Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 153 // Morning sun exposure fights brain fog in Hashimoto’s naturally [Hashimoto’s Health Lab]

Transcript

153 // Morning sun exposure fights brain fog in Hashimoto’s naturally [Hashimoto’s Health Lab] · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. Our summer series is the Hashimoto's Health Lab.
• 0:05
  This series is going to be 10-minute episodes.
• 0:08
  Every week, we'll talk about a specific tool or practice. We're going to cover
• 0:12
  everything from environmental detox to stress reduction, energy boosters,
• 0:16
  biohacks, and all of it is going to be designed to give you tools for better
• 0:21
  health with Hashimoto's.
• 0:22
  I'm your host, Esther Yunkin. I'm a registered nurse helping women uncover their
• 0:26
  root causes and regain energy.
• 0:29
  So these episodes are going to be short. If you are ready for a deeper transformation,
• 0:33
  check out the Holistic Hashimoto's course. It will help you identify your unique
• 0:37
  triggers and root causes so that you can focus your own energy on what really
• 0:42
  matters for your health.
• 0:43
  Are you ready to explore a new strategy for thriving with Hashimoto's?
• 0:47
  Let's dive in. This is the Hashimoto's Health Lab.
• 0:50
  This week stocks so nicely with what we talked about last week.
• 0:54
  Last week, we talked about grounding or earthing, which is basically exchanging
• 1:00
  electrons with the ground.
• 1:01
  It's like when you rub a balloon against your head and then shock somebody,
• 1:05
  except it's at a super, super low level every time you touch the ground.
• 1:10
  And that's all in the last episode. This week is early morning sunlight.
• 1:15
  And as I told you last week, I love to combine these.
• 1:19
  And I combine them with one other
• 1:21
  thing, which I'm not doing a Hashimoto's Health Lab episode about it.
• 1:25
  That one is a pet and I have an outside cat.
• 1:29
  His name is Cowboy and he loves to come and get attention, climbs up on my lap and he purrs.
• 1:35
  And that is also so beneficial for your stress levels and for your hormones.
• 1:40
  But let's talk about the benefits of early morning sunlight.
• 1:44
  Like I said, I combine the grounding and the pet and the early morning sunlight.
• 1:50
  All three of these are beneficial for you. But the question is why?
• 1:55
  Like how can going outside first thing in the morning help your health?
• 2:00
  It helps in a bunch of different ways. And here are 15 different things that it does.
• 2:06
  First of all, the early morning light signals your brain to stop making melatonin.
• 2:12
  Melatonin is your sleep hormone.
• 2:14
  It also tells your brain that it's going to increase the cortisol.
• 2:18
  Usually on this podcast, if we're talking about cortisol, I'm telling you that
• 2:22
  we want to lower it, we want to get it regulated, that our stress level is too
• 2:26
  high, and that we have chronically elevated cortisol.
• 2:29
  All of that is true. However,
• 2:32
  We do need some cortisol first thing in the morning because we are cyclical creatures.
• 2:38
  Every single day, every single 24 hours, we have increase in cortisol, which helps us wake up.
• 2:44
  And then in the evening or early
• 2:47
  in your sleep, you have an increase in melatonin, which helps you sleep.
• 2:50
  That is how it's designed to be. So you want your eyeballs in your brain to
• 2:56
  see the early morning light to trigger that 24-hour cycle. That is the number one thing that it does.
• 3:03
  It also triggers serotonin production and that helps your mood.
• 3:08
  That is huge if you have Hashimoto's because hypothyroid levels increase your risk of depression.
• 3:16
  Hypothyroid, think of it as a slowing down of everything or a decrease and when
• 3:21
  your brain is slowing down it is depressed.
• 3:24
  So we want to make sure that our serotonin levels are elevated, they are normal.
• 3:29
  And one way to do that naturally is to get early morning sunlight.
• 3:34
  This also impacts, you know, seasonal affect disorder, SAD, if you're familiar with that.
• 3:39
  And that typically hits people more in the wintertime when the days are short.
• 3:44
  And early morning sunlight in the winter is super, super crucial because you
• 3:49
  just have less of a window to get it.
• 3:51
  And people are just more depressed because of the light.
• 3:55
  And backing up for a second, that cortisol, the increase in cortisol,
• 3:59
  it's going to help you combat your Hashimoto's fatigue.
• 4:02
  It boosts your energy levels. When you get outside first thing in the morning,
• 4:06
  right when you wake up, they say like within 20 to 30 minutes,
• 4:10
  if you can get outside, that is ideal.
• 4:12
  So getting out there is going to increase your energy levels.
• 4:16
  And that, of course, is something that we want if you have Hashimoto's.
• 4:20
  So you're regulating your circadian rhythm, you're boosting your energy level,
• 4:24
  you're improving your mood.
• 4:26
  It actually does help your melatonin production.
• 4:29
  Remember I said, when you wake up and you look outside or you go outside into
• 4:34
  the light, it stops your melatonin. That's true.
• 4:37
  But when you trigger that 24-hour cycle by increasing your cortisol in a healthy
• 4:44
  way, you're telling your body that, you know,
• 4:48
  in X many of hours, you need to increase your melatonin. So everything works better.
• 4:53
  Your hormones work better on that cycle when you are exposed to the early morning sun.
• 4:59
  Early morning sunlight can also reduce brain fog.
• 5:04
  You'll just have clearer thinking.
• 5:06
  Part of that is because of the circadian rhythm. It's because of the serotonin.
• 5:10
  It's because of the cortisol.
• 5:12
  It's combating the Hashimoto's fatigue.
• 5:15
  And of course, part of that is in your brain. So it's going to reduce brain fog.
• 5:20
  It decreases inflammation. So serotonin and vitamin D can lower inflammation markers.
• 5:27
  Now, early morning sunlight, you're not going to make much vitamin D from that exposure.
• 5:32
  Vitamin D synthesis, so your body creating vitamin D, does happen with the sunlight
• 5:38
  exposure, but not really in the early morning. It's more when the sun is higher in the sky.
• 5:44
  That's when your body can create more vitamin D from the sun exposure.
• 5:49
  The vitamin D creation or synthesis in your body and increased serotonin can lower inflammation.
• 5:56
  Also, just balancing the hormones, the cortisol and the melatonin,
• 6:01
  it balances other things. All of your hormones are connected.
• 6:06
  So stabilizing your cortisol is going to impact your thyroid hormones,
• 6:11
  is going to impact everything.
• 6:12
  And then increasing melatonin levels and increasing your quality sleep is going to help you heal.
• 6:19
  That is one of your body's main jobs when you're sleeping, is to heal,
• 6:23
  is to heal, to renew, to restore, and to grow.
• 6:26
  You know, Hashimoto's tends to hit women during the three Ps,
• 6:30
  puberty, pregnancy, and perimenopause.
• 6:32
  So if you're getting Hashimoto's when you're hitting puberty,
• 6:35
  you still have growing to do and you need to get a good night's sleep.
• 6:38
  We all need to get a good night's sleep because our bodies are working so hard
• 6:42
  at healing and restoring, restoring balance, figuring out what is friend and what is foe.
• 6:48
  We want to stop our bodies from attacking our thyroid.
• 6:51
  So getting good sleep is crucial. And when you have that early morning sunlight
• 6:57
  exposure, it improves your sleep quality.
• 7:00
  You'll get deeper sleep, more restorative sleep. You'll have a stronger circadian
• 7:03
  rhythm, like I've talked about a.
• 7:07
  And here's one crazy benefit that I did not expect when I was starting to look
• 7:11
  up the different benefits of early morning sun exposure, and that is weight loss.
• 7:17
  People lose weight when they're exposed to light in the morning.
• 7:20
  And the earlier you get it, the better it appears to work.
• 7:24
  And for this benefit, you seem to need 20 to 30 minutes.
• 7:28
  And that's first thing in the morning.
• 7:30
  And people lose weight. I don't know how much weight.
• 7:33
  The article I was reading just said people lose weight and they do not have,
• 7:39
  they didn't cite an art or a research article.
• 7:42
  So usually I like to get citations and this one, I mean, the fact that they
• 7:47
  have the time that you need it, the amount that you need, they have a lot of
• 7:51
  things that make me think that they did cite research. They just didn't give us the citation.
• 7:56
  They just plagiarized it. So maybe I shouldn't be telling you this one,
• 7:59
  but what a cool benefit, right?
• 8:01
  You're getting all of these benefits to your hormones and to your healing,
• 8:05
  to your sleep, to your energy, to your brain fog.
• 8:07
  And also, it might help you lose weight if that is something that you're helping to do.
• 8:13
  But we all want to have a better relationship with our hunger hormones and with our cortisol.
• 8:20
  Of course, cortisol impacts how
• 8:22
  you store fat. It impacts your blood sugar regulation. It does so much.
• 8:26
  So early morning sunlight is a fantastic thing. And it goes so well with what
• 8:31
  we talked about last week, which was grounding.
• 8:34
  And both of these are completely free. I am trying to do a mix during this Hashimoto's Health Lab series.
• 8:42
  Some things that are cheap, some things that are free and some things that are
• 8:46
  a bit more of an investment.
• 8:47
  I hope this is helpful for you. If you have an idea of what you want me to cover
• 8:51
  in the Hashimoto's Health Lab, come over to Instagram or our school community and let me know.
• 8:57
  I would love to create an episode that specifically talks about what you want to hear.
• 9:03
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 9:06
  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
• 9:09
  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
• 9:14
  You do not have to figure your health out alone.
• 9:17
  So that is school, S-K-O-O-L.com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
• 9:23
  I'll see you next time on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.