19. How to optimize your sleep for weight loss and overall health and wellness.

Unlock the secrets of sleep's transformative power on health, weight, and menopause as we journey together today!

This episode promises to arm you with a comprehensive understanding of how sleep intricately weaves into your body's hormonal balance and overall well-being.

We tackle the tough topics, like how a lack of quality rest is not just about feeling tired—it's a precursor for a cascade of health troubles that can affect everything from mood to immunity.

As you navigate the complex world of leptin, ghrelin, and cortisol, we prepare to equip you with the tools necessary to align your sleep patterns with your body's innate rhythms, ultimately steering your health in the right direction.

We don't just stop at discussing problems; we offer solutions for syncing your sleep cycle for optimal health. Learn why a standard sleep-wake cycle, managing your sleep environment, and understanding the impact of alcohol on your body are critical for achieving the rest your body craves.

We delve into the relationship between sleep and weight management, offer advice on supplements and sleep positions, and share why white noise might just be your ally in the battle for better sleep.

Plus, don't miss the chance to find out more about our upcoming belly fat challenge, designed to revolutionize your approach to sleep and health.

Tune in to this enlightening conversation and emerge with a toolkit brimming with actionable strategies for restful nights and energized days!

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Just in case you missed it:

Join my10:21 Day Weight Loss Boot Camp, to be apart of our vibrant community and kickstart your journey!

See you there!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends, Welcome, welcome. Welcome to my channel. Today we will be talking about sleep. I will share with you just a few tips and strategies and things that you can do to improve your sleep. If you go to sleep and wake up tired, this video is for you. If you go to sleep and you have just too many times where you wake up cannot go back to sleep, this video is for you. If you're like me, female in menopause, we struggle with sleep all the time this video is for you. First thing. First, I want you to type in the chat. Let me know where you're watching from. Tag your friends to this video, because studies show one in three Americans are struggling with sleep. So I want you to type in the chat where you're watching from. Also, this video will be uploaded to my YouTube channel later on and to my podcast. So if you miss it, wait for the link, go to my YouTube channel, subscribe, so when it comes out.

Speaker 2: 1:17

save that link because it's going to help you. Postmenopausal physician herself, who has helped thousands of women experiencing the significant life stage, she understands the unique challenges you face. Listen in as we explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting you in your health and wellness journey. Hopefully, the practical tips and strategies offered potentially help you adopt an empowering approach towards menopausal weight loss and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yembe.

Speaker 1: 1:50

All right. Sleep is important also for those of us who are struggling with our weight. Why is that? Because the sleep hormones those are balanced while you are sleeping. Sleep is so important also just for general well-being. I work in the emergency room full-time. Most of the time sleepiness. People fall asleep on the steering wheel while they're driving. Accidents happen. Productivity at work can be reduced if you are not sleeping enough. So this video is really for everyone. Poor sleep has a huge impact on our lives, specifically if you are sleeping less than six hours a night.

Speaker 1: 2:33

All right, hormonal imbalances or hormones are balanced while you're sleeping. Specifically two hormones that I'm going to mention here. Number one is cortisol. Cortisol is that hormone that's a stress hormone. It's also important for keeping you awake. So when I talk about some of the tips and strategies, you're going to understand that. A second hormone that's important for our sleep, of course we know melatonin. That's the one that's here that helps you stay asleep.

Speaker 1: 3:03

All right, if you're struggling with your weight. I'm going to tell you two hormones that are also important Leptin and ghrelin. Those are our hunger hormones. Those are balanced while you are sleeping. So when you don't sleep enough, your hunger hormone called ghrelin it is a little higher. Makes you have the munchies want to snack all the time. Can affect your weight. Also, makes you have the munchies want to snack all the time can affect your weight Also. If you don't sleep enough, you have decreased insulin sensitivity, so you're more insulin resistant. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, all right. Also, if you're not sleeping enough, you have more time awake. That's another opportunity for you to eat unnecessarily when you may not be hungry. So poor sleep influences our wellbeing.

Speaker 1: 3:51

I have show notes here. I'm looking at 15, 15 different aspects of our life that poor sleep can affect From decreased memory, poor cognition. Affects your blood pressure, which can put you at risk of heart disease. Can cause mood disorders. Just because you're not sleeping enough, you get anxious depression. It can also decrease your immune system, your ability to fight infections. You have poor healing. It can affect your metabolism, like I said, so you have weight gain because of that. Poor sleep can cause you to have a lower pain threshold, so small thing happens, you feel a whole lot of pain.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Poor sleep can do that. It can also cause reproductive hormone imbalance. So if you're not sleeping enough, you can have problems with your reproductive health. Poor sleep also causes digestive issues, causes problems with your eyes and your visions You're wide awake, eyes can get dry and other different problems. It can also cause you to have trouble with allergies. All right, listen to this one People who don't sleep enough for a long, long time, you have increased risk of us women in menopause got hot flashes keeping us awake or waking us up too many times. All right, so how does sleep really influence our health? Actually, if you sleep less than six hours, you can have all these hormonal imbalances and there are many, like I said Leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, melatonin, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone so many hormonal imbalances. Also Leptin Increased hours of wakefulness cause you to eat even more.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Our bodies have a clock called the circadian rhythm. That's how our bodies work. That clock is reset every 24 hours. So it's very important for you to realign your habits, your sleeping habits, with your internal clock so that you can sleep better. Internal clock so that you can sleep better.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Studies show that one in three adults in the United States are sleeping less than six hours, so this is a problem that is very, very prevalent. In fact, 35% of Americans and up to 10% of Americans suffer from true insomnia. For women in menopause, that incidence is even higher Up to 60 women in menopause struggle with sleep. So sleep deprivation causes decrease in the activity in your frontal lobe. Your brain has a central cortex. That's the part that's responsible for automatic things, and the part that you reason with is right here in the front. So if you don't sleep enough right here, it can have decreased activity in your frontal lobe. Poor decision making, which also affects your food choices. So it's very, very important the reward center in the brain is more stimulated with food when you are sleep deprived. All right, so we've said all these things in the big mouthful. How, then, do we improve our sleep?

Speaker 1: 7:39

I'm going to share several tips and strategies. I want you to just take from this video the one that resonates with you the most and start working with that. However, try to implement as many as possible of these techniques, because it would help you. Number one is scheduling. Like I said, your body has an internal clock, the circadian rhythm, so it's very important for you to align your habits with that rhythm. So the very first thing that's important is a schedule. When do you want to go to sleep? Most of us have a wake-up alarm, but most of us do not have a sleep alarm.

Speaker 1: 8:20

If you're struggling with your sleep, set an alarm for you to go to sleep. Pick a time that's most convenient for you. Everybody's different. Some of us have to wake up early, some of us have to wake up late. It's no point just waking up early just because somebody said wake up early If you have work that starts at 3 o'clock in the evening, early, no. If you have work that starts, say, at three o'clock in the evening, yes. So you can set a sleep alarm to go to bed, say, at 10 o'clock. That's your schedule. If you're somebody who has to be at work at 6 am, you set an alarm that tells you to go to sleep a lot earlier so that you can have seven to nine hours of quality sleep. But set an alarm. Your body works better when you are regular. Like they say, regularity is king. Set a sleep alarm and set a wake-up alarm. It would help you.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Number two strategy is temperature. Now I have hot flashes as a female, but I'm cold-natured, so what I used to do in the past is heat up my room and go to sleep in the heat. Actually, that's incorrect. You want to drop your room temperature to about 65 to 68 degrees. Why is that? Because the cooler your core temperature is, the better your body has a chance of producing the sleep hormone called melatonin. So, especially for those of you women in menopause, cool down that room temperature. And if you cannot do that let's say for those of my friends who are in Africa and things like that we don't necessarily have a way to cool down our room temperature Take a shower, cold shower, about an hour or 30 minutes before you go to sleep. That's going to lower your core temperature and help you sleep. Your brain and your core need a lower temperature to go to sleep and to stay asleep.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Number three strategy is light. Artificial lights, especially from the TV, from your phone, from your computer or your laptop, will keep you awake. In fact, when the daylight goes down and this is why back in the days people used to go to sleep it gets dark, everybody winds down, they go to sleep. Why is that? Because decrease in light causes the pineal gland in your brain to increase melatonin production. That helps you go to sleep. So if you fraction or you give yourself light, you're interrupting the production of your own natural melatonin and then you just have a higher chance risk of not sleeping or a higher chance of waking up too many times at night. So we want to not stimulate ourselves and decrease our own natural melatonin production.

Speaker 1: 11:14

How do you do that? You know you can have these screens, like the blue screen or whatever screens they call, that you can put on your phone so that you don't have that blue light coming into your eyes, because naturally I'm not gonna sit here and pretend and tell you to turn your phone off two hours before you go to sleep. It doesn't work, right. Okay, so you can just put a screen over your phone, a screen over your laptop or your computer so that you don't have that light stimulating you all the time, and also turn out the lights in the bedroom. Use blackout curtains. That would help you. And in my clinic I have women who come in and tell me we leave the TV on, but it's on mute so I'm not hearing anything, but I just like my TV on. Take the TV out of your bedroom, please. If you cannot do that, I want you to turn the TV off.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Also, one big thing to remember is our bodies have memory, so you need to have your bed as a sacred place for you to sleep only. Don't carry your work to bed. Don't carry your food to bed, because you're giving your brain mixed signals that tells you when you're in bed you can do anything but sleep. We go to bed only to sleep. We don't go to bed to work. We don't go to bed to watch TV. We don't go to bed to eat. Don't do that in your bed, because if you struggle with sleep then you're giving your brain too many mixed signals and your body doesn't remember that the bed is for sleeping only. Don't do that, all right.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Tip number four have a wind down routine. For those of you who have children, you know when the baby, the children, are small, we try to wind them down after dinner. Then they get to know we take them a bedtime story. We take them a bedtime story. We read them this bedtime story and the baby nicely goes to sleep. Do that also If you're an adult. You're struggling with sleep. Have a wind down routine. Take about 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, stretch, relax. Go to YouTube, find some breathing techniques that can help your body, relax. Take a warm bath in the bathtub. That's going to help you wind down. Take a book and read it. Do something every single day that will tell your mind this is bedtime, winding down, and next thing you know you go into your bed and you sleep. All these techniques, I'm telling you it's no point trying it one time, no because, in the beginning it may not work.

Speaker 1: 13:47

You've got to do this over and over and over, especially the schedule. Do that every day. Maybe hard in the beginning, but your body gets used to it.

Speaker 2: 13:56

All right.

Speaker 1: 13:57

Number five exercise. Exercise is important. I'm going to tell you something. So melatonin is that hormone that helps us sleep. Cortisol is a hormone that's a stress hormone that keeps us awake. So if you wake up in the morning and exercise, your body says I'm awake now. That's why if you check your cortisol levels in the morning it's higher, because it is a wake up hormone, keeps you wide awake. A wake-up hormone keeps you wide awake. So during the day when you exercise, your body stays awake, especially in the morning. Wake up in the morning and workout if you can. It's going to help you feel more energized, help the brain health and will help you more.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Go to sleep at bedtime. For those of us who struggle with sleep, don't go to the gym about an hour before you have to sleep and run about two miles on the treadmill. That's just going to increase your stress, internal stress. It's going to increase your cortisol level. Keep you awake at night. Now, if you're somebody who maybe you're struggling with sleep, do the exercise in the morning and not in the evening, especially for cardiovascular health also. Cardiovascular health also.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Another thing that really helps us is also just avoid eating right before you go to sleep. I'm somebody who suffers from acid reflux. So I know that when I go to sleep right after eating, lay down, it looks like my food is trying to come up here and talk to me. Those kinds of things will keep you awake. Make sure you eat, especially if your food is spicy. Consume your food about three to four hours before you actually lay down to sleep. Also, if you're feeling menopause and you have faced the struggle with the hot flashes, also try to not drink so much water too close to bedtime.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Water is healthy. We all need it. We all need to consume more water. All I'm saying is just try not to drink too much water close to bedtime, because what's going to happen? You're going to go lay down, you're going to get up, go to the bathroom and then, when you come back to bed, you may not be able to sleep at night. So drink all your water earlier. So I'm going to also talk about one other thing that we drink frequently. Me, for example. I'm a huge caffeine person. I love my coffee. It helps me All right. Now, studies do show that the half life the time for half of the caffeine to go out of your body is five to six hours in most people.

Speaker 1: 16:29

So if you drink coffee, say at 4 pm, half of it is still in your system. Say around 9 or 10 pm, and here you are. Eyes are wide open. You're wondering why. So try to consume all your caffeine before 11 o'clock in the morning. If you're somebody who struggles with sleep, drink your caffeine a lot earlier in the morning so that by bedtime it's all out of your system and you have better sleep. Still talking about drinks here, this one. I'm going to get some feedback on it.

Speaker 1: 17:02

I know Alcohol. Alcohol is one of those things that causes problems. Yes, you may drink alcohol and get tipsy and go to sleep easily, but actually what alcohol does is it influences REM sleep. That's that time when you're in a deep, deep sleep. Alcohol fractions that. So even if you go to sleep, then you're going to wake up too many times. Alcohol causes fragmented sleep. If you're struggling with your weight, you have to be careful about the alcohol though. Empty calories that's one problem. Number two it affects your reasoning capacity. So you have poor food choices if you're drinking alcohol. If you're female or if you're overweight female in menopause or overweight, we have fatty liver, so alcohol will cause more damage to your liver. I know that's enough about alcohol. If you're struggling with sleep, though, don't drink it at night to help you sleep. It's going to actually cause you to have more fractionated sleep. All right, this next one here. If you're somebody who struggles with sleep, don't take a long nap in the afternoon because you're just going to be more awake in the evening, all right. The next one I'm going to say and this is towards the end of this little talk here, the end of this little talk here If you have as somebody who struggles with sleep all the time, you snore at night.

Speaker 1: 18:33

You wake up too many times at nighttime. You wake up tired. You're moving your legs. It seems your legs hurt. They want to just move too much. You may actually have a true sleep disorder. I want you to go to the doctor and try and get an evaluation. Maybe you need a sleep study. Maybe you need some blood work. Those of you who are anemic have low iron levels. It may actually cause restless legs, and if you have restless leg syndrome and you're taking medicine and all of a sudden, you notice your restless legs are worse after months and months of taking the medicine that helped you, you may actually have a phenomenon called augmentation.

Speaker 1: 19:17

All these things. Don't try to fix them by yourself. Please go to the doctor, get a sleep study or get some blood work so your doctor can help you. The way I look at it is if your leg is broken, there's no point trying to practice how to run a marathon with a broken leg. You may have all the desire to, but you're not able to. It's the same thing with sleep. If you're trying to fix your sleep and if you're just not able to, something may be broken. You may need some medical attention at that time.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Now, obstructive sleep apnea is just downright dangerous. So if you're overweight and somebody's telling you snoring too loud and you're stopping your breathing while you are asleep, this is a very, very important one for you to pay attention, to. Go to the doctor. Tell them you're having headaches when you wake up. You're waking up tired, even though you slept so many hours. You're snoring at night, and so your partner, your family, is complaining and it seems like you stopped breathing while you're sleeping. Please seek medical attention because that one can affect your heart, it can affect your lungs, can affect your brain. I actually have people who come to my emergency room in respiratory failure, meaning they quit breathing completely because, after months and months and months of not breathing right when you're sleeping, your carbon dioxide is too high and so you don't have that automatic drive to breathe on your own. Now we have to put your life support to get a machine to breathe for you All because of poor sleep habits.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Again, poor sleep will influence your weight. If you're trying to lose weight, the very first thing for you to do, in addition to nutrition and all the things, is to fix your sleep and try to get seven to nine hours of good quality sleep every day. Lastly, let's talk about the supplements. I know we've got melatonin over the counter. You can take it. If it helps, you take it. Now. Every single supplement that's over the counter, including aspirin, tylenol and these things you must check with your doctor. Not every supplement is for everyone just because it's over the counter and you have easy access.

Speaker 2: 21:34

You may have a severe allergic reaction to even ibuprofen.

Speaker 1: 21:39

So be careful, don't take anything over the counter, even if it's a vitamin, without talking to your doctor first. But anyway, magnesium may help you. I'm going to put a picture on my Instagram page of the one that I take every night to help relax me. Also, just taking an Epsom salt bath in the night, that helps me with muscle soreness, helps me go to sleep at night. I don't do it every single day. Now there are some essential oils that may help you Lavender, chamomile, valerian sandalwood. If you're just an essential oil person, consider those All right. That's it for today. I hope that I have given you enough information to help you sleep. Oh, the last one.

Speaker 1: 22:24

I see that here the very last one that helps is your sleeping position. Studies show that if you have your head on about 30 degrees incline, you sleep on your side or on your back. That may help you with sleep. It's just really different for everybody. For women, especially, if you're pregnant and you're struggling with sleep, put a pillow in between your legs, that's going to help you also. All right, everyone. We also have some music, some white music, that may help you while you're sleeping. But anyway, I hope all these tips help you. Don't forget, the belly fat challenge starts on Monday, april 1st. I want you to go to the channel on this Instagram page and join that channel, because every day, for seven days, we're going to be doing things to help with the belly fat. All right, my friends, thank you. Thank you and have a happy Easter. Have a happy Easter, God bless. Bye, bye.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Thriving Through Menopause. We hope you found valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it and review. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember, menopause doesn't have to be a challenge. It can be an opportunity for growth, renewal and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and advice to help you along your path. Once again, thanks for listening in and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of Thriving Through Menopause. Until then,