Carol’s Article

Water affects so many systems within your body that it’s impossible to maintain your energy levels if you’re not drinking sufficient amounts of just water.  People often forget to hydrate because it just isn’t on their minds.

Everyone’s different, but science tells us we should drink water to the point where your urine is clear.

Your brain needs sleep like a car needs gas; neither runs very well on empty. Among other things, the body uses sleep to stabilize chemical imbalances, to refresh areas of the brain that control mood and behaviour, help to process the memories and knowledge that are gathered throughout the day.

This is especially important during the 90-minute period known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. When it’s disturbed, the mind is generally sluggish the next day and won’t retain knowledge very well. The brain depends on sleep to re-process what is experienced during the day. Exhaustion can leave you vulnerable to forgetting important things, like a doctors appointment. Exhaustion causes us to feel threatened, as our prehistoric brains realize we aren’t able to escape life threatening danger, and this makes us especially irritable.

Being exhausted causes every aspect of your life to suffer — especially activities and exercise which require mental focus to perform those things safely. If your brain is falling behind because you are not well-rested, your ability to properly use your body in simple tasks like climbing stairs, getting in or out of chairs or bed will be reduced — add to that the havoc dehydration wreaks on performance consequences that come with poor sleep, and injury is close behind.

Our bodies are programmed to find the easy way out, which was useful 10,000 years ago when survival was difficult. Today that means our *prehistoric brains* use one night of lost sleep to cause weeks of missed walks, lousy golf games and unhealthy meals, not to mention the toll it can take on relationships.

It’s no surprise to anyone that stress prevents a good nights sleep. What is a surprise to most of us however is that the stress caused by dehydration can be at the root of exhaustion-inducing chronic insomnia.

According to research published in the journal SLEEP, nearly 2,900 men and women were interviewed about the stress in their lives, including how long it affected them, how severe it was, and how they handled the pressure over the period of a year. The research found that people who coped with stress by distracting themselves, dwelling on the issues, or trying to completely ignore it had higher instances of chronic insomnia, (characterized as three nights of insufficient sleep in a week, for a month or more).

The research also discovered that dehydration quickly turns unhealthy sleep patterns into a vicious cycle of stress and exhaustion, fueling one other.

The researchers suggested using mindfulness techniques to ease stress as a better way to cope than ignoring the problem or using distraction.

Breathing exercises, relaxed walks and sipping water all day were the three most effective techniques.

The more exhausted you are, the more you crave high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods. Exhaustion often stimulates the body to produce higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. To decrease cortisol, your brain will often seek out a hit of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is a calming hormone. An easy way to activate this hormone is by ingesting comfort foods full of carbs and fat.  All that junk food can wind up making you even more exhausted, as the empty calories fulfill the bodies cravings for WATER. With highly processed, highly glycemic foods like soft drinks, candy bars, or bagels, blood sugar and insulin levels will rise, actually causing blood sugar to plummet, and dehydration sends the body into panic mode. The brain triggers even stronger cravings for something full of sugar, fat, and calories, and the never ending cycle continues.

Instead of reaching for comforting junk food, fueling the body with healthy low-glycemic foods like fruits and whole grains that can help stabilize your blood sugar and keep your insulin levels from swinging wildly in either direction. Also drinking WATER, which is what the body is actually craving, suppresses the appetite.

In a study in the journal Sleep Medicine, 61 study participants slept for eight hours for one night. The next night, their rest was interrupted by four phone calls that instructed them to finish a short computer challenge before they could continue sleeping. Researchers found that after a night of fragmented sleep, people experienced worse moods along with weaker attention spans, suggesting that interrupted sleep might be as detrimental as the exhaustion that comes from full-on sleep deprivation.

Dealing with interrupted sleep, or going to bed way later than you should is called *Bedtime procrastination* by sleep medicine specialists. In a study in Frontiers in Medicine researchers reported that they discovered that on nights when the 177 participants reported procrastinating their zzz’s, they had slept less and it had been much worse quality sleep. They also experienced more intense fatigue, listlessness and depression the next day.

They determined that people need to set a bedtime and stick to it, counting back seven hours from when they need to wake up, to determine the ideal start to the *sleep latency* period, or falling asleep time.  They advise decreasing stimulation 30 minutes before sleep by shutting off cell phones, televisions and other devices, and sipping water mindfully.

So… I tried it!!

I can honestly say it works! Give it a try!

TURN OFF the cellphone, tablet, computer and TV.
TURN ON the relaxation for 1/2 an hour before climbing into bed.
TURN UP your water consumption!