How to Wake Up with ENERGY
There are 2 primary hormones involved in sleep - cortisol and melatonin. These hormones work in opposition to each other, where cortisol is high in the morning and low are night and melatonin is low in the morning and high at night. In order to keep these in balance, there are a few things that need to happen.
Balance blood sugar - if you eat a diet high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, cortisol levels will be higher 1.
Minimize blue light - blue light tells your brain that it is day time and to produce cortisol for energy. When you have this blue light right before bed, it will tell your body to produce cortisol and reduce melatonin. This leads to an inability to get to sleep and also grogginess in the morning because the sleep-wake cycle has shifted.
Consistency with sleep-wake times - as mentioned above, your body has cycles that it likes to stick to. When you start staying up really late 1-2 nights a week and going to bed really early 1-2 nights a week to catch up on sleep, it confuses the body. It doesn’t know what time to start producing melatonin to initiate sleep. Staying consistent with bed time will allow your body to release melatonin at the same time every night and therefore to release cortisol at the same time every morning when you usually wake up.
Sufficient serotonin levels - this is important if you have fibromyalgia, are extremely protein deficient or have severe gut issues. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that turns into melatonin (called a precursor). If you have insufficient serotonin levels, you will not be able to produce enough melatonin. You simply do not have enough building blocks for your body to get sleep (which depletes you further, so it’s a bad cycle).
Proper exercise - when you exercise you increase testosterone and lower cortisol levels naturally.
Proper weight - fat cells can actually self regulate cortisol levels. This is very scary if you are obese because cortisol can also lead to fat gain. This means that fat cells are creating more and more fat cells just by doing nothing.
Stress management - cortisol is the stress hormone but as you can see, it also has many other roles in the body. One of the easiest things you can do to manage sleep is to manage stress.
I know this is a lot to digest, but if you feel like you have tried everything and you are still having issues sleeping, it could be your sleep hormones. If you currently take melatonin as a supplement, make sure to take a break (unless otherwise told by a health care professional) and let your body naturally produce it because it may be relying on it now more than ever before. There is also time released melatonin that can be useful, short term, for those that have a hard time staying asleep all night.
Sleep is EXTREMELY important for overall health and energy levels. I use to be someone who barely slept, and now I look forward to my 9pm bed time, even on the weekends!