We All Need More Beauty Sleep.

Quality sleep is essential for good health.  Lack of adequate sleep will prevent your body from regenerating, and it’s all downhill from there. FYI, by adequate sleep I mean 7-9 hours.  You can eat perfectly, and exercise appropriately but if you are not sleeping you will not be healthy, period, end of sentence.

Our bodies repair and regenerate as part of the rhythm of our biology, and unless you are meditating all day, you need to sleep for that to happen.  If you don’t allow for the rebuilding of your body systems, you will continually break down until you crash head on into a degenerative disease.

When people tell me they don’t have time to sleep, I know their lives are out of balance. You don’t want to disrupt your body’s natural rhythms any more than you want to try to fool Mother Nature.   The go-go-go lifestyle will get-get-get you to an early grave.  

Here’s what happens when you don’t sleep.  You prevent your body from producing melatonin, a powerful antioxidant as well as your ticket to restorative sleep.  Without melatonin at night, along with the subsequent production of the hormone prolactin, your immune system is suppressed, and that is never a good idea.  

Furthermore, cortisol stays up as late as you do and your insulin stays up to deal with all of it.  That means that in the morning, when you need it, cortisol is no where to be found.  This is the reverse of a “normal” and desired circadian rhythm.  As a result you wake up groggy, and your low cortisol means low dopamine so you can’t focus.  

With cortisol and insulin out of whack, your other hormones are all tripped up and you find yourself out of balance on all levels.  Here is where carbohydrate cravings take over in an effort to gain energy and focus.  And we all know where that leads...belly fat and mood swings on your way to insulin resistance.

Another consequence of of staying up after midnight is a reduction in the coveted growth hormone, which keeps us youthful.  As we age, our level of growth hormone reduces on its own, so I would say sleeping is a pretty easy and convenient way to stay young.  They don't call it beauty sleep for nothing.

for guidance and support on your journey to better sleep and a younger you, contact me for a free 15 minute consultation at nina.lynn@me.com.