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We humans tend to make our lives very complicated.  However, the most basic components of good health are actually very simple.  Getting adequate sleep, drinking enough water, breathing properly, bathing in the sun and getting sufficient daily activity can greatly impact our bodies’ functioning.  Getting good sleep is listed first because this is a foundational principle for good health – without proper rest none of the body’s systems can function optimally.  Some people can easily fall asleep when they are tired and sleep soundly for the majority of the night.  However, getting good sleep is a big challenge for most of us.  When restless sleep or difficulty falling asleep becomes the norm, bedtime can be accompanied by a sense of frustration and hopelessness.  However, assuming there are no underlying health conditions, good sleep is more under your control than you might think.  This is where good sleep hygiene comes into play. According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep hygiene consists of habits and practices that are conducive to sleeping well on a regular basis.  Finding and sticking to the sleep practices that work for you can have a profound effect on your nightly rest.  The following are things to consider when determining the sleep hygiene practices that will work for you.

 

Exercise:  Getting enough exercise and gentle movement during the day will help to tire the body by nighttime when it’s time for rest.  However, be aware of exercise too close to bedtime.  A mellow walk after dinner might be enjoyable, but a more intense workout can increase cortisol in the system, which will make it difficult to fall asleep.

 

Natural light:  Aligning your body with natural light cycles will help your body wind down when it’s time for sleep.  Make sure to get some sunlight exposure during the day and dim artificial light after dark.  The hormones that govern sleep and wakefulness (melatonin, serotonin, and cortisol) are very sensitive to light.*  For example, artificial light exposure shuts off melatonin production for 4-6 hours, so keeping to natural light patterns is key to re-educating your body for healthy sleep.

 

Digital stimulation:  It is a good practice to stop using cell phones, computers and TVs at least two hours before bedtime.  These devices emit blue light, which registers more intensely to the human brain than midday sun.  If you must use them, biohacker Ryan Frisinger advises downloading f.lux on your devices, which warms the colors on your screen to dampen the stimulating effects of nighttime illumination. (https://justgetflux.com).

 

Caffeine, alcohol, food:  Caffeine can stay in your system for six hours or longer, so if you are not sleeping well, it is best to avoid coffee, tea, chocolate and soda after 3:00pm.  Alcohol has an initial sedative effect, but can disturb sleep during the second half of the night, so moderation is advised close to bedtime.  Finally, while you don’t want to go to bed hungry, you want to allow enough time between your last meal and your night’s sleep for digestion to occur, so most people find it best to stop eating a few hours before bed.

 

Supplements:  Ryan suggests taking natural remedies such as Biochemic Phosphates or GABA with L-Theanine fifteen minutes before bedtime.  These help to alleviate nervous exhaustion and help the brain to wind down by flooding it with calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin.  (I, personally, take all of the above and find the effects profound).  For more information, visit Ryan’s site: https://kosmicanimal.com

 

Pre-bedtime ritual:  Many people find it helpful to have a soothing night-time routine to get the body and mind ready for bed, like taking a warm bath and pleasure reading in bed until it is time to fall asleep.  I use this time for my evening gratitude practice:  I think of one thing for which to be grateful that is specific to that day.

 

Sleep environment:  The bedroom should be comfortable and inviting.  The general rule for most people is quiet, dark and cool.  Quiet for some may mean earplugs to block out all noise and for some it may mean using a white noise machine (I use one in my massage practice to block out any distracting noise).  Reducing ambient light sources through windows or from other rooms is important, as well as keeping the room at a comfortable temperature.**  You should have good pillows and position yourself for good body alignment (see my prior blog post https://rootsaustin.com/2017/02/05/best-sleep-positions/).

 

Keep it cyclical:  many sleep experts suggest going to bed and waking up at around the same time every day, even on days off.  The body functions best on rhythmic cycles, so keeping to a schedule will ultimately signal your body and brain when it’s time for sleep.

 

Good sleep is critical for a well functioning body and happy brain.   Without adequate rest, you may experience fatigue, brain fog, unexplained hunger and mood swings.  Prolonged periods without adequate rest contribute to chronic hormonal disruption, creating conditions that favor ill health.  By being mindful of your sleep hygiene, you can help your body restore itself. Waking up every day refreshed and recharged is within your power, if you remember to practice good sleep habits.

 

*”Primal Endurance”, Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns, 2016.

**“7 Energy Sapping Culprits and Ways to Prevent Them”, Lisa Murray, RDN, LD, blog.emersonecologics.com

 

There is much debate in the fitness world about stretching. The popular consensus appears to be that consistent daily stretching for ten to fifteen minutes is important for increased flexibility, which improves joint mobility for daily function.  The most current prescription for casual exercisers is:  a light cardio warm-up and dynamic stretching prior to a workout, static stretching after a workout.  Based on their own personal experience, people generally have their firm beliefs about how much stretching is required to obtain the benefits of flexibility – some require more than others, and others do not stretch at all.  (Full disclosure: I am the latter.)  If athletic performance rather than flexibility is your goal, your attitude toward stretching may be completely different, and different still depending on whether your sport demands power or range of motion.  Regardless of where you fall in the stretching spectrum, there are situations in which your personal stretching routine is appropriate and there are situations in which stretching is actually detrimental to your body’s healing.  Our bodies send us signals to let us know which situation we are experiencing, and it’s important to be able to interpret those signals properly to give our bodies the response they need.  I will explain both scenarios.

 

When we have used our muscles more than we are accustomed to doing, our muscles can experience soreness.  This can happen deliberately, like from increasing weight load at the gym, or inadvertently, like when performing a different type of activity than we normally do (shoveling snow after a big storm, for example).  The feeling of soreness often accompanies the body’s response to microscopic tears in the muscle created by the increased force of the contraction.  (Soreness is not, contrary to popular belief, due to lactic acid build-up, which clears the body a few hours after a workout).  We experience swelling and inflammation because nutrients and fluids flow to the muscle site in order to repair these micro-tears, and this tear-and-repair process is actually how the muscle grows and becomes stronger.  An interesting side note about soreness is that muscles tend to become more sore during eccentric contractions than concentric contractions.  Concentric, or “positive”, contraction is when a muscle generates force as it shortens.  This typically happens as the muscle works against gravity: the load is most often traveling up (think of lifting a heavy grocery bag onto your shoulder).  The “negative” or down phase involves an eccentric contraction, in which the muscle produces force as it lengthens while resisting a load.  The load is traveling down more slowly than gravity alone would take it down (think of lowering that same grocery bag onto the table slowly so as not to break the contents).  For example, runners performing hill workouts report more soreness in the quadriceps muscles in the front of the thighs (which contract eccentrically while running downhill) than the glutes (which contract concentrically while running uphill).  In a scenario such as this, or any in which you experience muscle soreness, stretching is appropriate.  It may not eliminate your soreness, but it could help move some of the fluid out of the area and decrease the swelling.*

However, in some situations the sensation you experience is more than just soreness.  If you are experiencing pain, you might have over-stretched the muscle. As counterintuitive as it may seem, stretching out the muscles in which you experience pain in this case is not the best course of action.  As these muscles are already over-stretched, stretching them MORE is not helpful.  With over-stretched muscles, there are two things you can do that work much better than stretching:  massage and exercise.  What’s right for you depends on whether you have an acute injury or a chronically elongated muscle.  An example of an acute injury would be performing a vigorous kick in kickboxing and over-stretching the hamstring or hamstring tendon on the back of your thigh.  For an injury such as this one, rest is probably the best idea.  There are multiple massage modalities which can help you, as well, including active and positional release therapy.   Positional release will be the topic covered in my next blog post.  It yields amazing results and can be done by yourself at home.

 

Chronically over-stretched muscles also respond to massage, but they tend to respond even better to massage coupled with exercise.  A very common example of discomfort due to a chronically overstretched muscle would be a constant nagging pain in the shoulders and in between the shoulder blades, after a long day (or days) slouched over the computer desk.  A simplified version of what is happening is this:  when you spend many hours with your arms in front of you, you are continually contracting your chest muscles.  Due to reciprocal inhibition, opposing muscles perform the opposite actions.  This means that if a muscle is shortening, the opposing muscle must lengthen.  The contracting muscles, in this case the pectoralis muscles, are perpetually shortening so they are sending constant signals to their opposing muscles, the trapezius and rhomboids, to lengthen.  If these muscles are continually receiving signals to relax, eventually they stop activating and they become very weak.  This is where exercise comes in.  By exercising those muscles you can strengthen them and stimulate them to activate.  In this example, pull-aparts with a band, seated rows and wall angels are all helpful exercises to perform. **

To summarize, stretching can be beneficial.  Stretching muscles can lead to increased flexibility in their corresponding joints, which can aid in pain-free movement in everyday life.  Stretching, however, is not universally advisable and there are situations in which it can even be harmful.

 

*Massage helps reduce DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) and a number of studies prove it. In two similarly designed studies where all subjects lifted weights but only half received massages two hours after working out, subjects who received massages reported less muscle soreness than the subjects who did not. In a longer-term study in 2005 in which soreness and swelling were measured, all subjects lifted weights, but only half of them received massages 30 minutes after exercise and then one, two, three, four, seven, 10, and 14 days post-exercise. The subjects who received massages reported 30% less soreness than subjects who were not massaged, and importantly, swelling in the muscle was reduced only in the subjects who received massage. It may be that the pressure of the massage strokes moved fluid out of the muscle and reduced the swelling that causes DOMS. Whatever the mechanism of action, massage after a workout (sometimes lots of it) was effective in reducing DOMS in these studies.  (MedicineNet.com)

**”Regaining Healthy Posture”, Michelle Burns, BSRN, BSAltMed, LMT