Manage Stress

Is it me or are most people pre-wired for high anxiety and the go-go-go mentality? Work pressures. The economy. Life drama. No matter what day it is, you can bet there’s something going on that is making your blood boil. You don’t see it, but it’s killing you.

Chronic stress is linked to six of the leading causes of death. The link between stress and diabetes is hormonal. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a stress hormone that increases with severe or prolonged stress. The main effect of the hormone is increased food intake, increased proportion of energy stored as fat, and decreased physical activity. Uh oh. If you read the post on preventing diabetes, you know that excess fat, especially in the belly area, significantly increases your diabetes risk.

Point well taken. So how the heck do you calm down? My quick tips for stress management are very basic.

1. Say “no.” Don’t put too much on your plate. The overcommitment increases stress levels, eats up valuable free time for nutrition and exercise, and frankly wears you out unnecessarily.
2. Just breath. When you feel the stress piling on, take five minutes and lie on your back in a quiet room only focusing on your breath. The drop in blood pressure also allows your crazed stress hormones to take a reprieve.
3. Sip on herbal tea. Teas like peppermint, ginger, or chamomile are very soothing and help you come down from that stress frazzle.

But there’s one more thing that can weigh down the risk for diabetes. Yes, sleep.

Sleep

Research shows that people who get less than six hours of sleep are 4.5 times more likely to have problems controlling their blood sugar – and that, my friends, leads to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. What’s more, lack of sleep also throws your hungry/full hormones out of whack so when you don’t get sleep, you’re hormonally hungrier the next day thanks to higher levels of ghrelin (the “grow” hormone).

So, cheat yourself of sleep (maybe due to poor stress management) and now you’re hunger hormone is raging like a teenage boy at cheer camp. Of course you’re going to overeat and gain weight, which takes us back to our “top three” ways of preventing diabetes… eating healthy, exercising, and losing weight.

Behavior change starts with awareness. What can you do today to make yourself more aware of your behaviors?

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Sleep and Relax to Prevent Diabetes

Tryptophan, Serotonin and Melatonin

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid (protein building block the body cannot make). It is high in many protein rich foods, like turkey. Tryptophan helps build muscle like other amino acids, but it is also a specific precursor of serotonin. Nearly all serotonin is in the gut where it regulates GI movement, but about 20% is actually dispersed in the central nervous system (CNS) where it regulates mood, appetite, sleep, muscle contraction, and some cognitive functions including memory and learning. Some serotonin can become melatonin, which regulates your sleep/wake cycles.

Besides turkey, your starchy foods like rolls, potatoes and stuffing have something to do with the “food coma” that ensues. The insulin your pancreas releases after eating carbs does its job, which is partially to pull essential amino acids into muscle (yay for muscle building), but there is one lonely amino acid that doesn’t go into cells…  tryptophan. This amino acid didn’t get an invite to the party, and so left alone in the blood it increases serotonin levels and sleep eventually comes along.

Perhaps the real question is “Who cares? What’s wrong with enjoying a hearty meal with family and napping yourself into a more relaxed and carefree state, at least for a day?” If you ask me, we don’t really rest enough and enjoy our families as we should. Our inability to slow down does more to wreck our weight management hormones than one gut-busting, coma-inducing turkey dinner. Nevertheless, your best bet is balance. Strike a “happy middle” with the desire to enjoy food and the urge to overeat.

Here’s are some Turkey Day Eating Tips:

• Most meals are 1000+ calories per plate! So stick to one plate, and that’s it. Include some green vegetables on that plate. Take a little of everything that looks good and enjoy each bite. You shouldn’t need a fork lift to lift your fork!

• Start with a healthy breakfast – stay full with oatmeal made with cranberries and walnuts and have a morning snack of a handful of nuts and low-fat cheese. Try this recipe for Simple Mashed Cranberries.

• Don’t compete for the award for biggest plate and cleanest plate. Just enjoy the conversation and company. This is not about the food. It’s about people.

• Instead of seconds, have a cup of hot peppermint or ginger tea to aid in digestion and put off the dessert a couple hours.

• Make a “top crust” apple pie with thinly sliced apples. They bake crispy and people love the look and it has less guilt!

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How to Avoid the Thanksgiving Food Coma

A quarter of those surveyed who were unemployed said they didn’t get enough rest any night in the last 30 days.

The study seems to confirm the anecdotal belief that west coasters are more laid back than the east coast. Twelve of the 14 best-sleeping states were west of the Mississippi.

The report wasn’t very in depth, as they just asked people about their perception of how much sleep they got, not the actual hours.

The Health Consequences

Sleep problems can lead to other health problems, surprisingly maybe even diabetes. Researchers aren’t quite sure if lack of sleep directly causes diabetes or if it’s associated in some other way. But, even a remote piece of evidence should be enough to think twice about watching your favorite late night talk show.

Sleep Aids

Exercise is a great way to help your sleep problems… assuming you aren’t just staying up late by choice. The National Sleep Foundation reports that afternoon exercise can help with deeper sleep, and even cut down the amount of time it takes for you to fall asleep. Evening exercise may have the opposite effect, while morning workouts seem to get the best results.

Keep in mind that there may be occasions when prescribed sleep aids are appropriate, but they shouldn’t be seen as the long-term answer.

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Americans Aren’t Getting Enough Sleep

Remember, if you are not breaking a sweat, you are not working hard enough!

So, putting exercise aside, being healthy mentally and physically requires a lot more than just getting the heart rate up. Below are 10 simple ways to a healthier you! Each of the following will help increase your energy levels and in turn, better workouts and more productive days will be the result.

1. Rest: Get six to eight hours of sleep a night
2. See the Doctor: Schedule regular doctor/dentist visits
3. Relax: Find time to relax and enjoy life
4. Be More Active: Find ways to get the heart rate up more throughout the day, in addition to exercising
5. Laugh: Find time to laugh
6. Eliminate Stress: Avoid stressful situations and try not to worry as much
7. Help Someone: Giving back has been proven to offer health rewards
8. Get a Hobby: Can help you enjoy life more as well as reduce stress levels
9. Try Something New: Try something new each week or weekend (dancing, hiking, etc.)
10. Smile: Reduces stress and it seems to be contagious

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10 Simple Ways to a Healthier You

Researchers fed mice a high-fat diet during the normal time they ate. Those mice gained about 20 percent of their weight over a six-week period. But, when the researchers fed other mice the same diet, but during the time that they would normally be sleeping, those mice put on 48 percent of their weight.

While these results need to be duplicated in a human study, the researchers believe that the results will be the same.

The popular slogan “calories in/calories out” to describe how you lose weight via a calorie deficit may be oversimplifying it a bit.

“How or why a person gains weight is very complicated, but it clearly is not just calories in and calories out,” says the study’s leader Fred Turek, professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern University. “We think some factors are under circadian control. Better timing of meals, which would require a change in behavior, could be a critical element in slowing the ever-increasing incidence of obesity.”

More research is certainly needed. Not just because the findings need to be duplicated in a human study, but a similar study involving monkeys concluded that late-night snacking didn’t cause extra weight gain.

The difference between the studies may hold the key.

In the monkey study, only a portion of the monkeys’ food that they ate was eaten at the time that they should be sleeping. A bit like late-night snacking. But, in the mice study, their whole diet was consumed when the mice should have been sleeping.

That seems a bit extreme, since nobody I know eats breakfast, lunch and dinner between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

(via: MSNBC)

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Eating During Sleep Hours May Cause Weight Gain

This past spring, researchers found that people who get less than six hours of sleep each night are more likely to develop impaired fasting glucose, or pre-diabetes.

A more recent study of five men and six women varied their sleep time for 14-day periods. The subjects averaged 40 years old. And while they were all a little overweight, they were otherwise healthy. The participants stayed in a lab where their sleep, activity, diet, and blood chemistry were monitored.

During one period, they were allowed no more than 5.5 hours of sleep each day. When their sleeping time was shortened, the volunteers’ blood sugar was higher on a glucose-tolerance test.

The researchers also restricted them from exercise, and made junk food available. Not surprisingly, they gained more than four pounds on average.

“If confirmed by future larger studies, these results would indicate that a healthy lifestyle should include not only healthy eating habits and adequate amounts of physical activity, but also obtaining a sufficient amount of sleep,” says University of Chicago researcher Plamen Penev, MD, PhD who led the study.

(via: WebMD)

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Lack of Sleep Can Cause Diabetes

1. Dieting at Night – The key to weight loss is eating, believe it or not. You need to fuel your body with healthy food during the day, starting with breakfast and have a lighter dinner; then let the dieting begin right when you are winding down. I usually tell my clients to focus on “protein and produce” at dinner. Swap your salad at lunch for a tuna wrap (choose either light mayo or cheese not both) and have an entree salad at dinner.

2. Controlling Alcohol Intake – This is probably the #1 behavior I see with clients who are trying to lose weight when they first come in. They say they drink 1-2 times a week, but then their food journal shows 2 glasses of wine. When we talk about weekends they usually have 1-2 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That’s almost half of the week people. That adds up to 600 extra calories that you aren’t getting from food, let alone the temptation to eat salty snacks with alcoholic drinks. If you take my advice, you’ll limit alcohol to 1-2 drinks once a week.

3. Sleeping 7-8 hours most nights of the week. Turn off the T.V. Stop surfing the ‘net. You have to get sleep if you want to lose weight. Sleep allows you to recover from your workouts (that you ARE doing because you know you will do better with long term weight loss if you exercise.) Sleep also keeps your hormone balance in check, especially leptin and ghrelin. According to researchers at Stanford, people with short sleep (5 hours a night) have reduced leptin (thin hormone) and elevated ghrelin (hunger hormone). Based on what the hormones do in the body, the researchers claimed the differences in leptin and ghrelin are likely to increase appetite, possibly explaining the increased BMI observed with short sleep duration.

4. Fitting in the Veggies. It might sound old, but you need your veggies. The fiber makes them filling. The low calories makes them “figure friendly,” the phytochemicals and antioxidants help prevent diseases (like many cancers), and they help repair blood vessel damage. Try these fun ways to have veggie “finger foods” on the go:

• celery and almond butter
• avocado stuffed cherry tomatoes
• blanched broccoli with lemon
• prosciutto wrapped asparagus

All these choices make great snacks! Personally, I recommend that people keep carbs as low as possible at snacks and save them for meal times.

5. Eating Mindfully. Mindfulness is a state of being aware, ‘in the moment,’ present, and engaged. Rarely do we spend time in the day being truly mindful, especially when it comes to food. It’s amazing the mental and emotional transformation that happens when people take back the pleasure of eating. When you choose nourishing foods and take your time to enjoy them bite-by-bite, you engage all your senses – not just “taste.” Notice the colors, smell the aroma, appreciate your food choice for all the ways it is going to give health to your body.

All of a sudden, the drive-through window and 100-calorie packs become less appealing. If you make one change, try making each meal last 30 minutes and spend the first five engaging all your senses except taste. When eating mindfully, you will notice that it gets easier to choose healthy from the start and stop eating when you feel satisfied not when the plate is clear.

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5 Weight Loss Rules You aren’t Following

When you are dieting, getting ample sleep is essential. If your body does not have enough energy, it will tell you that it wants more calories to help keep it going. If you are tired, it is more difficult to fight off temptations, keep a positive frame of mind, and motivate yourself to exercise.

Sleep can be interrupted by many things, often when someone is unable to fully relax. Few things are more frustrating than trying to sleep when you can’t. Most people do not realize that sleep is a habit, something you teach your body, similar to your stomach “growling” or preparing for food at the time you have taught it to expect that you will eat. In the same way you can learn to sleep. The trick is the discipline it requires and sticking to a routine until sleep comes easily. I have taught several people how to sleep. The process is a bit involved, but can be relaxed once you are sleeping more easily.

• You MUST get up at the same time every day. That means no sleeping in on weekends. If you get up at 6 a.m. to go to work, you have to get up at 6 a.m. on Saturday, even if you came home at 2 a.m. Friday night.

• Do not nap. If you want to learn to sleep at night, you do not want your body to sleep during the day. Also, if you push through the day without much rest, you will be more likely to fall asleep at night.

• Do not do anything in your bed but sleep. This means no reading, eating, watching TV, or arguing. Take it elsewhere. Like Pavlov’s dogs, you want to pair your bed with sleep so it happens automatically.

• Ensure that you have a comfortable sleep environment free of allergens and distractions. Your bedroom should be dark and cool. Make sure your bed is comfortable according to your personal preferences.

• If you are not sleeping, get out of bed! You want to pair your bed with sleep, so lying in bed awake is counter-productive. Participate in quiet, soothing activities, returning to bed the moment you start to feel sleepy. Housework is likely too strenuous. Only read things that you are willing to walk away from, even in the middle of a sentence.

• Start preparing yourself for bed 4-6 hours before you intend to sleep by turning off the TV and computer; avoiding heavy, spicy, or sugary foods; and keeping strenuous activities to a minimum.

• Avoid nicotine and alcohol all together, as neither will help you sleep or sleep well. When you indulge in alcohol, you do not progress in to the deepest levels of the sleep cycle.

• Turn off all computers and televisions. Both screens have a strobe light effect that can be stimulating to your brain, keeping you awake. Many people like to sleep with a television turned on; however, your brain cannot fully rest because it continues to process what it is hearing from the television, even while you are asleep!

White noise, dairy products, and even counting sheep can also be helpful when learning to sleep. If you are not sleeping well, take your physical and mental health into your own hands by teaching yourself to sleep using these tips.

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Learning the ABZzzs of Healthy Sleeping Habits

The study illustrates a few key points about the mindfulness that a yoga and meditation practice can cultivate and the benefits of physical activity.

While no one can escape the stress of project deadlines and the fear of job security, mindfulness practices like meditation teach employees how key their reaction to workday stress can affect how they perceive their lives and the workplace challenges they confront.

Additionally, most employees who work desk jobs lead sedentary lives which is not only a factor in obesity and diabetes but also in mood disorders like depression. Numerous studies have shown the positive mental health benefits and physical benefits such as improved sleep quality that come from engaging in exercise. And while yoga may not be the first form of exercise that comes to mind when one thinks of physical activity, certain kinds of yoga have a strong cardiovascular component to them and most all improve strength and muscle tone.

For the millions of  Americans who work, the stress of their everyday office lives takes its toll on their health. But studies like this point to the importance of having workplace policies that encourage employees to take part in mind-body practices like yoga and meditation. Hopefully, as more research is done on the benefits of stress-reducing programs in the office, more and more companies will begin to incorporate such practices as part of their regular employee wellness programs.

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Workplace Yoga Reduces Stress and Improves Sleep

Not only should you get enough sleep, but enough REST is equally important. I’ve had two severe injuries in the past two years, and both left me sidelined for quite a while. I can look back at both and see a direct correlation to the amount of training I was doing – once training for a half marathon and once trying to lose extra weight in time for a vacation.

I’m not advocating that you slack on the exercise – just be sure you are getting enough good quality rest in between your runs. Be sure that you get to bed in good time, leaving the books and the television and even the bills for another night. Turn off the lights, turn on the fan, and crawl under the covers. You’ll reap the benefits on the training field!

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Quality Sleep Offers Injury Prevention