Why Sleep Is Required For Memory – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 296
Sleep is important for things like immune health, energy and memory. But as you get older, it may become harder to fall into a deep sleep, which can negatively impact your memory.
Tag: sleep
Specific Foods and Nutrients That Promote Healthy Sleep – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 265
One of the most underestimated factors in our overall wellness is sleep. But foods and nutrients can really support a restful night of sleep?
How Tart Cherry Supports A Good Night’s Sleep – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 224
tart cherry
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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Cherries are proving to be a very healthy food choice. One of them stands up and above all the other cherries when it comes to proven health benefits. It’s the Montmorency tart cherry.
It’s loaded with anthocyanins, a very powerful group of antioxidants. They’re sort of reddish-pigmented antioxidants found in produce that really help shield your blood vessels and they’re really good for your brain and eyes. They just have numerous benefits throughout the body.
Tart cherries have been studied for physical performance. At Texas A&M, they’ve published a number of studies in health journals and medical journals. They used the Montmorency tart cherry, the CherryPUREⓇ, which is the trademark name of it. When they give it to their NCAA-level athletes, they perform better. They perform at a higher level for a longer time and it improves their endurance, physicality, physical performance and stamina.
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That has a lot to do with tart cherry being a powerful vasoactive substance. A vasoactive substance means that it helps improve blood flow. So if you can increase the flow of blood to your muscles when you’re exercising or playing a sport, that rinses the acids out of your muscles that are building up and it provides the muscle with more oxygen, nutrition and fuel and you can perform better. It does this by improving the function of a gas in your blood vessels called nitric oxide that pops your blood vessels open. By the same token, by improving circulation, that also helps your heart pump to your brain and legs, so that helps restore high blood pressure to a more normal level safely.
Beyond its effects on circulation to the muscles during exercise and physical performance or improving blood flow and blood pressure, it also supports healthy blood flow to the brain, which is good because blood flow to the brain declines in certain groups. For instance, older people have decreased blood flow to the brain and it’s a fairly common finding in diabetics also. So giving these people tart cherry helps increase circulation to the brain that has fallen due to age or disease states.
For more information on additional benefits of tart cherry, listen to the full podcast episode.
Tart cherry and Sleep Benefits
The other thing that they’re finding with tart cherry in a number of studies is that it improves sleep, even in insomniacs, and it does it safely. It doesn’t make you sleepy. It’s something you can take in the daytime for mental health, brain health and for physicality and it doesn’t make you sleepy. But at night, you sleep better, so that’s a very important finding.
Insomnia, of course, is trouble sleeping. Defined, insomnia is having trouble sleeping on average more than three nights per week and it affects an estimated up to 34% of people over the age of 65. Longlasting insomnia is connected to poor health outcomes, such as chronic pain, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and a decline of cognitive function, even dementia among the elderly. So, a safe way to improve sleep is very important and giving them sleeping pills is rather dangerous. It’s very easy to overdose on a sleeping pill.
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A study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food done by the Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center looked at a tart cherry juice blend. They wanted to see if it improved insomnia in healthy people. It’s a pilot study that’s a randomized, double-blind, crossover design, which means everybody in the study either got the cherry at one point or they all got the placebo at one point. They did find a difference. They found that on the tart cherry, there was a statistically significantly improved pre- to post-treatment on all sleep variables. Sleep variables could be how easy is it to fall asleep, how long do you sleep, how restful and how deep was the sleep. They’re all variables of sleep.
Listen to the full podcast episode for more studies about how tart cherry can impact sleep.
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
Experiencing Brain Fatigue? L-Tyrosine Can Help! – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 190
We’ve all experienced the feeling of staying out late but still having to get up early for work or class the next morning. If you’ve ever burnt the candle at both ends like this, L-Tyrosine may help!
Melatonin Supports Immunity, Sleep & Beyond – Invite Health Podcast, Episode 87
Did you know that your immune system can manufacture and release Melatonin? This demonstrates the importance of Melatonin, like Vitamin D, to our immune system. Here’s what you need to know.
How Insomnia Impacts Your Overall Health – Invite Health Podcast, Episode 56
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey. Ph
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Anyone can have a bad nights sleep, but when it is persistent and beyond your control it is called insomnia. Sleep is a cure-all, but insomnia is just the opposite; it can damage your health and sometimes shorten your life.
The Impact Insomnia Has On Your Health
Insomnia is the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep for as long as you need. Poor quality sleep, or not having enough, impacts exercise, your work performance, sexual function and more. It can also overtime permanently effect your health.
Not enough sleep can contribute to weight gain, poor ability to exercise, an a heightened risk of diabetes. Lack of sleep effects your brain; it leads to poor mental performance and depression. In fact, people with insomnia are five times more likely to develop depression. Poor sleep also impacts your heart, and puts you at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack and stroke.
Being sleepy also causes accidents; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that fatigue is a cause in 100,000 auto crashes a year in the United States. Lack of sleep impairs your attention, alertness, concentration, memory, reasoning and your problem solving.
Lack of sleep also ages your skin. Many people have experiences puffy eyes after a few nights of missed sleep. But it turns out that chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster skin, fine lines (which are the start of wrinkles), and dark circles under the eyes. Excess cortisol in your bloodstream can break down the Collagen in your skin. Collagen makes up 70% of your skin and it is the protein that keeps your skin smooth, elastic and wrinkle free.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your body less human growth hormone. During aging, human growth hormone helps increase your muscle mass, thickens your skin, and strengthens your bone.
What about Drugs for Sleep?
Drugs are dangerous. You have heard about the opioid crisis and have heard about the number of people who overdose or have become addicted to opiates. Issues with sleep medications are right behind that in number. You just aren’t hearing about that because opioid issues are dominating the airwaves.
Lifestyle Changes to Improve Sleep Duration and Quality
Did you know there is a sleep and exercise connection? Insomnia has been shown to improve with regular exercise. So, adding exercise to your daily routine can improve the quality and length of your sleep.
Make sure you are powering down your electronic devices. The soft blue light from a cell phone, a tablet, a digital clock in your bedroom, even that light from your cable box can keep you awake and impact sleep. Turn off your electronic devices about an hour before you go to bed.
You can set your body clock by going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This is extremely important now that we are all practicing social isolation and even quarantine – it may be hard to get your body on track to waking up and falling asleep, but try to push yourself to keeping a similar sleep/wake schedule every day. This can help you reset your circadian rhythm, which is your body’s clock.
Look for hidden caffeine and stimulants in food and beverages. Besides coffee, tea and chocolate (the obvious sources of caffeine), some sodas, ice creams, and certain medications for coughs, colds, fevers and weight loss contain stimulants.
Be careful with alcohol. It can at first put you to sleep, but later in the night it has been connected to poor sleep quality and waking up multiple times.
Natural Remedies to Improve Sleep
If you are stressed out or your brain is just overly active, you have to shut down your brain and prepare it for sleep. A way to do that is using L-Theanine. This is an interesting supplement that comes from the tea plant. Before sleep I recommend about 200mg. In the daytime, if you take 100mg of L-Theanine it is excellent for stress, staying focused, it helps you be a little creative. It has been shown to relieve the effects of stress hormones, which can make you jittery and unfocused. At night, if you are releasing stress hormones, the hormones can keep you awake. This can be counteracted by L-Theanine. This is a non-habit forming, very gentle supplement.†
Melatonin can also help. A recent review from MIT showed that when researchers analyzed human clinical trials on Melatonin and sleep, they concluded that Melatonin can improve your quality of sleep. It can also decrease the sleep onset latency (falling asleep faster) and make you sleep deeper and longer. Melatonin has also been shown to reset your body’s clock, or your circadian rhythm.†
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast.
