We are born with miraculously integrated bodies and minds. Our lungs draw in vital oxygen, essential for producing energy. Our hearts ceaselessly pump blood through vast networks of vessels to all of our tissues and organs. Raw materials are transformed into fuel by our digestive systems. Our muscles and bones propel us through the world, allowing us first to stand, then walk, then play and work.

Each day our brains take in a barrage of new information, filtering it, selectively storing it, and adapting their way of working accordingly. At the end of each day, we recharge and reset our systems by sleeping. All of us come equipped with a self-contained set of tools that, properly used, may allow us to live 100 years, or maybe even longer.

Beginning early in our lives, though, our genes, our environment, our culture, and our own free will conspire to test this marvelous organism—sometimes to the breaking point. There are people who maintain their health and live long, fruitful lives, sustaining minimal wear and tear. But others—perhaps most of us—push our bodies to the limit. Instead of eating the way our bodies were designed to eat, we indulge in foods filled with sugars and other refined carbohydrates, trans fats, and unhealthy food additives. Instead of walking to nearby destinations, we drive our cars. We sit most of the day. Some of us smoke. Some of us drink too much. Many of us allow negative feelings and stress to rule our thoughts. Not many of us get adequate sleep. The wrong choices trap us in a lifestyle that actually endangers our lives.

The effects of these poor choices compromise every system that keeps us well, and the damage is not pretty. After years of a diet high in refined carbohydrates, arteries become narrow and clogged with plaque, raising the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack. We find ourselves on the unhealthy path to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and cancer. Eating too much of the wrong foods and getting too little exercise allows fat to build up around our organs and beneath our skin. Smoking fills our lungs with toxins, damaging our health in myriad ways. Not getting enough sleep worsens our memories and disrupts an important hormone cycle that prevents us from overeating. And too much stress compromises our body's natural immune system, the very tool that would help us combat much of the other damage.

Return to the Path of Good Health

Fortunately, we have the ability to choose.

That’s where our series of HealthJournals on Wellness come in. Our Wellness series will show you how to completely change your lifestyle to a healthy and sustainable one that will restore your vitality and reverse chronic medical conditions. It will provide you with innumerable health benefits. It will lessen dangerous abdominal fat, lower chronic inflammation, and reduce the threat of other chronic diseases. Your risk of getting heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases will be greatly reduced. You will be likely to live longer, too. What’s more, your systems and organs will be provided with all the nutrients they require, so that your hunger will be satisfied, and your body brought into homeostatic balance.

This wellness information is based on real science that refutes current mainstream medical notions of what we should be eating. In this series, we explain the most natural way to eat—so that fat melts away and the body’s hormonal systems rebalance themselves. In doing so, we turn popular notions of a “healthy diet” on their head. Moreover, we give you all the leading science on other aspects of wellness in your life—including how to break your bad habits, the benefits of sleep, how to de-stress, and the real benefits of exercising.

It’s rarely too late to make changes that can reverse damage to your abused organs and tissues. Even people who are sensitive to carbohydrates, and therefore genetically predisposed to putting on weight, can get back on the path to good health. By eating the right foods, exercising, modifying your negative habits, quitting smoking, sleeping well, and celebrating life, you can reverse many chronic conditions—and increase your enjoyment of life immeasurably.

We hope that you will continue to explore the miracle that is your body, knowing that the good choices you are making will enable you to enjoy a life full of activity and fulfillment. You have the power to keep your body and mind healthy, strong, and alive. You can live longer and live better.

To life!

Wellness and Sleep – Revitalize Your Brain and Control Your Appetite

Getting enough sleep helps your brain to regulate hunger and your body to lose more weight. Along with improving your mood, sufficient sleep gives you the energy and focus you need to exercise and make good choices at meal times. When you don’t get enough sleep (most people need 7–8 hours a night), the hormones that help regulate your appetite are thrown out of balance. You feel hungrier and more tired—making it likely you’ll eat unhealthy food for a quick energy fix. Sleep-deprived people also have difficulty making responsible decisions—not helpful when you are trying to transform your health habits.

One night of insufficient or interrupted sleep can ruin your day. It’s harder to wake up the next morning, you feel sluggish and foggy all day, and your motor skills are not their sharpest. But chronic (ongoing) sleep deprivation, depending on its severity and duration, can interfere with your long-term memory and is associated with greater risk of depression symptoms and weight gain. While you are sleeping, important upkeep tasks are going on throughout your body. Feeling chipper and rested is only part of sleep's payoff.

Your sleep normally progresses through a number of distinct cycles each night, and important upkeep tasks are going on during each one. The first cycle is light sleep, also called stage N1, in which you can easily be awakened. This is followed by stage N2, when consciousness of the external environment disappears. This stage occupies about half of total sleep time for most adults. Stage N3, deep sleep, is the stage in which most important cell repair and system restoration occurs. Rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep accounts for 10-25% of total sleep time. Your brain is very active during REM sleep, and this is when dreaming takes place.

Normally, your sleep proceeds in cycles of non-REM and REM sleep, in this order: N1 → N2 → N3 → N2 → REM. This represents one cycle. When one cycle is completed, another starts, beginning again with stage N1. A complete sleep cycle takes about 90-110 minutes. A night’s sleep may include four to six sleep cycles. To complete the cycles and allow your body to repair and restore itself, you need 7-9 hours of restful sleep every night.

Without adequate sleep, or when your sleep is continually interrupted, your motor skills and coordination can deteriorate. Clumsiness, grogginess, and slow reaction times can lead to injuries from accidents or falls. Sleep loss also affects memory recall and performance of math calculations.

Sleep also has a vital role in helping you process and store memories. During the first half of a full night's sleep, an area of your brain called the hippocampus consolidates and stores memories such as factual information, personal memories, autobiographical events, and other event- and language-based memories. During the second half of a night's sleep, memories such as new motor skills or habits are consolidated and stored in the brain.

The hippocampus is the initial storage site for fact-based memories. When you learn new vocabulary, math operations, people's names or historical facts, your hippocampus takes in the new information first. During sleep, the hippocampus downloads these memories to the brain's cortex. This clears the decks in the hippocampus to make room for new information and files away the facts you have learned so that you can recall them when you need to.

After your hippocampus has catalogued new information and stored it away, another memory consolidation process kicks in. This process occurs during REM sleep, and ensures that acts of coordination, physical skill, and other non-fact-based learning is filed away.

In a Harvard University study, college students were taught a pattern of finger movements, similar to playing a song on a keyboard. Some of the students then slept for 12 hours, while the others did not. Then all subjects were asked to repeat the pattern they had learned. Those who had slept had a much easier time recalling and executing the sequence of movements. Also, functional MRI brain scans showed that the sleepers had much more activity in their cerebellum, an area of the brain that controls speed, coordination, and accuracy.

Many physiological processes slow down during sleep. Your body temperature drops, your heart rate lowers, and your breathing slows. Your digestive system puts on the brakes. You don't need to run at full throttle, because you are not expending energy on movement. But your body does have some busy night-shift workers. Your immune cells, many hormones, cell repair processes, and specific areas of the brain kick into high gear while you are asleep. They tidy up, make repairs, and generally prepare your body to thrive during your waking hours.

During deep sleep, a burst of growth hormone is released. In growing children and teens, the increase in blood levels of growth hormone is most dramatic. Growth hormone works in tandem with various proteins and specialized growth factors to patch up damaged muscle, skin, and bone cells, and to promote the growth of new cells.

When you are coming down with a cold or flu, sleep is irresistible. It's as if your body knows it should shut down the main systems and focus on getting well. When you sleep, your bone marrow manufactures many of the immune cells that are your body's natural fighters against illness. Subjects in sleep deprivation studies had lower levels of certain immune cells after missing just one night of sleep.

It has been found that poor sleep, as well as sleep deprivation, can increase your appetite. This is because two important hormones that regulate your appetite are released during sleep: leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is a hormone that tells your brain you are full. Ghrelin is a hormone that sends signals of hunger. When your sleep is disrupted, the balance of these hormones is disrupted, too.

Leptin, produced in your fat cells, is your body’s natural appetite suppressor. It signals your brain that you do not need any more food. Its functional opposite is the hormone ghrelin, produced in the stomach, which tells your brain that you are hungry and need to eat. During sleep, the body’s production of leptin increases and its production of ghrelin decreases. But when sleep is interrupted, leptin production is suppressed and ghrelin production is greater. Because of a decrease in the hormone leptin, it takes you longer to get the message that you’re full. This imbalance can result in overeating and weight gain.

In one study, subjects were allowed to sleep only 4 hours per night for two nights. Their leptin levels decreased 18% and their ghrelin levels went up 28%. When hunger signals outnumber satiety signals, you want to eat—whether or not you need to.

Other studies have also found that the less people sleep, the more likely they are to be overweight and eat foods that are high in calories and refined carbohydrates, likely from trying to get a needed energy boost. People who sleep 5 or fewer hours per night are much more likely to become obese than people who sleep 7-8 hours a night.

A chronic lack of sleep, as we’ve seen, can lead to weight gain and obesity. Being obese can lead to another disorder: sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a serious disorder that occurs when people's throats close off and they stop breathing during sleep. People who suffer from sleep apnea get an urgent message from the brain that they must wake up and take a breath. They can wake up multiple times every hour throughout the night, disrupting their sleep cycle. Obesity is the most powerful risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), as overweight people are more likely to have excess tissue that blocks their airways and interferes with proper breathing.

IMAGE: Clear airway (left image) and airway that’s obstructed during sleep apnea (right image)

Having sleep apnea just adds to the vicious cycle that is sleep deprivation. When your sleep is disrupted, say from OSA, your hormones leptin and ghrelin are thrown out of balance. Leptin production is suppressed and ghrelin production increases. This increases your hunger and causes you to reach for easily accessible energy sources, like refined carbs, and to overeat. The spike of insulin caused by the carbs and the overeating leads to increased fat storage and weight gain.

The weight gain ensures that your sleep apnea does not go away, and you continue waking up frequently throughout the night. This adds to your sleep deprivation and continues the downward spiral.

To make matters worse, dramatic evidence of sleep's importance to memory has been found in people with obstructive sleep apnea. A 2008 study from UCLA's Department of Neurobiology scanned the brains of OSA sufferers and a control group of subjects who did not have the disorder. The researchers found that OSA sufferers have smaller mammillary bodies—globelike structures on the underside of the brain that play a role in long-term memory. People with sleep apnea have been found to have mammillary bodies nearly 20% smaller than those of people without the disorder. OSA sufferers have long complained of memory problems and forgetfulness. This study was the first to connect physical deterioration of the mammillary bodies to the sleep disorder.

But there’s good news. When you lose weight, the chances are excellent that your sleep apnea will disappear.

People who don’t have sleep apnea can fall victim to this vicious cycle, too. Many people fall into the cycle of sleep deprivation and overeating because they go to bed late and have unrestful sleep. If you’re one of them, you can end the cycle by getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night. Making the right choices before bedtime can help you get a better night’s sleep. Here are some tips to help you get your best night’s sleep:

Best Drinks for Sleep

Chamomile is a traditional herb that can help promote relaxation and sleep. Milk and soymilk are also known to promote sleep, but be aware of their carbohydrate content, especially if you're avoiding carbohydrates. You should avoid drinks containing caffeine or alcohol as they can keep you from falling asleep or staying asleep. Alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, but you are more likely to wake in the night. You’re also likely to toss and turn more, have nightmares, or have your sleep interrupted by thirst—and trips to the bathroom.

Best Activities for Sleep

Relaxing activities like reading, doing a crossword puzzle, listening to soothing music, or taking a hot bath may promote calm and prepare your brain for ending the day. But perform activities like reading and listening to music in other areas of your home, such as the living room or den—not in your bed. Use your bed only for sleep and sex—no TV, reading, or lounging. The more time you spend in bed doing things other than sleeping, the more you condition yourself to being awake in bed.

Best Exercise for Sleep

Low-intensity evening exercises such as slow yoga, stretching, and after-dinner walks can promote relaxation, improve circulation, and help you fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. Being physically active earlier in the day is also important to a good night’s sleep. Don’t overdo it, though, and don’t perform vigorous exercise within 3 hours of going to bed.

When you wake from a good night's sleep, you feel physically refreshed, but recharging your batteries for the day to come is only one of sleep's functions. People who are chronically deprived of sleep are at risk for many health problems, memory failure, and accidents resulting from exhaustion. It’s important to get your sleep habits back on track and maintain a regular sleeping routine.