen to a relaxation piece without the click of the cassette tape.

Insomnia

Working with older people, I often get the complaint that they are having trouble sleeping. There are some things to ask yourself about your sleep patterns to facilitate what might work better for you to get a better night's rest.

First, what time do you go to bed? Being consistent with you bedtime helps your body. The occasional late night is not a bad thing, but being all over the map or clock if you will as to when you go to bed, will make a difference in your sleep. So set a fairly consistent time every night, like between 10-10:30 p.m. Now this will also be dependent upon when you get up. My internal alarm clock wakes me at about 4:15-4:30 a.m. every day, so I shoot to be in bed by 9 p.m. Once I'm awake, I'm up. You may wake up but go back to sleep, so the question to ask is not just what time do you wake up, but what time do you actually get out of bed.

More tomorrow on this subject.

#4 of 7 Ways to Lessen Stress in Your Life

Take some time to relax. I know this is easier said then done many times, but decreasing the stress in your life is important from a physical as well as a psychological aspect. Relaxing can be anything that helps you unwind without winding you back up or winding you up more from a hectic day.

Make sure you give yourself adequate sleep periods. Sleep disturbance can be a symptom of increasing stress. I would discourage you from using sleeping medications as this will put you to sleep, but it interfers with the normal sleep cycle and you don't always get the true rest that the body needs.

Early to Bed Helps Lose Weight

Studies have shown that getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night helps with weight loss. Children should be getting 10 hours of sleep a night. So early to bed is a good thing to help keep off excess pounds.

The reason this is true, is that hormones which stimulate hunger are decreased when the body has 8 hours of sleep. Best to keep yourself active during the day so that you can feel tired and ready to sleep at night.

7 Healthy Habits

For the next 7 days, I'll be giving you a habit that will help you stay healthy. The first one is getting the right amount of sleep. Adequate amounts of sleep are required for you to stay healthy. The question most people have is how much sleep should I be getting?

Studies have shown that 7-8 hours produces the best longevity and healthiest individuals. If you sleep less than this you are likely to have more disease and a shorter life span. One thing that is good, if you don't get 7 straight hours, but you get a chance to take a nap during the day, this is OK. Taking that time to rest will help your body to stay healthy.

Sleep

Yesterday I talked about sleep and the effect on the hormone cortisol. Many of you may have experienced a sleepless night or have trouble sleeping. One night is not a big deal, however, you probably noticed that you didn't feel as well the next day.

Setting a sleep ritual is important if you have difficulty sleeping. You should try to go to sleep at about the same time every night and waken about the same time every morning. When I follow this ritual by getting to bed at my usual time, my internal alarm clock will waken me at the same time every day.

Another thing to keep in mind is that as you get older, you have less periods of the deeper levels of sleep. So you tend to sleep in level 1 or 2. In level 1 sleep, you literally will wake up when you naturally turn or move which is about every hour. Hence if you have a clock by the bed, when your eyes open you see the clock. Every hour you see the clock and you think you have not slept. In fact you have slept, but not at a deep level. Put the clock so you cannot see it when you awaken at night.

For more information about sleep, see my other posts related to sleep under the keyword sleep.

Rest for Brain Health

The last thing I want to mention about brain health is rest. Getting into good sleep habits is important for the brain. Research has shown that people who have slept only 4 hours a night have an increase in a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone which is related to the deposition of fat in the abdomen. Cortisol also has an effect in the brain.

The area of the brain where memory occurs is the hippocampus. When cortisol levels are high, this area of the brain begins to shrink. By increasing sleep to 8-9 hours, the amount of cortisol drops significantly. The other thing about cortisol is that when the levels are high, the brain cells are unable to produce energy to function.

I'll talk a little more about sleep again tomorrow.

Valerian

Someone asked the other day about taking valerian. I did a little research and found that it is more likely to be prescribed in Europe than Xanax or Valium. While I was aware of valerian's sedative effect, I had not thought of it as a substitute for these anti-anxiety drugs.

The actual mechanism of how valerian works is not clear. However, it has been around for centuries. Valerian is particularly helpful when one is unable to fall asleep because of anxious about something. Valerian has a calming effect without making you feel like you have been sedated with a drug.

I would certainly use caution with this herb in terms of when you take it. If you are going to be driving or operating any kind of equipment, I would not recommend taking it. I have used this herb when we have traveled and been in a different bed and place and I want to get a good night's sleep. It works wonderfully for this!

Chamomille Tea - A Healthy Choice

Whether you are a tea drinker or not, you may want to consider drinking Chamomille Tea. This particularly tea has many health benefits. The basis of the health benefits are two things, hippurate and glycine (an amino acid).

These two compounds contribute to multiple health benefits. One of the greatest benefits is the calming effect not only on anxiety, but also relaxation of muscles. So cramps or muscle spasms can be helped by Chamomille tea. Ladies, this includes menstrual cramps.

Along this same line, it combats inflammation because of its strong antioxidant effect. As you know antioxidants strengthen the immune system, thus helping to prevent illness and disease.

As a relaxant, Chamomille may also be helpful in helping one sleep. Many individuals experience an overall relaxed feeling which assists them in going to sleep at night.

More tomorrow.

More on Walnuts

I found an interesting fact about walnuts. They have been shown to decrease the likelihood of gall stones by 25% by just eating 1 ounce per week. This is a pretty easy thing to do if you use a few walnuts as an afternoon snack or your sprinkle a few walnuts on a baked apple (no sugar added) or pear. This make great desserts and give you some of the essential nutrients to help your body.

Melatonin which is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, helps us sleep. As we age we produce less melatonin and sometime supplementation helps, but many times not. So here is something you can try that is not only good for you, but as an evening snack may actually help you sleep. That's a bonus!!