Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 081 // Sleep, fatigue, and Autoimmune Diseases

Transcript

081 // Sleep, fatigue, and Autoimmune Diseases · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Hey, welcome back. Do you have Hashimoto's? If so, do you know why you have Hashimoto's?
• 0:05
  We're going to talk about one of the root causes today, and that is sleep.
• 0:10
  Is sleep an issue for you? And was it an issue before you got Hashimoto's? Is it an issue now?
• 0:17
  Is it like a chicken and egg thing? Well, we're going to talk about all of that.
• 0:21
  But first, welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. My name is Esther.
• 0:24
  I am a registered nurse. I am a holistic health educator.
• 0:28
  I have Hashimoto's. I am a mom to four amazing kids.
• 0:32
  We're busy. We live in the country. I don't think that roosters will be crowing
• 0:37
  outside my window today.
• 0:38
  They seem to be on the other side of the house, but I did listen to last week's
• 0:42
  episode and I couldn't hear them.
• 0:43
  So I don't think that you can hear my roosters even when they're crowing right
• 0:47
  outside my door or my window, but it is fun to have chickens.
• 0:51
  And I like to have things that reduce stress.
• 0:55
  And for me, looking out the window and seeing like this whole flock of chickens
• 0:59
  just walk by, it just makes me smile.
• 1:01
  And when you smile, when there are things that, small things that bring you
• 1:05
  joy throughout the day, I feel like those are healthy because they lower your
• 1:09
  stress a little bit and they just raise your overall wellness.
• 1:14
  Everything is connected to everything.
• 1:16
  So having chickens makes me happy, makes me a little healthier.
• 1:19
  Also, I love having like eggs unless they're not laying.
• 1:23
  And then you're waiting, like, do I have enough eggs for today's recipe?
• 1:28
  That can be frustrating.
• 1:29
  Then you run outside to the chicken coop and check for eggs before you make your recipe.
• 1:34
  Anyway, do you have chickens? Let me know on Instagram.
• 1:37
  That is where I connect with people. So head over to Instagram if you're on
• 1:41
  there. I am at estery.rn.
• 1:44
  I post about my chickens sometimes.
• 1:46
  Usually you'll see those more in my stories. My youngest son is supposed to
• 1:51
  let them out in the morning.
• 1:51
  But if he doesn't, and if I do, then sometimes I take a little,
• 1:55
  you know, video and post it in my stories and you get to see my chickens.
• 1:59
  So head over to Instagram and tell me about your chickens. And also tell me
• 2:02
  about sleep after you finish listening to this episode.
• 2:05
  So what is it about sleep and autoimmunity that go together like chicken and egg type scenario?
• 2:11
  It is, well, it's a couple things. Number one is you heard me say so many many times.
• 2:16
  It's while you're sleeping that your body does the healing process.
• 2:21
  And an autoimmune problem is when your body is trying to attack invaders,
• 2:27
  but it gets confused and it starts attacking yourself.
• 2:30
  And why does that happen? Well, sleep has one role in it, but we need to have a.
• 2:38
  Or not too much, you know, the Goldilocks range, everything in your body is Goldilocks range.
• 2:43
  Not too much, not too little. We want just the right amount.
• 2:46
  So we want to have enough sleep so that our body can heal.
• 2:49
  And there's a couple of things that happen when it doesn't, or when you don't sleep well.
• 2:54
  The first thing is it increases inflammation.
• 2:58
  Now at the root of pretty Pretty much every single disease, every single disease,
• 3:04
  like every single one is inflammation.
• 3:07
  Head over to PubMed, PubMed, P-U-B-M-E-D dot gov.
• 3:12
  It is like the Google of published literature, published research,
• 3:18
  published, obviously, medical research, PubMed, and type in inflammation and
• 3:24
  then type in the name of any disease you're curious about and see what pops up.
• 3:29
  More than likely, there will be hundreds of articles that have been published
• 3:34
  about inflammation and that particular disease.
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  But literally, when you read the research, pretty much every single disease
• 3:42
  has its root in inflammation.
• 3:44
  I first heard about this probably 20 years ago.
• 3:48
  I read an article and it was very intriguing to me.
• 3:51
  I was like, really, there's one thing that all of these have in common,
• 3:54
  like things that are so completely different as far as like different systems,
• 4:00
  different organs, different mechanisms.
• 4:02
  They really all trace back to one thing. And it's true.
• 4:06
  Inflammation is huge. So when you don't sleep well, your inflammation goes up.
• 4:13
  And when your inflammation raises, then that raises your risk for whatever you
• 4:19
  are are genetically susceptible to.
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  Now, obviously, you and I are each individual.
• 4:25
  We have different genes. We have a different upbringing. We have a different
• 4:28
  environment, both now and when we grew up.
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  So no two people are going to be exactly the same. No two people are going to have the same risks.
• 4:38
  So when you have increased inflammation and I have increased inflammation,
• 4:42
  that is going to affect each of us differently based on so many different factors.
• 4:47
  But we know that one constant is that when we don't get enough sleep,
• 4:52
  our inflammation goes up and inflammation is at the root of nearly every single disease.
• 4:57
  And then there's this weird cycle.
• 5:00
  Increased inflammation causes increased fatigue.
• 5:03
  Fatigue and so then obviously you want to
• 5:07
  sleep more but then sometimes you don't sleep
• 5:10
  as well so you feel like you're getting a lot of
• 5:12
  sleep like you're in bed but you're not getting
• 5:15
  good sleep I discovered this for myself when I got my aura ring I've talked
• 5:19
  about my aura ring before oh also I'm just gonna side note here occasionally
• 5:24
  I'll drop a link to the aura ring but I have found out that it's only good for
• 5:28
  one person so if you want a discount code on the aura ring I think it's like $50 off,
• 5:35
  then send me a message so I can send you your own unique link.
• 5:39
  Most of the links that I'll put down in show notes, they're good for anybody.
• 5:43
  But I did find that out about the Oura Ring. Also the probiotic that I use,
• 5:47
  the pre and probiotic, that one is on my website.
• 5:50
  I have a page of just links of things that I use.
• 5:53
  That one is also a single person code.
• 5:57
  So I have to remember to go over to the website and like change it frequently.
• 6:01
  I wish that they would just give me an affiliate link so that you can save money.
• 6:04
  I think you save 50% off of your first order when you use my link,
• 6:08
  but that link might not work if somebody else used it.
• 6:11
  So back to the aura ring. When I first got it, I knew that I had been sleeping
• 6:15
  a lot because I was so tired.
• 6:17
  I got my aura ring when I was first diagnosed with Hashimoto's.
• 6:20
  I wanted to know my root causes and I wanted to be able to work on them.
• 6:24
  And I knew that sleep had to be a part of it.
• 6:27
  It had to be part of the picture because I was so exhausted and yet I felt like I wasn't sleeping well.
• 6:34
  Well, the aura ring told me that I wasn't. My deep sleep was just teeny tiny.
• 6:39
  I could be sleeping eight, nine, even 10 hours and get like less than a half an hour of deep sleep.
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  Now, technically, you need 20% of your sleep to be deep sleep.
• 6:50
  That's considered quote normal.
• 6:52
  And I was getting maybe 5%. It was abysmal. And so I really worked on my deep sleep.
• 6:59
  But that's the thing. When you have decreased sleep, then you could have increased inflammation.
• 7:04
  When you have increased inflammation, you could have increased fatigue.
• 7:08
  And when you have increased fatigue, you might not sleep very well,
• 7:11
  even though you're tired. These things go in cycles.
• 7:15
  There's also another cycle, and that is the insomnia cycle.
• 7:19
  Cycle with pain. So do you have increased pain with your Hashimoto's?
• 7:24
  Some people do. Some people have increased joint pain.
• 7:27
  Some people have pain on their skin.
• 7:29
  There's different areas where people will develop pain when they have Hashimoto's.
• 7:35
  And when you have pain, that can lead to increased insomnia.
• 7:40
  And then of course, when you're not sleeping well, then that can lead to increased
• 7:45
  inflammation, which can lead to increased pain, but increased insomnia can also
• 7:50
  directly lead to increased pain.
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  And then that cycles back and the pain leads to increased insomnia.
• 7:57
  And it's just this cycle.
• 7:59
  There's so many things in our bodies that we just want to interrupt the cycle.
• 8:03
  You know, the inflammation and the disease cycle, we want to intervene.
• 8:07
  We want to stop that that as fast as we can, because inflammation can be a root
• 8:12
  cause of Hashimoto's, as can, you know, decreased sleep.
• 8:17
  So we've got both of these things going, which both increase each other,
• 8:22
  and they are both root causes for Hashimoto's, whether it's your original Hashimoto's,
• 8:28
  or whether it's a flare up, and it's getting worse.
• 8:31
  We want to attack the things that are making our condition worse.
• 8:36
  We always want to look at root cause.
• 8:39
  Yes, we absolutely can look at symptoms too. Are there things that we can do
• 8:42
  immediately to calm things down?
• 8:45
  Of course, we want to look at that, but we always want to make sure that we
• 8:48
  are helping our bodies to stop the attack at its source. So sleeping.
• 8:55
  Is really important. Decreasing inflammation, really important.
• 8:59
  But another thing that not sleeping well or lowering our amount of sleep,
• 9:04
  another thing that that does is it straight out increases our risk for autoimmune problems.
• 9:09
  Now, is it because of the decreased sleep and the increased inflammation?
• 9:15
  I don't know, but a different study showed that, you know, just not not enough
• 9:19
  sleep increases your risk of autoimmune diseases in general.
• 9:24
  And that was autoimmune across the board. It wasn't specific Hashimoto's.
• 9:28
  It was your body is not going to know who to fight and start attacking itself.
• 9:33
  There's this one quote, and I will link the research paper in the show notes
• 9:37
  if you want to look this up.
• 9:38
  But the one quote I read, it says, sleep deprivation can promote a breakdown
• 9:45
  of immunologic self-tolerance.
• 9:47
  In other words, when you are sleep deprived, your body can't tolerate itself as well.
• 9:53
  And I don't know about you, but I have felt that. I have felt that so deeply.
• 9:59
  Like, I don't want, you know, have you ever had those days when you're just
• 10:03
  so annoyed and you don't want somebody else to go away? You want yourself self to go away.
• 10:07
  You're like, can I just escape myself for just a minute, please?
• 10:13
  It's kind of like that for your body. When you are sleep deprived,
• 10:16
  your body can't tolerate your own body as well.
• 10:21
  And we want to be able to tolerate our own body. We want to embrace who we are. You are valuable.
• 10:27
  You are valuable as a whole person. Your body, your mind, your spirit,
• 10:32
  you are valuable and we cannot separate those because you are a whole person.
• 10:39
  I'm never going to tell you that just one part of you is valuable.
• 10:43
  We know from what the Bible tells us that we will recognize other people when we get to heaven.
• 10:50
  We're not going to have our same bodies. We're going to have no more,
• 10:53
  it says in the Bible, no more death, pain, sorrow, or tears when we get to heaven.
• 10:59
  Our bodies will be made new, but we'll still have bodies.
• 11:02
  We are a whole person. We're still going to be able to think and feel and be
• 11:08
  after we die, when we get our new bodies.
• 11:10
  Isn't that really cool to think about? That you're going to recognize people.
• 11:14
  You're going to be able to see, the Bible says, your unborn baby,
• 11:17
  the babies who died before you gave birth. The moms will know them.
• 11:22
  And I have one baby in heaven I miscarried, and the boys haven't done it for
• 11:27
  a while, but they used to argue about who was going to meet them first and find
• 11:31
  out if if it's a boy or a girl.
• 11:32
  Now, I have four boys, so I'm pretty sure, you know, that's all we make is boys.
• 11:37
  Pretty sure I have a boy in heaven. But when we had a family member die,
• 11:41
  like my grandpa and my grandma have both died, then the boys would be so excited
• 11:47
  for my grandpa and grandma because they get to meet our baby who's already up in heaven.
• 11:53
  And my boys just think that is so exciting.
• 11:56
  So all that to tell you that you will have a body. Like, it's not your body that's bad.
• 12:01
  You You are valuable, all of you. It's just things are broken and we want to
• 12:05
  be able to fix them as much as possible.
• 12:08
  We don't want our bodies to be intolerant of our own bodies.
• 12:12
  We want our bodies and all of us to embrace and tolerate who we are,
• 12:19
  whether that's the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, all of it.
• 12:22
  So sleep deprivation can promote that breakdown of our self-tolerance for our immune system.
• 12:30
  And then, of course, the study, you know, goes on to say that it increases our,
• 12:35
  it being sleep deprivation, increases our risk of developing autoimmune diseases.
• 12:41
  We need to sleep. Sleep is a root cause of autoimmune problems.
• 12:47
  It also exacerbates autoimmune problems. And then autoimmune problems also make
• 12:52
  sleep hard and exacerbate our sleep problems.
• 12:56
  So it's this cycle. cycle. How can you stop the cycle?
• 13:00
  I do have a lot of ideas about sleep. I have another episode,
• 13:04
  episode 23, is all about sleep, and I give you some ideas there.
• 13:08
  But today, I want to tell you one simple thing that you can do.
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  Of course, I'm always going to tell you things that are simple and sustainable
• 13:15
  so that you can increase your health.
• 13:18
  Today, let's talk about chamomile tea.
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  Chamomile? Chamomile? How do you say it? I've always said chamomile,
• 13:26
  but I think in, you know, the Beatrix Potter,
• 13:29
  not Harry Potter, the Beatrix Potter books when, what's the bunny?
• 13:34
  Benjamin Bunny? Peter Rabbit.
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  One of them, their mom gives them chamomile tea, chamomile tea.
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  And maybe if you say it with a British
• 13:43
  accent, it sounds different than my Minnesotan accent. I don't know.
• 13:47
  You'll have to tell me on Instagram. You say chamomile, chamomile.
• 13:50
  But however you say it, it has been long said to be like the thing that you
• 13:56
  should drink at bedtime if you need to sleep better.
• 13:59
  Now, the research is kind of mixed on it. A lot of research says that chamomile
• 14:03
  tea does help you sleep better.
• 14:05
  And then others say, eh, not really.
• 14:08
  But the ritual of having tea before bed can help you.
• 14:12
  So let's talk about a bedtime ritual and including chamomile tea in that ritual.
• 14:19
  So a bedtime ritual is so important for kids.
• 14:24
  I am reading a book right now. I haven't decided if I'm going to do a bonus
• 14:28
  episode on it. It is Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas.
• 14:33
  It's a book written by a pediatrician and it's all about like how preschoolers
• 14:38
  live and how if if we lived more like preschoolers, the good ways that preschoolers
• 14:43
  live, how we could be healthier and happier.
• 14:46
  It's an interesting premise in the book. Let me know if you like those book
• 14:50
  review podcast episodes I do.
• 14:52
  I love reading and I love to be able to share what I'm reading.
• 14:55
  I just want to make sure it's valuable for you.
• 14:57
  Anyway, that book was saying that it's super important for preschoolers and
• 15:03
  toddlers to have a bedtime routine and ritual.
• 15:06
  It's just as important for you. The The things that you do towards bedtime help
• 15:12
  your brain and body and spirit prepare for sleep.
• 15:16
  Just it's, we are built for routine.
• 15:20
  That's how we are as humans. So doing the same thing each night,
• 15:24
  hopefully things that are calming is going to help you fall asleep better and
• 15:29
  stay asleep better and hopefully get deeper sleep.
• 15:32
  So one of those things that you can do is brew some chamomile tea.
• 15:36
  And why chamomile? Well, we already said, you know, Beatrix Potter,
• 15:40
  she said use it for bedtime, for sleep.
• 15:43
  But here's a crazy thing that you need to know as somebody with thyroid problems.
• 15:48
  Chamomile tea...
• 15:50
  Two to six times a week helps reduce your risk for thyroid problems by almost 80%.
• 15:59
  Isn't that mind-blowing? Something so simple as having chamomile tea at bedtime
• 16:06
  as part of your every single day ritual, it's going to reduce your risk for thyroid problems.
• 16:12
  The study that did this, they looked at a bunch of people and they were specifically
• 16:17
  looking at thyroid problems,
• 16:19
  problems thyroid cancer and then healthy people and
• 16:23
  they found out that when they had eliminated the
• 16:25
  variables drinking chamomile tea
• 16:28
  decreases your risk of thyroid cancer and other thyroid problems by 80 so what's
• 16:36
  the downside there i don't know i really don't know i mean maybe you don't like
• 16:40
  tea i get that i didn't used to like it so maybe for you if you like the tea
• 16:44
  you have have it as part of your ritual to wind down, to relax.
• 16:48
  The ritual, again, ritual of getting the water hot, steeping your tea,
• 16:55
  pouring your cup, sitting down,
• 16:57
  sipping it, enjoying a good book or something while you're drinking your tea,
• 17:01
  all of that is going to help you wind down for bed.
• 17:04
  And then the chamomile itself is going to help reduce your risk of thyroid problems.
• 17:10
  That's like a win-win. And if you don't like chamomile tea, maybe you're like,
• 17:14
  was it Peter Rabbit or Benjamin Bunny?
• 17:17
  Maybe you're like the little rabbits in the fictional story where you're drinking it as medicine.
• 17:22
  Either way, there's worse medicines, I think. I mean, anything cherry flavored
• 17:26
  or grape flavored, oh, gross. I don't like any of those artificial flavors.
• 17:30
  I had one medication as an adult and it was flavored and I called the pharmacy
• 17:35
  and said, can I please have have this in a tablet because I cannot do this artificial flavor.
• 17:41
  And they were very nice and they gave it to me as a tablet so I could just swallow
• 17:44
  it. So maybe you don't like the flavor of chamomile.
• 17:48
  They do sell chamomile as tablets, but the research that I read,
• 17:54
  it was specifically about tea.
• 17:56
  My hunch is that part of the reduction in risk is just that ritual of winding
• 18:02
  down, of having better sleep, but I don't have anything to verify that with.
• 18:06
  So some chamomile maybe is better than none. I don't know.
• 18:10
  But what I do know is that sleeping well is going to help your overall health.
• 18:16
  Sleeping well is going to reduce your risk for autoimmune problems.
• 18:20
  Sleeping well is going to increase your overall health.
• 18:25
  It's going to strengthen your immune system. When your immune system is stronger,
• 18:29
  it's not going to be as, you know, offline.
• 18:32
  It's not going to attack things that it shouldn't as much. And also when you're
• 18:36
  sleeping well, you're reducing inflammation.
• 18:39
  There's so many benefits to sleeping well. So adding some chamomile tea into
• 18:44
  your bedtime time routine or just making sure that you have a strong bedtime
• 18:47
  routine to start with, those are going to be really good for your overall health.
• 18:52
  And if you want to address other root causes, I invite you into the Holistic
• 18:57
  Hashimoto's course. That is everything that we do in that course.
• 19:00
  I help you look at your root causes and figure out simple and sustainable ways
• 19:05
  that you can have better health.
• 19:08
  Everything in that course is designed to help you help your body,
• 19:12
  mind, spirit, diet, environment, the whole you to have better health,
• 19:16
  to attack the root causes.
• 19:18
  And if you've been over to the website recently, I still have the 20 and 24 special going on.
• 19:24
  They're not used up yet. So you can come and you can get that special.
• 19:29
  It is a huge discount for the first 20 people into the course in 2024.
• 19:35
  Head down to the show notes, click the link, check it out and enroll.
• 19:38
  So not only can you save for that 2024 special, but more importantly,
• 19:43
  so that you can get started now on doing things that actually matter,
• 19:48
  that actually help your health, that actually help the root causes in a sustainable
• 19:54
  way. I never want you overwhelmed.
• 19:56
  I want you moving forward at a rate that you can do that doesn't stress you out.
• 20:01
  We want to lower worth of stress, and we want to increase your health.
• 20:04
  You are absolutely worth it. I look forward to seeing you in the course.
• 20:08
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:12
  Please be sure to discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 20:17
  Music.