Latest / Common Sense Health / Sleep: The Missing Piece Of Your Health Puzzle
Transcript
- Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Hello. Today I want to talk about sleep because sleep is one of those things that everybody knows is important but many people still treat as optional. This is actually part of a longer lesson that I use inside my metabolic reset programme, but I wanted to share a version of it here as well because whether you are low carb, keto, carnivore, or just trying to improve your health generally, sleep is one of those foundational things that can make everything else either easier or much harder. And that is the bit people often miss. I mean we can talk about food and carbohydrates and insulin and protein and fat or exercise, supplements, blood glucose, fasting, and all the other things people love arguing about online. But if sleep is poor, the whole system has a harder time working properly. And sleep matters for repair. It matters for recovery, it matters for appetite, it matters for cravings, it matters for your blood glucose. It matters for mood and energy, decision making, hormones, immune function, and metabolic health. So in other words, it's quite important. Which is annoying because many of us would quite like to believe we can just sleep five hours, drink loads of coffee, power through and somehow expect the body to behave like a well maintained machine. Unfortunately, the body is not quite that gullible. Now things we need to look at first. I don't Do not want to get too obsessed with the idea that there is one perfect number of the hours of sleep that every single person must sleep through every night. You will often hear that everyone needs eight hours. And for many people, around seven to nine hours is probably a sensible general range, but we are not all identical. Some people genuinely feel well on a lot less sleep, others need a lot more. Sleep needs can change with age and stress and Or illness, how you train your recovery, hormones, the work demands, parenting and and whether your dog has decided that three in the morning is the ideal time to begin a personal security patrol of the kitchen. So rather than obsessing over one magic number, I think it's more useful to think about sleep quantity and sleep quality. How long are you sleeping? But also is that sleep actually restoring you? Because you can be in bed for eight hours and still wake up feeding night you've been folded up into a suitcase and posted somewhere unpleasant. Sleep is not just about being unconscious for a certain amount of time. Sleep is an active recovery state. It is not the brain switching off, it is the body doing essential work. So when you fall asleep, your physiology does change. So your body temperature drops, your heart rate slows, your breathing slows, your muscles relax, and your energy expenditure changes. Brain activity changes and hormones change. The immune system is active. Memory processing takes place. Repair and restoration are taking place. So sleep is not wasted time, it is not laziness, it is not the thing you do when you are finished being productive. Sleep is part of what allows you to be productive and it makes you stable and focused and metabolically healthier when you are awake. So trying to improve your health while ignoring sleep is a bit like trying to renovate a house while refusing to let the builders in. It may look determined, but it is not joined up thinking. Now, sleep happens in cycles. Broadly we talk about non-REM sleep and REM sleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement. The early stages of sleep are lighter and This is where you are drifting off and your body begins to slow down and your breathing and heart rate begin to settle, and you can still be woken up quite easily. This is a stage when someone says to you, Are you asleep? And you say no, even though you absolutely were, and now you are awake, slightly irritated and wondering if this relationship needs a full review. if you get through that, becomes more stable, your body temperature drops further, muscles relax more, and the brain begins producing patterns of activity that help protect the sleep and support memory processing. So we get into deeper sleep after that, often called slow wave sleep or delta sleep. This is incredibly important for physical recovery. This is where the body is doing a lot of repair and restoration. growth hormone secretion is much higher, tissue repair is supported, immune function is influenced, then the body is doing maintenance work that you cannot replace with willpower or motivational quotes or another coffee. Deep sleep is also important for brain function, memory and clear thinking. If you have ever had a terrible night's sleep and then tried to make a decision the next day you know exactly why this matters. Everything just feels harder. Food choices are harder. You know, exercise is harder. Patience is harder. Not ordering something ridiculous online at eleven o'clock at night becomes harder. And then there is the REM sleep. This is the stage most strongly associated with vivid dreaming, although dreams can happen at other stages as well. REM sleep is important for learning and for memory, emotional processing and brain health. Interestingly, more REM sleep tends to happen in the second half of the night, which means if you are regularly Cutting sleep short, you may be losing a meaningful amount of REM sleep. So sleep is not just one thing, it is a cycle, and the body moves through these stages several times during the night. Earlier in the night we often get more deep sleep. Later in the night REM sleep tends to become more prominent. That means both ends matter. If you are constantly going to bed too late, you may compromise that deep sleep. If you constantly wake up too early, you may be compromising REM sleep. And if you do both, you have to basically find a way to make your body run like a car without taking off the handbrake while complaining that you feel sluggish. So now one of the systems involved in sleep is called the homeostatic sleep drive, which is just a fancy term for sleep pressure. In simple terms, the longer you are awake, the more pressure builds to sleep. One of the molecules involved in this is adenosine. Adenazine builds up while you are awake and contributes to the feeling of sleepiness. This is where caffeine comes in. Caffeine does not remove your need for sleep, it blocks some of the signaling that tells you sleep pressure is building. So you may feel more alert, but the sleep pressure has not actually disappeared. It is more like stuffing those unpaid bills into a drawer and declaring yourself. I'm financially free. At some point the body still wants payment. And that is why caffeine timing matters. Some people can have coffee later in the day and sleep perfectly well, but other people cannot. Some people metabolize caffeine quite quickly. Others are still being personally sponsored by Lunchtime Expresso at midnight. So if sleep is poor, it is worth looking at caffeine. Not necessarily removing it altogether, but maybe moving it earlier in the day and seeing what happens. The other major system involved in sleep is your circadian rhythm, which is your internal body clock. This helps regulate when you feel awake, when you feel sleepy, and your body temperature, hormone patterns, digestive alert digestion alertness, and many other processes. And one of the strongest signals for your circadian rhythm is light. Morning light helps tell the brain it's daytime, and darkness in the evening helps tell the body it is time to prepare for sleep. Simple. The problem is modern life often gets this completely backwards. Many people spend the morning indoors away from natural light, then in the evening they sit under bright artificial lights, staring at phones and laptops and televisions, giving the brain the message that apparently it's midday in a casino. Then we wonder why sleep feels difficult. So two important chemicals here are serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin is involved in mood and In appetite, well being and other processes, and it is also part of the pathway that can lead to the melatonin production. Now melatonin is often called the sleep hormone, but I think it is better to think of it as a darkness signal. It helps tell the body that it is nighttime. Your body tends to produce more melatonin in darkness and less in bright light. So if you are blasting yourself with bright light late at night, especially from screens close to your face, Well that may not be helping. You do not need to live in a cave after sunset, although that would probably make avoiding late night snacks a bit easier. But you do need to be sensible. Morning light in, evening light down. You know, screens managed, bedroom dark. That's the basic idea. Now let's bring this back to metabolic health. So poor sleep can affect appetite. Many people notice that after a bad night's sleep, they are hungrier the next day and cravings are stronger. They want quick energy. They want snacks. They want more food. They are more likely to look at a packet of biscuits and think it has a a meaningful Reason to be used. That is not a character flaw. This is physiology. Poor sleep can affect hunger and satiety humans. It can affect impulse control. It can make the brain more interested in high reward foods. It can make it much harder to stick to a plan. So if you're trying to reduce carbohydrates or cut grains or stop grazing or move towards keto or carnivore, sleep can either support you or make the whole thing feel unnecessarily difficult. So poor sleep. is also able to affect your blood glucose. Some people will eat well, do everything right with the food, and then notice higher morning glucose after a terrible night's sleep. And that is because the body is not only responding to food, it is responding to the whole environment. Yes, food matters, but sleep matters, stress matters, movement matters, and light matters. And this is the joined up thinking and this is why I think sleep deserves a place in any serious conversation about metabolic health, because If someone is tired or stressed, underslept and running on caffeine and willpower, it is much harder for them to make good decisions constantly. So what can you do? Let's keep it simple. First, try to get that natural light early in the day. Even a few minutes outside can help. You do not need to stare directly at the sun like you're trying to download wisdom through your retinas. Just get outside, get daylight into your system and help anchor your body clock. Second, Reduce bright light in the evening. Dim the lights if you can, reduce your screen brightness, use night settings, give the brain a message that the day is winding down. And third, look at caffeine timing. If sleep is poor, try moving caffeine earlier and see whether that helps. Fourth, make the bedroom dark. Make it cool and quiet as possible. A dark room supports melatonin signaling. A cooler room also often helps sleep. If noise is an issue, use whatever work, earplugs, white noise, or politely asking the household not to recreate a small festival outside your bedroom door. And fifth, build a simple window routine. This doesn't need to be elaborate, it might be just reading or stretching. Some people it's a shower, preparing for the next day, or simply getting away from stimulating screens and arguments with strangers online. And sixth, Pay attention to late eating. Now some people sleep fine after eating late, but others do not. If late meals or alcohol or sweeteners or dairy or snacking affects your sleep, you know that's useful information. And finally, do not panic about one poor night. One bad night is not the end of the world. The issue is when poor sleep becomes a routine. If you have had a bad night, get back to your normal rhythm the next day if possible. Get the daylight, eat properly, avoid turning it into a week of chaos. So if you take one thing from this video, let it be this. Sleep is not separate from metabolic health. It is part of the system. If sleep is poor, appetite can increase, cravings can become stronger, blood glucose may be less stable, stress can feel harder to manage, and food choices can become more difficult. But if sleep improves, the whole process often feels easier. You don't need to become perfect. You do not need to turn bedtime into a military operation involving blackout curtains, a sleep tracker, blue light glasses, magnesium rituals, and a formal apology to your circadian rhythm, but you do need to take sleep seriously because a tired body is harder to heal, harder to regulate and much harder to negotiate with when biscuits start whispering from the cupboard. And this is sort of part of a bigger picture I teach inside the metabolic reset. The fall program is a comprehensive thing. 30 day reset with a video lesson for every day, a student handout for every subject, and 20 live events you can take part in across the 30 days. So if you want the full structure program, the link is in the description. But for today, keep it simple, eat proper food, protect your sleep, get morning light, dim the lights in the evening, watch the caffeine and give your body the chance to repair. And I'll see you in the next video. Links to everything are in the description.