The Importance of Sleep.
Kimberly Lewis October 15, 2020
A hundred years ago when you were sick the Doctor would recommend bed rest. As it turns out sleep is one of the best remedies ever. In todays hustle and bust we never seem to get enough sleep. Sleep is imperative to the health and healing processes. The latest in research shows us that when dealing with illnesses both acute (New) and chronic (Ongoing) that sleep is the one of the most important things in overcoming these health issues. Especially when it comes to autoimmune diseases and immune function.
Let us look at some of the reasons we don not get enough sleep and the reasons why we should.
We can either not fall asleep or we cannot stay asleep or both. Sometimes the reasons are obvious. The neighbor’s dog is barking all night, we are preoccupied by a thought, we are working way too much, or we are excited over an event the next day. These are normal occurrences that happen to us all.
Let us look at the mechanisms when lack of sleep is no longer in the normal category.
We have natural rhythms called circadian rhythms that help to regulate our sleep cycle. When these rhythms are disrupted, we either can not fall asleep or we cannot stay asleep. Often insomnia is caused by undetected problems can be resolved with time proper care. Simple testing can show weather your circadian rhythms are out of cycle. If so thereare programs we can use help you with to bring these cycles back online. Other factors such as reactive hypoglycemia, neuroinflammation, food allergies, sensitivity to EMF and undetected autoimmune disease will also cause fatigue and poor sleep. It is especially important to identify these triggers. The most common cause of insomnia is insulin surges. We tend to eat a high carb diet. Our insulin levels fluctuate throughout the day and every time our blood sugar gets a little low, we eat again. This is quite common and since we are carbohydrate dependent drop in insulin during sleep will cause you to wake up after 5 or five hours Regulating your blood sugar is important for this reason even in non-diabetic patients. On the other hand, lack of sleep can trigger all the above problems and make them worse, especially auto immune diseases. It is important to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night to maintain optimal health. Properly identifying the causes of sleep issues and creating a custom program to get you back on track is one of the many things we do for you at our office.