Sleep & Weight Loss Connection

Transcript:

Hello, this is Teresa, one of the dietitians at Nutritional Weight and Wellness. And I have a question for you. Are you tired of constantly battling food cravings, or maybe you've had enough of the calorie counting and yo-yo diets that don't deliver sustainable results. Well, guess what? You can experience freedom from dieting while enjoying fewer cravings, increased energy, fewer aches and pains, and so much more with our Nutrition for Weight Loss program.

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CASSIE: My name is Cassie Weness. I'm a registered and licensed dietitian, and it goes without saying that I love working for Nutritional Weight and Wellness because every day I get to help people make real food choices that help improve their health and their quality of life. And I know my cohost feels the same. Joining me in studio today is Britni Vincent. Britni is also a registered and licensed dietitian, and she is one busy lady. She not only has an active caseload seeing clients at the office, but she's a mom to 11-month-old, wait for it, twins; twin girls. And she also has a two-and-a-half-year-old son. Britni is a wealth of knowledge and has a lot of clinical experience to share. So I'm excited to be on air with her this morning. And with that welcome, Britni.

BRITNI: Good morning. Yes. It it's fun to be on air with you. It's been a while.

CASSIE: It's been long time.

BRITNI: Well, if you are a long-time listener, you have heard we've had many shows on Dishing Up Nutrition about sleep and giving listeners lots of great information. But so many people have ongoing sleep problems. And, you know, for a lot of those individuals, you really just need to make an appointment, get some individualized recommendations, but today we're going to provide some suggestions and you know, a lot of science behind it too. But for some, the answer is extra magnesium glycinate: puts them into a deeper sleep. And it just does the trick for them.

CASSIE: I love magnesium glycinate. And I don't travel without it either because yeah, it helps with my sleep for sure.

BRITNI: Yeah, it is great. Sometimes, you know, people need 5-HTP or add extra calcium, but lots of different solutions. And generally speaking, we can help you find an answer to get better sleep.

CASSIE: Yes. And today, mostly at least in the first half of the show, we're going to focus on the why's. Why does a lack of sleep often lead to that unwanted weight gain? And I, I love that that's what we're focusing on, at least for the first half of the show, because when I was in clinical practice, a lot of people needed to know the why before they were willing to make the changes that we were asking of them.

BRITNI: So true.

CASSIE: So we'll give you lots of whys, lots of science here today, and then we will also go over some foods and some drinks that can cause us to wake up in the night and really have a less than stellar night's sleep. We'll also touch on a few supplements towards the end of the hour that many of our clients have found helpful to get good rest.

But one thing we do know for sure, both from clinical practice and from the research is that an ongoing chronic lack of sleep usually leads to unwanted weight gain. And we've also seen it in our class participants in our Nutrition for Weight Loss classes. Very often they'll come in struggling. And, and one of the key pieces that they don't even know is something they need to fix is their sleep.

Research backing up importance of sleep

So let's start off right away here with some research. I have a, a small pile of research. The one at the top here is coming out of the University of Chicago. The lead author was Dr. Eve Van Cauter. And she just to establish her credibility, she's well known in this area of sleep research. And she's been conducting sleep research for about the past 30 years or so. In this particular study, she found that people sleeping only four to five hours a night were more hungry the next day.

Okay. Many of you can relate to that, but what is fascinating is that she pinpointed one of the reasons why. When we are chronically lacking sleep, the level of our hormone called leptin decreases. We don't produce enough leptin and longtime listeners have probably heard that word leptin before, because we've talked about it on past Dishing Up Nutrition shows, but basically leptin is the hormone that signals your brain and your body that you're satisfied. You know, you can push the plate away. You're no longer hungry. You're feeling that satiety. So when leptin is in short supply because we're sleep deprived, we basically lose that off switch and we want to keep eating.

BRITNI: And I'm sure a lot of you have noticed when you're lacking sleep, your brain says, “Please keep eating. I want more.” Even though, I mean, really you have eaten enough. And up until about 20 years ago, sleep was not considered a critical factor for your health, but after considerable sleep research, it was shown to be one of the most important, but perhaps one of the least understood aspects of our life, wellness, just overall longevity. It is so critical to our health.

CASSIE: And it's fixable.

BRITNI: Yeah. Good point.

CASSIE: Critical and fixable. That's the upside here. Yeah. So like you said, you know, for years, and, and I think still some are not giving sleep the credibility, the, you know, the emphasis that it deserves. But we're getting there. We're getting there. Slow but sure more and more research is being done in this area. And I really feel like in the past 20 years there's been an uptick of the research that's been conducted and published, and there've been some great books written as well.

Some of you may have heard of the book called Why We Sleep. That was published not that long ago here, back in 2017. So it's called Why We Sleep. The author is Dr. Matthew Walker, who is actually a neuroscientist and the founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. This is a great read. So if you need another summer book, pick this one up. Just a couple things I want to pick from the book and share with listeners; one of the things that Dr. Walker talks about is that basically sleep helps our brain to be able to learn. And that really struck me, I think mostly because I'm a mom of two teenagers that have a lot of homework at night, you know, and, and have some hard classes and they're in some accelerated classes and, and I get it.

I know how important a good night's rest is for them to be able to memorize for upcoming tests and just overall to be able to learn and to maintain those good grades. And I think they would agree with me when I say they're not always happy with my rules around sleep. I get pretty strict. You know, there's a set bedtime in our house during the school year. And we're flexible, right? I mean, if we have a night where basketball practice has to go late, whatever or basketball games; we adjust, but when we are home, there's a set bedtime. And, and we really stick to that. And I also monitor their screen time because we know that can affect their sleep as well.

BRITNI: Oh, I think that's great. They will hopefully thank you for it down the road.

CASSIE: Someday.

Some reasons why sleep is so important

BRITNI: Because you really do understand the importance of it. And you know, I think a lot of people, oh, we're sleeping. You don't realize that your brain is still quite active; like you said, learning and recalling memories. So many, so many important things happen when we're sleeping, including sleep helps to balance your emotions.

CASSIE: Oh, good one. I notice that in myself and in my kids.

BRITNI: Yeah. I, I think most of us can admit that we're maybe more irritable if you, if you haven't gotten that seven and a half hours or maybe your, your significant other could attest to that.

CASSIE: Right.

BRITNI: It also helps maintaining immune function. Lack of sleep slows down our metabolism, lowers our energy level. Adequate sleep can improve our ability to learn as Cassie mentioned. We're really, what we learn during the day, our, our brain is working on that at night while we're sleeping.

CASSIE: Yes. Yeah. There's so many factors that come back to are you getting good quality sleep? So many factors in terms of our overall health. And we'll be talking more about that when we come back from this first commercial break. If you just joined us, you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. This show is brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness. And today, Britni and I are talking about how a lack of sleep slows down your metabolism.

And we're also going to be offering some steps for getting good sleep. So keep your pen and pencil handy. So what do we mean by good sleep? Britni sort of alluded to it: at least seven and a half hours most nights of the week is what research shows adults need. So seven and a half to nine hours. Everybody's individual. So on that note, let me ask the listeners, are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting seven and a half to nine hours of sleep? If not, please keep listening because we do have a lot of advice coming up on how to get a good night's rest. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

BREAK

BRITNI: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. To get an adequate amount of sleep, I suggest to clients to sleep to a stick to a sleep schedule. Get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. It really, really helps your circadian rhythm. On weekends, I know you're thinking, oh, I don't want to get up at six. You could sleep in an extra half an hour, but more than that, your biological clock will just start to shift. So sleeping by 11, awake by seven or 10 to six,

CASSIE: 10 to six is a good one for me. Everybody's different.

BRITNI: Yep, yep.

CASSIE: Yeah. Yeah. Get into bed so that you have enough time to get that adequate sleep. And I just want to kind of wrap up too, the things that you were saying Britni, before we went to break, because I think you touched on some good things, especially that immune system.

BRITNI: Yeah.

CASSIE: If you're sleeping too little, so less than seven and a half hours most nights of the week, it weakens our immune system. You know, we're, we're still seeing COVID cases pop up.

BRITNI: Yes, we are.

CASSIE: None of us want a weak immune system. So get to sleep. Also, you might have noticed, maybe you've connected the dots that when you're not getting enough sleep, you don't remember stuff very well. Or that memory recall goes by the wayside. And the statistics show us that people that don't sleep enough often die younger. And in general they just have more chronic health problems.

BRITNI: Yeah. You know, I recently read a study about, they think lack of sleep is a big risk factor for Alzheimer's too.

CASSIE: Yes, yes. Dementia and Alzheimer's.

BRITNI: So I mean, the list goes on and on.

CASSIE: You know, and that's interesting you say that because I remember Dar talking about think of Ronald Reagan and was it Margaret Thatcher? They both ended up with dementia and they, they were two well-known figures that prided themselves on very little sleep.

BRITNI: Gosh.

CASSIE: Connect the dots.

BRITNI: Well, you know, I was talking when we came back from break about, on the weekends, maybe sleeping in an extra half an hour, but I know a lot of people really count on the weekends to sleep in and “catch up on sleep”, but it doesn't quite work that way. So every, every night that you don't get enough sleep, you create sleep debt and that sleep debt accumulates. So Monday through Friday, if you're getting six hours of sleep, you have a lot of sleep debt and then sleeping in on the weekends does not make up from that. So week after week after week, you're just creating more and more sleep debt.

CASSIE: Until you crash at some point in your life.

BRITNI: Yeah, exactly. And you know, I think most of us know, we, we really need about eight hours of sleep because of poor sleep habits or inability to get to sleep, stay asleep. We just don't get enough sleep in America.

CASSIE: Most people, no.

BRITNI: And some people, they definitely have that myth that they can function on, you know, five or six hours of sleep. And if you are sleep deprived, your body does cognitively adapt. So at a certain point, you know, maybe you aren't tired when you're functioning on six hours of sleep.

CASSIE: And we all know these people, right; that say, I do just fine on five or six.

BRITNI: But, but your, your body it's still degrading. And then, you know, you mentioned earlier, some people pride themselves on not getting enough sleep or they can function just fine on five or six hours. And that's just not true. Right? Or for some people it's too much caffeine, too much wine, too much sugar and not eating enough, stress, menopause. So many different reasons for lack, lack of sleep, or just staying up longer, later.

What might be your reason for not getting enough sleep?

CASSIE: Especially with all the screens that we have at our disposal that we can be on. But I like Britni, that you just mentioned several different reasons, cause again, our, we're all different. What is your reason? Stop and think about that. What is your reason for not getting enough sleep? Because this is really key. We have to pinpoint what the reason or reasons are before we can fix them. So again, you mentioned caffeine. It could be alcohol at night. It could be the wrong bedtime snack. It could be stress. Figure out what your reason is so that you can move forward and fix it.

And you know, another thing to think about: if you are one of the millions out there having trouble sleeping through the night and you've decided to try a sleep medication, I want you to rethink that. And here's some good food for thought. Going back to that book I mentioned earlier called Why We Sleep by Dr. Walker. He talks in there about the effects of prescription sleep medications. And I have a quote here that I jotted down from him. Dr. Walker said, “No past or current sleeping medication on the legal or illegal market induces natural sleep.” And that's the end of his quote. But he goes on to talk about how yes, sleeping pills sedate you, but they don't give you that natural restorative sleep. So in the long run, you're doing more harm than good.

BRITNI: Oh, I'm glad you brought that up, Cassie. Yeah. And he went on to say, “Sleeping pills: they effectively knock out the higher regions of your brain cortex, which then affects your memory.” And I believe after reading this information about sleep medication from Dr. Walker, who, again, he's a neuroscientist. He knows his stuff. You're probably going to be more inclined to seek out a natural way to get that adequate sleep.

Lack of sleep can cause people to eat more unhealthy food

CASSIE: Yes. Yeah. And there are a lot of natural options, but right now, circling back to our, our main topic of why. Why does a chronic lack of sleep lead to a slow metabolism and thus that unwanted weight gain for so many? I have another research study here to share. This one comes out of King's College in London. It was published back in 2016 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study found that people sleeping five and a half hours or less a night gravitated towards higher calorie, lower protein foods.

So think about your own body. How are you the next day or after a couple nights in a row of poor sleep? What foods do you want to grab? Do you reach for a piece of pizza? Or do you take time out to put together a nice big entrée salad for your lunch when you're really low on sleep? I think we know the answer. Or maybe pizza, isn't your sleep deprived vice. Maybe it's a caramel roll or a donut. And I am going to take us right into our next commercial break. And on the other side, we'll be talking more about the science behind not getting enough sleep and that slow metabolism. If you've just tuned in you're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition.

Before we go to commercial, I do want to share a couple of ideas to help you get a good night's sleep. These are a couple of ideas that we incorporate in our house that really help. One is blackout curtains. If you're having trouble sleeping, consider blackout curtains, especially now in the summer when the sun comes up so early. That bright light stops our melatonin production or slows down our natural melatonin production. And then that causes our body to start to wake up. So think about getting blackout curtains.

I wear a sleep mask, which I swear by, again, helping to keep the light out. And when you're going to bed, if you find that you're having trouble shutting your brain off, something I do is pray. I just pick a prayer that I know by heart. And I say it over and over and over to kind of bore myself to sleep, or maybe you want to meditate. And then one more thing I wanted to share, and this is something that my oldest likes to do. He journals most nights and that just helps him get all those thoughts out and onto paper. So you can clear your mind, calm your mind for a good night's sleep. And with that, we'll head to commercial and rejoin you on the other side.

BREAK

BRITNI: Welcome back to go back to Dishing Up Nutrition. If you're having trouble staying asleep through the night, start exercising earlier in the day. Even 15 minutes a day will help. Also have your vitamin D level checked. It should be between 60 to 80 for optimal health. If not, start taking 3,000 to 5,000 milligrams of vitamin D3. And adequate vitamin D: maybe you've heard more about it with COVID the past two and a half years, but vitamin D helps with the absorption of calcium and also with how well the neurotransmitter serotonin is utilized. Interesting.

CASSIE: Right, because serotonin is that brain chemical that helps us sleep.

BRITNI: Yes. That, having adequate serotonin helps to stop those racing thoughts. And we're going to talk more about that a little later too. So I have a couple of interesting facts about sleep: adults who regularly get less than five hours or more than 10 hours of sleep have double the mortality or death rate than those who sleep seven and a half to eight hours most nights. That's significant.

CASSIE: Well, and like you said earlier, not getting enough sleep, even though you might be saying, I function fine on five to six hours, you are doing a detriment from the inside out. You're negatively affecting so many different aspects of your health and not realizing it.

BRITNI: Another part of it: everything's relative. Right? If you've been sleep deprived for so long, you don't realize how much better you could feel if you get more sleep.

CASSIE: Yes. Good point.

BRITNI: Yeah. So here's another interesting fact I have for you. If you fall asleep almost immediately when your head hits the pillow, you are sleep deprived. I think I'm sleep deprived.

CASSIE: We'll give you a pass with two twins under one.

BRITNI: I’ve fallen asleep mid setting my alarm before.

CASSIE: Oh, Britni, you made me remember when I was pregnant with my first I and I was struggling with some insomnia, I think just cause of my hormones going a bit crazy. But I remember a client of mine saying to me, oh, just wait till you have that baby. You'll be so tired. You'll be able to fall asleep on an airplane tarmac. I bet you can relate.

BRITNI: But you know, if you do need an alarm to get up almost every morning, you're probably not getting enough sleep if you need that alarm to, to wake you.

CASSIE: Right.

BRITNI: And actually the truth of, of the matter is about 75% of U.S. adults have some form of a sleep problem.

CASSIE: Wow. Yeah.

BRITNI: It's a lot.

Lack of sleep can be a contributor of insulin resistance

CASSIE: There's an astounding statistic. Wow. And I'm going to keep bringing it back here to the big question of why, why does this lack of sleep negatively affect our metabolism? So let's see, I have another piece of research here. We were just talking about research on the backside of this break that showed that we tend to gravitate towards higher calorie foods after we haven't gotten enough sleep. This research gets a little more into the biochemistry of things and it's showing that people sleeping four to five hours a night actually affect how their cells use insulin. I'm trying to figure out how to word this without getting too, too wordy in the chemistry world.

But we negatively affect how our cells use insulin. So, and this research showed that even after just one week, this occurs. So these research participants were sleeping between four to five hours a night. And after just one week, their cells were less receptive to insulin. In other words, they developed insulin resistance.

BRITNI: Wow.

CASSIE: And without getting into a lot of biochemistry, when you have insulin resistance, then the sugar in your blood stays circulating. Your muscles are resistant to allowing it in. So if we can't fuel our muscles with that sugar, then that sugar is in the bloodstream too long. And then we test our blood sugar and we have prediabetes if this insulin resistance continues. And that's what this research showed is that lack of sleep can lead to higher blood sugars, which then can produce a prediabetic condition. So, you know, chronic lack of sleep, it's no wonder is now recognized as one of the factors in the rapid rise of type two diabetes in this country.

BRITNI: And I've read many other studies saying similar things. So there is such a huge connection to our blood sugar and sleep.

CASSIE: So we can look at that, you know, gloom and doom, or we can say, wow, let's just fix your sleep. And we might be able to put your prediabetes or your diabetes into remission.

BRITNI: Yeah. And when you do sleep less than that seven and a half hours per night, inevitably weight gain is likely going to happen. And when you sleep only four to five hours a night, you're going to be far hungrier than if you got that seven and a half to eight hours. So then you're having the lack of sleep. Plus you're eating more. And researchers found that those who slept only four to five hours ate 300 calories more compared to those who got adequate sleep. So just lack of sleep alone could lead to a gradual weight gain of, you know, easily 10 to 15 pounds. Many of my clients say, “I've gained, you know, 15 pounds over the past however many years.” But it's so gradual sometimes people don't really notice it until, you know you step on that scale.

Lack of sleep causes cravings for sweets and salty foods

CASSIE: And you're like, wow, where did that come from? Right. Yeah. And isn't all this research interesting? There, there is such a strong connection with this lack of sleep and weight gain. And, and it's not just that people tend to eat more. Like you mentioned, this research showed that people tend to eat on average 300 calories more when they're not getting good rest. But much of the research shows that a lack of sleep changes what types of foods you want to binge on. And this particular study I found here showed that people not getting adequate sleep craved sweets. So think of cupcakes, candy bars, ice cream, or they craved salty foods like potato chips or French fries, or they craved both of those things. On the other hand, the same research showed that participants who slept seven and a half or more hours a night reached for higher protein foods and more vegetables.

BRITNI: Wow. So naturally lack of sleep creates insulin resistance. And then we add we're hungrier. We're gravitating towards more carbs. So then it just makes insulin resistance worse. I mean, it's no wonder the weight gain happens so easily.

CASSIE: It's a snowball effect.

BRITNI: And then, you know, another biochemical change that occurs when you have lack of sleep: it's stressful to the body. And then that can trigger an excess of cortisol and cortisol, you know, is known as our stress hormone and excess cortisol often leads to weight gain as well. Now I have several clients who in order to fit exercise in, they wake up even earlier in the morning than they have to, just to be able to get in that exercise.

CASSIE: Just to get to the gym.

BRITNI: And at the end of the day, when it comes to more sleep or exercise, I recommend get more sleep because you're, then your body is stressed being sleep deprived. And so that exercise could just be doing more harm than good. I know it sounds crazy.

CASSIE: It sounds backwards, but I am the same and, and it's because we've, we know the science and we've seen it work in clinical practice.

BRITNI: Yeah. Yes.

CASSIE: Sleep, sleep, trumps exercise every time. Yeah. So I'm glad you brought up that cortisol because we talked about insulin. That's a hormone that works against us when we're not getting enough sleep. Cortisol’s another hormone working against us when we're not getting seven and a half or more hours of sleep a night. So I think probably hopefully the listeners by now get it. Not getting enough sleep is not good for our health, but probably a lot of you listening are still in the dark in regard to how to fix this problem. So I think for the rest of the hour, Britni, we should share some of the more common sleep solutions that have worked for our clients. Yeah. People love solutions. And some of the solutions I'm going to share are ones that have worked for me personally, too.

Sleep solution #1: be mindful of caffeine intake

So again, you might want to get out your pen and paper and jot some of these down. The first sleep solution that I would like to share is to consider eliminating your caffeine or at least cutting back on it. So if you're drinking coffee or soda or tea, or if you're eating chocolate, don't forget that chocolate contains some caffeine. You're going to want to consider cutting back on these or cutting them out of your life altogether. And I know for me, I've had to make a commitment to not drink coffee past about 12:00 PM or I don't sleep well. And that never used to be. I could have a cup of coffee at four in the afternoon when I was in my twenties, no big deal. But as we age, many of us metabolize caffeine differently, not as effectively as we age. And so we might have to back up and have that cutoff point earlier.

BRITNI: I think that's true for a lot of people. They just need to cut it off at a certain point.

CASSIE: Right. yeah. You go ahead. I don't want to budge in. We're going to take a commercial break in one minute, but if you have something to share, go for it.

Sleep solution #2: be mindful of light and electronics

BRITNI: Well, another, another important piece to the puzzle here is your bedtime routine. Or maybe you don't have a bedtime routine and that's part of the problem. So ideally you want to cut out all electronic exposure because as we were talking about cortisol any light source from even lamps, even if you have a lot of lamps on at night, that stimulates cortisol and cortisol has an inverse relationship with melatonin. So if we're making more cortisol, we're not making as much melatonin and that can make it more difficult to fall asleep or more likely that you're going to wake up throughout the night.

CASSIE: Interesting.

BRITNI: So in an ideal world, you're really cutting out that screen time a couple hours before bed. And I'm going to talk more about this when we get back.

Sleep solution #3: magnesium to the rescue

CASSIE: Yes. I want to, and I have a comment too. But we are going to take our last quick break of the hour. You're listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Before we go to commercial, I do have another sleep solution to share though you might want to jot down. And first I want to say that in July of 2020, it was reported in the Pharmacy Times that at least half of Americans are magnesium deficient. At Nutritional Weight and Wellness, we know that having enough magnesium is needed for good sleep.

So with that in mind, do consider taking between 400 and 600 milligrams of Magnesium Glycinate at bedtime. This helps to, it helps you, helps me to fall asleep, but also helps us to stay asleep. And all of our Nutrikey brand of sleep support supplements are on sale for this month of June. So if you buy one of any Nutrikey magnesium, 5-HTP, or L-Theanine, you get 10% off the price. And if you buy two or more, you get 15% off. And don't go away. We have more ideas for getting a good night's sleep on the other side of the break.

BREAK

BRITNI: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. If you are struggling with a sleep problem and now realize how serious it is for your health and for your metabolism, I suggest making four to six monthly appointments with one of the Weight and Wellness nutritionists to help you overcome your sleep problems.

You can call us at (651) 699-3438. We can help and get you scheduled and figure out what you need individually. We can do in person appointments now, Zoom appointments or phone, and any of these are very effective. So whatever works best for, for your schedule.

Schedule a Nutrition Counsultation 

So before break, we were talking about screen time. I was talking about the relationship between cortisol and melatonin and, you know, I said, ideally, two hours before bed cut out screens. And I'm sure a lot of the listeners are thinking, “Whoa, I can't do that!” So what if you just start with 15 minutes?

CASSIE: Baby steps.

BRITNI: Baby steps. Yep. 15 minutes: cut out all screens, you know, even again, be mindful lights in your room; dim them. We use red light bulbs for our kids' bedrooms because it's not as stimulating, just a side note.

CASSIE: Oh, love it. I didn't know that. Note to self.

BRITNI: And then, you know, maybe you're one of those individuals that just likes to stay up later. I know as parents, I totally get this. That's your time either alone or time with your significant other to just unwind and relax. So it's easy to stay up later.

CASSIE: Peaceful.

BRITNI: Yeah, it is peaceful. Yeah. I'm, I'm guilty of that myself sometimes. So if that's you, it's about prioritizing, I mean, do the math in your head. When do you need to go to bed to get at least seven and a half hours of sleep? Or maybe you're getting six hours. How could you get six and a half hours? Baby steps. And then, you know, I have a quick client story because one of my clients, this is what she modified. She modified what she was doing before bed; cut out the screen time, created a more relaxing bedtime routine. And then she supplemented with magnesium, which you're going to talk about Cassie, and that solved her sleep issue.

CASSIE: It was that simple.

BRITNI: She was able to get adequate sleep. Yeah.

CASSIE: For a lot of clients, it is, is pretty simple. And then sometimes there are more complicated ones. Yeah. And we have to do trial and error, but like you mentioned, we've been able to fix almost everybody's sleep problems, if not, at least improve the sleep. Even if we don't get to perfection.

BRITNI: Yep.

CASSIE: Oh, I love that story. So I, and I was mentioning the caffeine; really consider caffeine cause I know I've had clients; I know there's a couple of ladies that work at the office that can't even have a cup of tea and tea has a lot less caffeine than coffee, but they can't even have a cup of tea in the morning cause it disrupts their sleep in the evening.

So do consider that piece and then also think about what you're eating throughout the day. Because if you're not sleeping well, you might be eating too many high sugar foods. So consider eliminating or at least greatly reducing the high sugar foods like cookies, granola bars, pasta, bread, pancakes, you know, just to name a few. And if you're having trouble sleeping, please eliminate the alcohol.

I know some people think that that helps to put them to sleep, but it's not. And, and it, you might fall asleep better if you have a six pack of beer. I don't know, but you're not going to get good sleep. It leads to what we call surface sleeping and it's not good restorative sleep. And Britni, you, you told the listeners, I would mention magnesium. I want to do that. This is something I take and it really helps with sleep.

And I mentioned it going to one of our commercial breaks, but I'll repeat it. Somewhere between 400 to 600 milligrams of Magnesium Glycinate with a balanced bedtime snack is the, the magic bullet for a lot of people. But I want to point out that the type of magnesium is important. Look for glycinate: g-l-y-c-i-n-a-t-e. It's very well absorbed by the body. I know if you run out to a big box store, you're going to easily find magnesium oxide, but it's not absorbed well. So it's not going to help you sleep if you're not absorbing it. And it can cause digestive upset and sometimes diarrhea truth be told for some people. So yeah, not fun.

BRITNI: And you know, Cassie, I want to just bring up quickly another client story, because it's top of mind: I talked to her this week. When she eats balanced throughout, so she has chronic pain. And generally, or before we started meeting, she'd be up five, six times a night. So once she started eating balanced throughout the day, cut out the sugar, the processed carbs, she was only waking up one or two times a night.

CASSIE: Cause the pain had decreased.

BRITNI: Yes. Huge improvement. So I talked to her this week. She started to recently eat more carbs and sugar. She's back to being up five or six times a night, but she knows, she said, I know when I eat balanced and I cut this out, my sleep improves. My pain improves.

CASSIE: And thankfully she continues to meet with you because that can be that big reminder. Sometimes we just need somebody to say, hey, you're falling off the wagon again.

Other potential sleep assisters: progesterone cream and 5-HTP

BRITNI: You know, another stage of life where we see that sleep is really difficult is perimenopause or menopause. Progesterone cream can be helpful for some of those individuals because progesterone is very calming to the brain. And I think of, if you're waking up in the middle of the night, two to four, just popping up wide awake, that could be a low progesterone issue. So you could use just a quarter teaspoon of this progesterone cream rubbed into thin skin areas of your body and that can help with sleep. You know, that is one too, it could be a good idea to meet with somebody and figure out is that something that you need individually? You know, it's an option.

CASSIE: You know, we're just giving options, but let's remember you have to have the right food in place first. And you know, if that's not working, maybe the magnesium, but I agree with you, Britni, that with the progesterone that can work for perimenopausal and menopausal women, I too would say meet with an expert in this area, like one of the dietitians at Nutritional Weight and Wellness.

Another one and here too, I would recommend that you talk to somebody before you just start this. But if I'm going through a period of time that's super stressful, I often will add some 5-HTP to my bedtime routine. So let me back up a bit and say that if you are somebody that often wakes up with sort of those recycled thoughts or some people call them regurgitated thoughts, like you just can't turn your brain off. And so you're not sleeping enough, 5-HTP can be helpful in this scenario because it is the building block for serotonin and serotonin is that brain chemical that helps us to sleep through the night.

BRITNI: Now, Cassie, you mentioned that bedtime snack is the ticket for a lot of people. Tell, tell us more about that because I think that does sound counterintuitive.

A balanced bedtime snack can help with sleep

CASSIE: Right. And I tell people if you're struggling with sleep, always, always have a bedtime snack. I don't care if you're hungry or not. You want that bedtime snack because it can help stabilize your blood sugars and with, you know, imagine a horizontal line, an even keel line, that's where you want your blood sugars to be through the night. So instead of popcorn, which is something I used to have for a bedtime snack before I found Nutritional Weight and Wellness, and I had terrible insomnia. Popcorn will drive your blood sugars up high and put you on a rollercoaster ride all night. Instead of that, go for a real carbohydrate and plenty of healthy fat. That will get your or your blood sugars to that balanced place, that even keel line.

And when you're there, your body can get restful sleep. So one example that I'm into right now is a handful of grapes. That's your real carbohydrate and a handful of walnuts for a healthy fat. Or you could do some berries, strawberries, blueberries, whatever you like. And some heavy whipping cream: two to three tablespoons on top. So always have that bedtime snack if you're struggling with sleep. And as we wrap up our show today, I just want to remind our listeners that our goal at Nutritional Weight and Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. Yes, it's a simple message, but it's a powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thank you for joining us and have a healthy day.

BRITNI: Thank you.