In Part 1 of this topic, I opened up about life when your kids won’t sleep. In this podcast episode, I dive into a little more of what sleep deprivation and sleep interruption can do to your body… and what it means for the way you eat, your decision making, your body fat storage and more.
Disclaimer: This podcast does not constitute medical advice. You should always speak to your doctor before changing your nutrition or exercise habits.
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WHEN YOUR KIDS WON’T SLEEP – PART 2- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Alright, friends, what is up, you can tell the PEP is back in my voice, I got a full night’s sleep last night, my husband got up to go sleep with the little one last night. And for once I didn’t even hear him out of bed. It was amazing. I had a full night’s sleep well, actually, I lied around four in the morning, somebody’s car alarm went off right outside my house. So that did wake me up. But still, I’m feeling good today. So I’m excited to finish our conversation about sleep deprivation and the impact on our bodies. And I’ve got to warn you guys, I have about 4000 tabs open on my computer because I’ve been refreshing myself about the research and any updates to all morning. So we’re gonna dive into this because it is really amazing when we really acknowledge the impact that sleep deprivation has on our bodies. And the first place that I want to start is related to a topic that I already covered. When we talked about emotional eating.
When our brain becomes fatigued or overwhelmed, we have difficulty making good decisions, we become impulsive, right, I talked about how emotional eating can sometimes actually be something called brain dead eating. And certainly having interrupted sleep or not getting enough sleep definitely impacts your brain in a similar way and makes it more difficult for you to make measured decisions about what you’re putting in your mouth, right. So you’re automatically at risk for eating things that maybe don’t necessarily serve your body. Right. And I do want to point out before we start that sleep deprivation in the scientific studies that I’ve been looking at this morning has been defined as seven hours or less of sleep. So I think for some of you guys, this is bad news for you. Because I really know many moms do not sleep seven hours, seven hours is like a good night’s sleep for them. So according to scientists, seven hours or less constitutes sleep deprivation. Now looking through the studies, I noticed that there was a big difference, not necessarily a big difference.
But some studies were specifically on sleep deprivation, like slept less than seven hours. And then there’s a whole other group of researchers that are studying sleep interruption. So sleep interruption is what most of us are experiencing as mom’s sleep deprivation would be more. So if you’re like staying up really late, or waking up early and not getting enough sleep. But that sleep isn’t interrupted the sleep interruption is when you’re waking up a bunch of times a night with your children. Maybe you’re technically in your bed for seven to eight hours. But you’re being woken up during that right. So some of us might even have a combination of both, maybe you’re only getting seven hours of sleep and that sleep is interrupted. But what I found when I was looking at a few research studies is that they’re generally acknowledging that the impact is similar. Which means for me, when I look at studies on sleep deprivation, the impact that’s discussed in those studies is probably going to be pretty similar to the impact of sleep interruption. So that is super, super interesting to me.
But I’m a giant nerd. So I’ll try to move on to stuff that may be more interesting to you. There are a lot of research studies out there on sleep deprivation. And in general, you have to be careful with research because some studies are better done than others. Some of them only look at like statistics of what we call correlation. And then some of them are controlled studies, which mean they split. They split the subjects into two groups. One group is the control group, which is not having anything done to them. And then one group is the experimental group, which would be having the experimental condition, right. So we’re always looking for the highest quality research studies. And it gets kind of tricky when you’re looking at research these days because there’s just so much of it. There’s just so much of it, but I’ve tried to pick out a couple of things for you guys that will be really good. Okay,
Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, they did a review of 18 different controlled lab studies, which is really great news for practitioners like me, because it’s really hard to go and read 18 studies and draw conclusions yourself, right? So these big journals will go and will do what’s called a meta analysis where they take the results of other well crafted studies, and they do statistics processing, and they’re able to draw conclusions about it, right. So they found their big effects on your appetite hormones, specifically, your ghrelin and your leptin. If you guys don’t know, ghrelin is the hormone that lets you know that you’re hungry. If you walk into a room and you smell a delicious pot of pasta and meat sauce, and you weren’t previously hungry, your body will release ghrelin in response to that smell and you will become hungry, like just because you’re around the hunger, right? It is your hunger hormone. It’s sort of little buddy that does the opposite thing as leptin, leptin tells you that you’re a full the more leptin you have in your system, the more satiated you feel. So they’re opposites.
The more ghrelin you have, the hungrier you have. You are, excuse me, the more leptin you have, the more satiated you are. And they said In one study, after just two nights of getting four hours sleep test subjects had a 28% Higher ghrelin hormone, that’s the one that makes you hungry, and 18%, lower leptin. So they have an increase in the hunger hormone and a decrease in the SI Shi ation hormone, compared to subjects who had 10 hours a night in bed right after just two days. And I think most of us know that right? Like we’ve experienced, being sleep deprived and being hungry, right. They also had the people in the study self report, their hunger and appetite ratings. And they said that after the sleep deprivation, of sleeping four hours a night for just two nights, their hunger increased by 24%, and 23%, respectively, the 24% was for hunger 23% was for appetite. So that is nearly a 25% increase in how hungry you are when you don’t sleep, which is a huge deal, huge deal. The researchers also noted that for the subjects, their greatest increase in appetite rating was for energy dense, high carbohydrate foods, that is what they want it now I don’t know that anybody knows why this happens. If I was going to kind of throw out a hypothesis, I would say your brain is really tired, because you’re sleep deprived, and your brain functions on carbohydrates or functions on glucose. So maybe the brain is trying to like deal with its life and just try to make things better. And it’s like, just give me more carbs. Like that’s the only thing that’s gonna make it better. I need carbs.
I don’t know that we’re not sure yet. There have been other studies that have shown that people who are sleep deprived want more fat and more saturated fat, that is still kind of out as far as the jury goes. But I think it’s pretty interesting. And there’s a lot of research going on in sleep deprivation. Now that is not completely cemented. I will say that not all subjects are excuse me, not all research studies find these differences in hormone levels, but it is becoming more and more prevalent in research studies that they’re detecting these differences in ghrelin. And in leptin. In general, when they analyze people who are sleep deprived, they find that usually they eat between 304 100 more calories daily than those who don’t. And there could be a couple different reasons for this. For the people who are sleep deprived, and going to bed late or waking up early, the more hours you’re awake, the more you are going to eat. That’s just logical, you just have more time in which to eat.
I remember when I was preparing for a bikini competition years ago, one of the common pieces of advice in the bodybuilding community, when you’re trying to diet and lose body fat for a competition is go to sleep as early as you can, because the earlier you go to sleep, the less likely you will be to eat right. So it makes sense. It’s kind of like a piece of wisdom. But then on top of that, when you layer the changes in the hunger hormones on top of it, it could be a really big deal for the difference in how many calories you’re eating on a daily basis. So I think that is pretty cool, the low circulating leptin levels and the additional time spent away then we couple that with what we know about impulse control and delayed gratification. And it makes a lot of sense right. Now, another study that is really interesting came out in the year 2000 out of Yale University and it was one of the first studies that had really focused on research subjects who were not overweight. So in the past, when they’ve done sleep deprivation studies, they oftentimes focused on women who are already overweight or obese. This one was the first one that was done on people who were of an average body fat right and They were studying the stress hormone cortisol. If you guys have heard of cortisol, this is something that’s released in response to stress. So anything that’s a stressor on our body during exercise, for example, during a single bout of exercise, our bodies release cortisol, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it goes away after exercise. And then we become more resilient for other stressors and produce less cortisol because of exercise. But that’s just an example of how our body reacts to that stress, right.
Also, anytime your cell phone buzzes when you get those notifications, there have been research studies that show that Cortisol is released. And then sleep deprivation, hello, when you’re not sleeping, it’s definitely going to increase your cortisol, right. So what they found is that when you are vulnerable to the effects of stress, when you have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, you are more likely to have excess abdominal fat. And I will tell you guys, I noticed this big time once I started having kids. And it’s a huge deal for me, I naturally store most of my fat in my abdomen anyways. But I think when we talk about the mom belly, a lot of women don’t realize that that can be related to cortisol, not just from sleep deprivation, but just from generally being stressed out. And I’m going to do a whole episode about why I quit drinking coffee and what was going on with with my coffee consumption. But I will tell you guys, when I quit drinking coffee, I noticed a significant difference in the appearance of my belly and how my body fat was stored.
And of course, like, it can be hard sometimes to take these anecdotal observations and trust them, because as women, oftentimes we have really poor perceptions around our body. But I do really think that this happened, it feels really different to me now. And I do know that when I started not sleeping, I felt like that area of my body changed. And it’s hard to tell sometimes, because you know, your stomach has already stretched out from having a bunch of children. For me, I have to diathesis recti, my skin is stretched out, especially got stretched out after the third kid. So then you layer that body fat. On top of it, the fact that you’re storing more body fat there, and it really feels crazy for us, right? So a good night’s sleep and reducing our cortisol can actually have an impact on the appearance of our belly without necessarily having to have a change in the rest of your body fat, which I think is really, really cool.
So that research study came out of Yale, which was great. Oh, let me see, what else did I want to talk to you guys about? I’m going to scroll through my tabs here, kind of scroll through my tabs. A lot of these relationships apply to men as well. But I will tell you, when I look. In research studies there, there are less studies that focus on the gender differences between men and women. And there were a few studies that I looked at, where the researchers said that the impact on the body was different for women than for men. So if you’re wondering why you have a bunch of children, and your husband is still a hottie, well just know, just know that our hormones can work a little bit different than our hubbies.
Okay, I want to back up to what I was talking about with the abdominal fat because I missed an important part here. So when it comes to storing abdominal fat, I kind of came at it from the angle of we all want to feel good in our bodies, but there’s actually some real risk as far as health goes from storing your body fat in that particular area. When it comes to storing body fat, you have to understand that there are two types of fat, right, there’s subcutaneous fat, which is underneath the skin, right? It’s the fact that you’re most commonly aware of, then there’s abdominal fat, abdominal fat, can come in a different form, as well, you do have subcutaneous abdominal fat, but then you have something called visceral fat, which is located around your organs. So if you were to have surgery, and the doctor was to go in there and poke around your organs, there would be fat around it, but it would be different than the fat under your skin. It would be a special type of fat called visceral fat. And this, according to researchers is really turning out to be the villain when it comes to disease risk and abdominal fat. So if you have a lot of fat in your abdomen, it probably is more so that visceral fat which they call visceral obesity, and it’s linked to overactivity of your stress response, which raises blood pressure, blood sugar levels and cardiac risk, right.
There’s also something that researchers are becoming concerned with called lipid toxicity because unlike your subcutaneous fat, those visceral fat cells release their metabolic byproducts directly into the blood supply of your organs, particularly what they’re concerned with is carrying that blood straight to the liver. So because of that, those visceral fat cells that They’re already kind of these things, cells that are stuffed with excess fat, they pour out these free fatty acids into the liver. And when free fatty acids accumulate in the liver, the pancreas, the heart and other organs, this can be really detrimental for our health, according to researchers, and scientists. So these free fatty acids accumulate in the cells, but they’re not becoming fat. What’s happening as a result is organ dysfunction, which produces difficulty with your regulation of your insulin, your blood sugar, your cholesterol, and sometimes even abnormal heart function, according to researchers.
So these are all just potential hazards of having that abdominal fat building app. And I know I know right now that this is getting kind of dark and stormy. And I want to try to circle back and give you guys a little bit of hope and some, some strategies and stuff, right? Because I know that if you’re truly dealing with sleep deprivation, because of your kids, you have very little control over what’s happening, right? Like, even though you know that this is a big challenge, and it’s not good for your body, you’re like, great, like, what can I really do about it? Well, obviously, trying to get some sleep is really helpful. So if there’s any way that you can pair off with a partner, have a conversation with them about exactly how bad it is for your body, and how much you guys have to take care of each other. I think that sometimes it’s really easy, when you have kids to just like, try to get through every day just surviving. And so you miss out on having this conversation, right, you keep brushing it aside, because you’re super busy.
So I want you guys to prioritize having this conversation with your partner like this – considering the health issues and the health risk from not sleeping, you guys at least need to figure out how to work together as a team to get some rest. And if you can’t do that, you know, there are some people who invest in night nannies and night nurses. And a lot of times we’re very hesitant to invest in ourselves as women. But this is something where it’s like, it’s literally your health, it’s your sanity, it’s your cardiovascular health risk. So
if you’re ever going to use money on something that was important, you know, at least maybe even just a couple nights a week of having somebody come and help you get some rest is a really, really big deal for your health. Second, you’ve got to minimize stress elsewhere and give your brain some rest elsewhere. I know this is a big task. This is something that you know, as wellness strategist, it would take me a whole session to work with my students around finding ways to give your brain rest and to reduce your stress. But if you know that you can’t control the stress that’s coming out of not sleeping, you have to find every other avenue of stress that you can control and every other opportunity to give your brain a break that you can control. Okay, last tidbit that I want to share. This comes out of the researchers at Harvard Medical School, and some of the resources through Harvard health publishing, sleep deprivation can increase your inflammation. And if you’re, you’ve probably heard about inflammation a lot. It is a huge buzzword. It’s often used and abused and turned into this reason to like do anti inflammatory diets which guys, I do not have enough time in this podcast episode to cover my opinions on like all the anti inflammatory diets and people’s fear of inflammation. But for the conversation that we’re having, it makes sense to mention that inadequate sleep can elevate your inflammation.
So that can be a big deal for those of you who are suffering with inflammation related challenges like I know I had, I had Hashimotos hypothyroidism for a while rheumatoid arthritis is up there. There’s even research that many mental illnesses can be related to inflammation of the brain, inflammatory bowel diseases up there, there’s just a lot of things that can really be aggravated by enhanced inflammation in your body. So that is the last big way that that is happening. Whew, that was a lot, a lot of stuff. And I feel like maybe I should have some sort of an artful ending to this, but I don’t I’m just really tired from spewing all the information out there. So I hope it was an aha moment for you guys. I would love to hear what your aha moments were because I’ve known this information for so long that I forget sometimes how it can impact people who are new to it. So make sure you tag me in your Instagram Stories, head over to the official podcast Facebook group, share how this impacted you. You can even send me an email if you know my email address. And that’s it. I’m going to go rest. I just got some kombucha on target pickup and I’ve got 45 minutes before my next client and I’m just gonna go rest a little bit. So wishing you guys a wonderful day and I think next week I will talk about my journey with quitting Coffee so make sure you tune in. I will talk to you guys soon have you joined at the Rock Your Wellness podcast official Facebook group? If not, what are you waiting for? It is the best place to continue conversation about these episodes and get to know your fellow listeners. If you’d like to do that and be linked in the show notes for this episode. I can’t wait to see you there.