Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 142 // Sleep is the secret weapon you need to fight Hashimoto’s fatigue

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142 // Sleep is the secret weapon you need to fight Hashimoto’s fatigue · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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What was the very first symptom that you noticed before you even knew you had
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Hashimoto's, before you even considered that there was something going on?
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What was it that you were struggling with?
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For me, it was fatigue, overwhelming tiredness, like falling asleep,
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slurring my words while reading to my kids, fatigue, so tired, bone weary.
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I didn't know that something was going on yet. I just knew that I was exhausted.
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Maybe you are also exhausted or maybe for you it was something else.
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Maybe it was your weight was creeping up or your hair started to fall off.
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But today we're going to talk about sleep because when you are so exhausted
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or anytime you're dealing with an autoimmune condition, you want to make sure
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that you are getting everything you can out of your sleep.
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You're optimizing your different stages of sleep. You're making sure that you're
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getting enough hours of sleep and that the quality is what you want.
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So welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. I am Esther Yunkin.
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I'm a registered nurse. I am the mom of four.
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And so when I was falling asleep while reading to my kids, I just assumed it
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was because I had four kids.
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At the time, like I can vividly picture one instance when I was slurring my
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words and nodding off while reading to my kids.
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I can picture where I was. I can picture that I had, I think,
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three kids, one on my lap.
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And the one that was on my lap was a toddler. So I'm sure I had another one,
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like the newborn in bed for a nap or something.
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I just thought it was because I had so many little kids and because I was working full time.
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I just assumed it was just part of life. That's what we hear.
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It is normal to be so tired when you are a mom, but it's not normal.
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It's common, but it's not normal.
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Common does not mean normal. You are not designed to be so exhausted,
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and there are things you can do about it.
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So let's talk about the benefits of sleep.
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It's been a little while since I explained my logo, so if you look on the cover
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art for any of the episodes or the podcast in general, you'll see a five-petaled flower.
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That is actually a Venn diagram and the five petals or the five circles overlap
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to include the whole you, your whole health.
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The five petals, the five different parts of the whole you represent your body,
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your mind, your spirit, your diet, and your environment.
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All those things contribute to your overall health and sleep impacts all five of them.
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So let's go from body. What does sleep do for your body? Well,
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number one, sleep is the time when your body is healing and.
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We know that your body is renewing, it's growing, it's healing,
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it's cleaning things up while you are sleeping.
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During deep sleep, your body is ramping up the tissue repair and the muscle
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growth and anything that's happening with your proteins.
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Your growth hormone, which is important for recovery, is mostly released at night.
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You know when your kids are sick because all of a sudden they're sleeping more, right?
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Because they are trying to heal. Their bodies are prioritizing healing.
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Another thing that happens while you're sleeping for a physical benefit is your
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immune system starts to get a boost.
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When you're sleeping, your body produces cytokines. Those are proteins that
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fight infection and inflammation.
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And of course, with autoimmune problems, we have a lot of inflammation.
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And we want to cut down on inflammation. That is one of our number one top priorities
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when we have an autoimmune problem is to cut down on inflammation because then your body can,
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your immune system can start to do what it's supposed to do.
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It's not going to go as haywire.
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We want to lower inflammation. And that's one thing that good quality sleep does.
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Good quality sleep or enough sleep and consistent sleep, it also is really good
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for your heart. It reduces the stress on your cardiovascular system,
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just getting enough sleep.
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And the final thing that I'm going to talk about that happens while you are
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sleeping is in your brain.
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So while you are sleeping, your actual brain shrinks a tiny bit,
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allowing for more fluid, more cerebral fluid to get up into your brain.
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And your brain actually runs like a dishwasher cycle.
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It gets more fluid up flowing through your brain, and it cleans out the broken things.
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It cleans out the old cells, the broken cells, the things that don't need to be there.
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It's called the glymphatic system, which is your lymphatic system in your brain.
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And we need things to be cleaned out in there.
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Like you might have heard of amyloid proteins.
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We think those might be related to Alzheimer's. there was some really sketchy
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research as far as sketchy, I mean, photoshopped research that has been exposed
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over the last, I think, year.
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And hundreds of studies were based on that one fraudulent study,
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which was about amyloid proteins.
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So I'm still not quite sure now, like what is the truth, but we do know that
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during sleep, your body runs that dishwasher cycle and cleans out amyloid proteins
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that are maybe related to Alzheimer's.
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But no matter how it's working, we do know that the better quality and quantity
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sleep you get, your risk for Alzheimer's goes down.
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So sleep is important for your physical health, is important for your immune
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health. What about diet?
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Let's just skip to diet. When you get hungry...
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Sometimes you're actually needing nourishment. Sometimes you eat because you're
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looking for energy and you're looking for energy because you are so tired.
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Your brain knows that you need more fuel.
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Your brain knows that you need more energy. And so where are you going to find that?
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Well, you didn't get it last night while you were sleeping and whatever's going
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on has you so fatigued. So your brain is like, oh, you know what?
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Let's reach for those carbs because that carbohydrate food.
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It's going to have fast energy. We need energy.
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So let's eat. People who are short on sleep, even by an hour,
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eat more calories during the day.
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And one reason is because your brain is looking for energy.
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Another reason could be because you're staying up later and you're snacking
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more late into the night.
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That could be another reason why people who have less hours of sleep,
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eat more calories on average.
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But those are not the only problems. When you are short on sleep,
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it also impacts your ghrelin and your leptin levels. So those are two hormones.
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The ghrelin is your hunger hormone, and the leptin is the one that tells you that you're full.
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And when you are short on sleep, you have too much ghrelin, so you're feeling
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hungry too much, and you have less leptin, meaning it takes more food to make
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you feel full, to make you feel satiated.
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That's all from getting too little sleep.
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Crazy, right? You don't think about a lack of sleep impacting so many different
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things. But there's more.
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There's always more. Remember, the five-petaled flower, body,
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mind, spirit, diet, environment, every single thing is impacted.
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So what about your spirit? Now, one of my favorite stories in the Bible is,
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it's either Elijah or Elisha.
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He had a huge event. he was an Old Testament prophet.
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He faced off against the evil king and queen.
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His life was at risk. His side won.
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But then he got scared of the queen and he ran out away from her so that she wouldn't kill him.
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He gets to this tree and he lays down under it and he's like,
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God, please just kill me. I am ready to die.
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And so an angel came and woke him up and said, I made a meal for you.
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So he gets up and he eats this big meal and then he goes back to bed.
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He takes another long nap.
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And the point of that story, or at least the point that I see,
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is God provides for our needs.
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We do have a need for good food and good sleep. But also our relationships.
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We need healthy relationships. When you're short on sleep, do you get snappy? Do you get cranky?
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Do you faster to get irritated with somebody?
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Getting short on sleep impacts our relationships.
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It impacts every single part
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of us so we talked about body mind spirit no
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we talked about body diet spirit what about
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our mind i just said you're going to get more irritable when you're short on
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sleep but there's other things that happen mentally and emotionally when we
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are sleeping that's when our memory consolidates it's when things that you did
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or learned throughout the day they get stored while we're sleeping.
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If you miss good sleep, you're going to be foggy. You're going to have more forgetful moments.
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Good sleep is important. I don't want to make this a depressing episode.
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Like there is hope. I have a free solution I'm going to tell you about at the end.
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It's my jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest. It's a five-day series. So don't worry.
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This is not going to be all doom and gloom. I just want you to know that it is so important.
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And I also want you to know, if you're exhausted, it might not be the fault of your sleep.
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You might have gone to bed on time. You might have done all the things right.
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And it's your Hashimoto's that's
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causing a problem with your fatigue and it's causing some brain fog.
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We don't want any of those problems. All those symptoms are cries for help.
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There are a body saying, hey, something's going on. Let's address it.
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And that is why I have the Hashimoto's Decoded Root Causes for you so you could
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figure out what to focus on.
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It's why I have this refreshing sleep and rest little five-day course.
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So that you can work on improving different things.
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The sleep and rest course was actually created when I was struggling so hard
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with my fatigue, when I was falling asleep while reading books.
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I remember one time I laid down in bed, it was middle of the day,
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and I know one of my kids, I don't remember which one, was sitting over top
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of my head, not on my head, but closer to the wall, and talking to me.
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And I remember telling him, I am going to go to sleep.
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I'm kind of ignoring you. Like I was very honest.
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I fell asleep. I didn't even know when I fell asleep, but the next thing I knew
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I was waking up and there was no kid there.
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So I have no idea like how long he talked to me before I was just, you know, dead asleep.
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Sometimes you just feel like a bad mom, right? I did. I do remember telling
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him, I am going to take a nap. You can keep talking, but I'm not listening. I'm falling asleep.
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Like, at least I remember saying that. So it wasn't as if I was completely ignoring
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him. Like he had warning.
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He could have quit talking, but you know, some people just will keep on talking.
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I'm sure you have people like that in your life, right? All right.
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So other mental or emotional effects of sleep or not enough sleep is your stress resilience.
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Your sleep buffers your cortisol. Your cortisol is your stress hormone.
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When you are sleeping, it helps your cortisol.
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So we want, of course, good quality sleep.
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Cortisol is your stress hormone. It is one thing that we focus on a lot in the
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Hashimoto's root causes and
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the holistic Hashimoto's course because stress is so big for most people.
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It is one of the biggest root causes.
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We want to help lower cortisol. We want to get the stress down.
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All right, what else does sleep do? We talked about physical,
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we talked about diet, I talked about some mental stuff, and then the relationships.
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When it comes to that environmental little petal of the flower,
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I don't know that sleep is going to impact your environment as much as your
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environment is going to impact your sleep.
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In the five-day free course in the Jump start to refreshing sleep and rest,
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one of the days is talking about your sleeping area and how you can make it
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more conducive to sleep.
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Like one thing you probably know already is that blue light interferes with your sleep.
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You might feel like you can stare at your phone or watch TV or be on your computer
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right before you go to sleep and you can fall asleep instantly.
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Like you might know that about yourself, but what you might not be feeling is
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that that blue light exposure impacts your melatonin.
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You can still be sleeping, but you're not getting good quality sleep.
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You're going to feel less rested in the morning when your eyes are exposed to
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that blue light, those blue light rays before bed.
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And technically, I think it's like two hours before bed.
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So things that you can do to protect your eyes from the blue light,
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you can get those amber colored light blue block, blue light blocking glasses.
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You can wear those. You can turn your screens onto night mode.
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You can do that on both Apple and Android.
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Look for the night mode option.
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There's a lot of different things you can do. But as far as preparing your bedroom,
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just try to get electronics screens out of your bedroom.
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That might be a huge adjustment for you and your typical wind down.
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And so I never tell you, you have to do anything or you should do things this way.
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I say, here is what is best for your health, you know, an absence of blue light.
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Now, how can you make it work for you? So maybe you really love to watch a movie before bed.
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Maybe you're going to choose to put on some amber light glasses and like watch
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everything, your brain will adapt.
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Yes, it will look a little funny for a little while or forever because it's
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blocking certain wavelengths of light.
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It's changing things, but you're going to be able to, I hope, get used to it.
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Maybe for you, it's you put your phone in a drawer, you put your phone somewhere
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else so that you're not even tempted to open it and stare at it before you go to bed.
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There are different ways that you can make it work for you and only you know
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what is going to work best for you.
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And that is always what I want you to be able to figure out is what is going to work best for you.
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What, like here's the problem, here are potential solutions,
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which solution is going to be the most simple for you.
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So for me, I choose to not look at my phone. When I'm on top of things,
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I put it in my underwear drawer.
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When I put my watch in my drawer, I have a fitness watch and so it has that
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green light every once in a while?
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Do I put that watch in my underwear drawer at bedtime and I put my phone in
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there and then I close the drawer because, you know, I'm going to open it up
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in the morning to get my deodorant and my underwear and my socks.
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It works perfectly for me when I do it.
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Sometimes I don't do it and then I usually look at my phone and I don't want to.
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So for me, I have to remember that I have a commitment to myself to have better sleep.
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And one way that I facilitate better sleep is by putting my phone in my drawer.
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I just have to remember that commitment to myself, right? But I do have a lot
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of other things in place to help me get better sleep. And I have those things
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for you too because sleep is so important.
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Along those environmental lines,
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there are other things you can do to create a nice environment for yourself
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or for your sleep. So we have a new kitten in the house.
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One of our cats had five kittens and we were able to find homes for four.
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We have not found a home for the fifth one.
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He is an adorable orange little kitten and he is very social, very social.
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He was so sad when his last brother left.
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Like he wandered around the house crying for days, just looking for his sibling
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and wanting to have a playmate.
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Well, he finds my kids in the middle of the night.
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One of my kids, my 11-year-old this morning, was super grumpy because he said
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the kitten climbed up on his bed multiple times overnight and woke him up.
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Now, if you are a mom, you have experience waking up multiple times and,
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you know, a baby to care for.
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Well, my 11-year-old does not need to take care of a kitten.
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So we talked about ways that he can make sure that his sleep is uninterrupted.
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One thing is he's in a temporary bedroom right now. He doesn't want to move
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back into his real bedroom because that's where his brother sleeps.
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They share a room and his brother keeps him up at night.
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So we talked about, well, if you're in your bedroom, you can close the door
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and the kitten can't get in there.
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In his temporary space right now, he doesn't have a door so the kitten can just come in.
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And then we need to talk to the brother about, you know, how about you not talk after bedtime?
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When we say goodnight and turn out the light, that's it. No more noise.
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I mean, I think I've said that about a thousand times, maybe just in the past
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month, but it bears repeating because sleep is so important.
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So for my 11 year old, he knows that the cat woke him up. He knows that if he's
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in his bedroom, he can close the door.
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That is a simple and sustainable solution. Dealing with his brother.
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Not so simple, but something that we can tackle together. And that is what I
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want you to be able to figure out. I want to give you different.
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Tips and different solutions. And you can say, oh, this will work for me.
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During the five days in the jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest,
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we talk about, you know, the two different trains your mind can get on because
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your mind can totally derail sleep.
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And so I talk to you about the two different things that really derail sleep
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and how you can get that back on track to facilitate better sleep.
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Every single day is on a different area. And right now I am collecting data.
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So the jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest is free inside our Health with
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Hashimoto's community over on school.com.
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S-K-O-O-L.com. It is free, the Health with Hashimoto's community.
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In the classroom tab, you'll see there's a community tab where there's lots
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of chat and, you know, make some friends, ask questions, share wins, share struggles.
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There's all of that in the chat. Then there's the community tab or the classroom tab.
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And that is where you will find things like Hashimoto's Decoded,
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Root Causes Revealed. It's where you're going to find the Holistic Hashimoto's course.
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Now a tip, if you are going to take the Holistic Hashimoto's course and you
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want to pay with your FSA or HSA money, you need to do that through my website, not through school.
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School does not accept HSA or FSA. So if you want to pay with your HSA or FSA
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card, you have to do it through my website. You can always send me a message
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in school, say, hey, I want to use my HSA. Can you send me the link? And I will do that.
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Also in the classroom is where you will find the free jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest.
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It is a five-day series, and I would love to know your data.
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So if you could share with me...
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This is how I was sleeping before. These are the things I implemented.
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And this is how I'm sleeping now. Or maybe you wear an aura ring or a fitness
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watch and it tracks your different stages of sleep.
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And it helps you figure out, you know, how many hours of deep sleep you're getting,
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how many hours of REM sleep, how many times did you wake up?
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If you have that type of data, I would love to know it because I will be teaching
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this five-day course to another group and I would love to have some stories.
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So if you are willing to go through it, number one, it's going to help you get
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better sleep. And that is, of course, the goal.
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We want you to be sleeping better. I want you to have better quality sleep.
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I want you to have better quantity sleep.
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I want you to wake up feeling rested and energized. I want you to have better
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health because your body is healing and your cortisol is coming down and your
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inflammation is coming down while you're sleeping.
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Your immune system is working better when you're awake. That is what we want.
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So that is goal number one, that you have improved health because of this.
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And then I would love to have an additional goal so that I can share the fact this program works.
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So come on over to our community, Health with Hashimoto's, and it is on school.com,
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S-K-O-O-L, and go through the jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest,
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and then let us know in the community what changed for you.
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Are you feeling better? Are you feeling more refreshed? Are you feeling better
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rested now that you've done this jumpstart? Let us know over in the community.
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This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
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Please discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
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If you found this episode helpful, will you please share it with a friend?
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I'll see you next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.