Your health

Sleeping trouble?

By Dani Duffil, our resident Homeopath

Sleep is essential to properly recharge your body and achieve good health. It turns out that many people have trouble sleeping, even if they are tired! The key to this mystery lies with the little-known glands on top of your kidneys - the adrenals.
These days, most people have weakened adrenals caused by a diet low in minerals and high in sugar, stress, poorly digested foods, and over-the-counter and prescription drugs.

When your adrenals are healthy, they help you sleep more deeply and for longer periods, but you NEED sleep to keep them healthy!

Ten Common Symptoms of Weak Adrenals

• Difficulty falling asleep at night, sleep lightly or wake early or often
• Hormone imbalances and low sex drive
• Difficulty relaxing, nervous, anxious or hyperactive
• General exhaustion
• Memory problems and feeling "spacey"
• Weight gain, especially in abdomen and waist area
• Cravings for sugar and salt
• Early aging
• Constipation
• No energy for digestion of foods

Your Adrenal Bank Account

Think of your adrenals as a bank account: you make withdrawals every time you experience too much stress, a poor diet, and too little sleep or poor quality sleep. If you don't make regular deposits of healthy food, relaxation and plenty of rest, you deplete your adrenals, hamper their performance and disrupt the natural rest/renewal cycle of your body.

What Do Adrenals Do?

Your adrenals:

• Are active in all other systems of your body.
• Determine your body's response to stressors of all kinds, from food and viruses to your environment and your job.
• Affect the level of cortisol in your body - key for metabolism and sleep.
• Are the main source of sex hormones in your body.

The adrenals are intricately linked to the thyroid, another small organ that is crucial for hormone production, balance and metabolism. Together they directly affect your energy and vitality.

SLEEP To Care For Your Adrenals

Sleep is especially important for your adrenals because while you sleep your adrenals are hard at work trying to repair your body.

• Turn off your TV and computer as soon as it gets dark outside.
• Get to bed early as often as you can. Try to aim for 10 p.m. at the latest and sleep in on weekends if your schedule allows.
• Take a long weekend - resting for 4 days straight can actually re-charge your adrenals and recharge your vitality.

Get Your Minerals!

Adrenals thrive on adequate minerals - so be sure to get plenty of minerals from dark leafy green vegetables and ocean veggies. Also grain-like seeds for minerals and for vitamin, fibre and protein.

Want to Sleep Better? First, Reduce Your Cortisol Levels then Follow These Six Key Tips

To start, it's important to explore why we have difficulty sleeping. Over the years I've learned that the hormone cortisol can play a major role in robbing you of a good night's sleep.

Cortisol - The Stress or Death Hormone

Cortisol is called the "stress hormone" because it is secreted during times of fear or stress, whenever your body goes into the fight or flight response. Cortisol is made in your adrenals. In the constant state of stress so commonplace today, cortisol creates chronic to severe inflammation that eventually causes premature aging and leads to an earlier death. In fact, cortisol is often called, "the death hormone."

Cortisol suppresses another important hormone DHEA, the "youth" hormone.
Cortisol causes blood sugar to elevate and this then leads to an acidic blood condition. Acidic blood leads to the modern life-style epidemics we see today like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Some other affects of elevated cortisol are:

• Lowered immunity
• Poor short-term memory
• Constipation
• Weight gain, especially in the abdominal region and the waist
• Loss of muscle tone
• Reduced growth hormone, testosterone, DHEA and estrogen
• Osteoporosis

Cortisol and Fear

If you're a big fan of TV and newspapers, you are well aware that the media constantly reminds us that we live in an unpredictable and potentially dangerous world. For many of us our thoughts are on overdrive and our minds are constantly filled with negative chatter. Worry and concern cause fear and that fear can consume us.

In Chinese Medicine, it has always been understood that our adrenals, kidney and bladder are the organs connected to the emotion of fear.

When you live a life full of chronic fear, as many of us do, you are weakening your adrenals, your kidneys and your bladder. As they become weaker, you will find yourself becoming even more fearful. It's a vicious cycle that has to be broken.
I'd like to suggest a few ways to help manage fear and bring down those elevated cortisol levels so that you sleep better at night.

Insomnia | Some tips to help

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