We've gotten a whole lot of traffic from people coming to learn about Amber. And I'm guessing, more than a few came to see what diet I put her on.
We'll eventually get to the food stuff, but there was something else going on with Amber that caught my attention and seemed like the more important priority. I say that, because it holds the potential to undermine any kind of nutrition advice I might give. Because of that, it needs to be addressed and corrected first, so that any type of nutrition changes we pursue have a better chance of catching and taking hold.
Amber doesn't sleep well. She shared with me that she often gets up in the middle of the night, she wakes up unrefreshed, as if she hasn't slept at all, she's exhausted most of the day, and she has memory problems.
Does that sound to you, like someone who's going to do well with a diet and exercise problem?
--She's going to have a hard time finding the energy to exercise. For those of you who have labelled yourselves"lazy" because you're not sleeping well…stop it. You're exhausted.
--She's going to have a hard time choosing productive foods, because all she's going to care about is quick energy to get through the next 10 minutes.
--She's not going to be able to organize her day to accommodate exercise because she's too tired to think about how to do that.
What it really sounds like Amber might be doing…is something called MICROSLEEPING. It's something sleep-deprived people do, kind of going through life in a subconscious haze, never really sleeping, never really being fully conscious. It's hugely stressful on the brain, and it tends to chomp away at neurons so they can't function. It's also quite dangerous, as you can see in this video, if you're spending any part of your day at all operating some sort of machinery.
It makes better sense, rather than imposing a self-defeating program onto an exhausted, stressed out system, to pull that system back into balance so it has the energy to pursue healthy living.
Here's what I think microsleeping does to hormones and how it may be affecting Amber.
1. When you're hyperinsulinemic, and you go long periods of time without eating, your blood sugar is likely to get low. That's not something your body really likes to see, so when that happens, it releases cortisol in order to get blood sugar back up. If that happens in the middle of the night, when stress hormones aren't supposed to be circulating, it prevents you from cruising through normal stages of sleep. So you wake up feeling as if you haven't slept.
2. When your stress hormones have been working during the night, you're likely to wake up in the morning not feeling hungry. Plus, it's likely that you overslept, finally having fallen asleep just before the alarm went off, so you hurry out the door without breakfast.
3. High insulin levels and empty stomachs are not really the greatest combination, so at some point, mid-morning, hunger appears…with a vengeance. If you're tired and haven't really planned your eating, you're highly likely to seek out caffeine and sugar to fix the problem.
4. And thus, the vicious cycle begins.
But how in the world do you begin to break it? Here are the things I suggested to Amber.
1. Eat a protein-containing snack about a half hour before bedtime. It should contain at least 8 grams of protein. It will help stabilize blood glucose through the night. I don't care if it's an energy bar, string cheese, or a slice of turkey. I like to have Greek yogurt with nuts, myself. (I don't even have PCOS but I find that it helps me to sleep better if I do this.)
2. Spend at least a half hour outdoors each day. Amber lives in a hot, desert, climate, and we're closing out our"winter" in the desert, meaning her body is likely really needing a hormonal reset. UV light exposure really helps to improve melatonin (and serotonin) metabolism. So she's been eating breakfast outside.
3. Define breakfast as something that contains protein and is consumed before 10 am. If she's not hungry at 7 am, I don't want to force her to eat, but I do want to be sure she's keeping blood sugar levels stable. I told her that a good sign we're resetting hormones is if she starts to feel hungrier, earlier in the day. Within a couple of days she emailed to tell me that she was.
4. Take a dose of fish oil equivalent to 1000 mg DHA (not total omega-3's, specifically DHA) per day. Not sleeping well is one of the quickest ways to oxidize and destroy brain cells so we need to rebuild them. And, because memory is an issue, we had a pretty detailed discussion about what needed to happen in order to make sure this happened every single day, without fail.
5. Eat at least 5 servings of vegetables per day. Research has shown that people who do this, have higher melatonin levels, which means they also sleep better.
6. Keep doing Craig's exercises, because they would help her be ready to fall asleep at bedtime.
Fortunately, she started feeling better almost immediately, so now we're looking at her food patterns to see what we can productively layer on this foundation.
In the meantime, Amber's discovered she's a bit dependent on soda, likely for the caffeine. So I wrote an article for my Examiner gig about some substitutions that at least give her some fizz.
We'll get back to you with more food information in future posts, but I wanted to be sure those of you who were disappointed to not see some sort of magic diet or supplement in our program, understood why you didn't find it.
Our approach at inCYST is very different. It feels a bit counterintuitive, I know, but those who trust it and use it, do see results. I hope this series is helping you, too.
