Too Little Sleep Equals Stress

Instead of allowing yourself to fill your plate with food, or allowing the amount of food you’re served to determine how much and when you eat, it’s time to start swallowing only what your body can digest, absorb, and use at that time. Eating at odd intervals of time, and in super quantities, throws off leptin signaling. We actually lose track of our hunger and fullness. With leptin resistance, it can seem that we are hungry right after we eat. And it can feel like we are never satisfied, even after an amazing meal. Ultimately, it is up to us to choose differently and eat in a way that matches what our bodies need to maintain balance. When we analyze the ritual of meals through history among various cultures, we see that what was eaten and when it was eaten matches up with what modern science recommends. Our busy lives can throw this ideal eating pattern completely to the curb. When this happens, it directly affects our health in a negative way. That’s why I consider irregular eating patterns to be a stress. To make matters worse, our bodies don’t have a fast way of telling us that we ate enough. The fullness signal can take twenty to thirty minutes to reach our consciousness, and in this time we can eat more food and become overly full.

The Narrow Way

Therefore, it’s our responsibility to track these dietary needs so that our bodies can thrive or develop intuitive eating habits. Finally, trendy eating patterns and extreme diets can throw off our hormones and gut bacteria, triggering a stress response. Many people become so focused on losing weight quickly, and attempting to correct what has gotten out of control, that they swing the other way. They find themselves severely restricting calories and/or fasting for long periods of time, then overeating large meals once the restriction time is done. There are also times when we end up overconsuming foods that are healthy, such as kale, green juices, avocados, nuts, and/or fermented foods. Our bodies need balance. Have you ever heard someone say, I’ll sleep when I’m dead? Talk about a lie that conditions us to suffer. Even once your head hits the pillow, sleep can be disrupted by lights, noises, children, animals, anxieties, and the need to go to the bathroom. Without adequate melatonin, and with disruptive stress hormones running rampant, it can be really hard to get a good night’s sleep even if you adequately prioritize it. At that point, you may find yourself having to choose between being angry at your body for not going to sleep and questioning your whole life and existence. That’s when it becomes most apparent why sleep deprivation is a form of torture. While I loved the training to become a midwife, it also meant I was up all night, several nights each week, for several years.

Surprise, Surprise

Labor tends to begin right about the time we go to bed! I was the first to arrive to assess and support the woman in labor, so there was no time to sleep. When I arrived home after the birth, I couldn’t go to sleep because I was getting my doctorate in naturopathic medicine at the same time, so I had classes to attend and patients to see in the clinic. That’s when I knew, the sleep deprivation had caught up with me and I was showing signs of brain fog and adrenal distress. Getting less than seven and a half hours of sleep per night is both caused by adrenal distress and a cause of adrenal distress. Those who are able to sleep, the challenge is getting yourself into bed in time for you to be able to get enough sleep before your alarm goes off. For those who wish they could sleep but are fighting their circadian rhythm, it’s a matter of retraining and rebalancing the body systems so that they are signaling sleep at the right time of day. In some cases, and at some points in our lives, stress brings us to the point of reconsidering the schedules we’ve created for ourselves, the jobs we have chosen, and the boundaries, or lack thereof, that we have established for ourselves. I want to be clear with you that when I share stories about my life, it is not just to talk about me. It is to share with you that I understand the emotional and/or physical pain you are experiencing. I may not have experienced exactly what you’ve been through, but I do understand what we tend to put ourselves through as humans. Not just what others do to us, but what we end up doing to ourselves because we think we have to or in the name of helping others. I know it can feel very dark and alone.

Its All About You

I also know that it cannot be removed with surgery. While many doctors told me the surgery was cosmetic, and even though I tried everything I could think of to avoid having surgery, in the end, the size of the growth and the need to diagnose it led to me having it removed, or at least the part they could reach easily. It is what my body chose to do with the stress it has endured. Surgery removed the lump. Now it is my role, my choice, my life decision to help my body recover. I believe it is possible to follow our life purpose without wearing ourselves out. I want you to know that I am here to be on that journey with you if you choose that for yourself. There are certainly stressful circumstances that we can’t do anything about or that are currently beyond our control. Think financial needs, parenting challenges, relationship struggles, natural disasters, or the death or injury of a loved one. Consider 2020’s worldwide experience of quarantine. It caused us to rethink how we spend our time, how we do our jobs, and even why we leave our homes. The unknown is always a stress.