Chris Belanger - Sleep, Stress Management and Recovery Coach

10/07/2023

🍄 Drinking my mushrooms for breakfast ☕️

I’ve been putting Lion’s Mane mushroom powder into my morning brew for a few months now and it’s definitely had some effect on clearing up my brain fog issues lately (even as my caffeine intake has gone to near zero). Study here, and a link in the comments to the brand I use: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jnc.15767

10/06/2023

Let's talk about !

Caffeine: The Sleep Interrupter ☕💤

While caffeine is often hailed for its ability to banish sleepiness, it’s essential to explore the unseen consequences. By intercepting adenosine—a neurotransmitter propelling us towards sleep—caffeine disrupts our innate sleep-wake cycle, which could alter our sleep quality and patterns.

Lingering in the System ⏳🔄

Caffeine has a plasma half-life of about 5 hours, but an elimination half-life swinging between 1.5 to 9.5 hours... which affects our sleep long after we *think* it's out of our system.

The Uncharted Influence of Lifelong Exposure 🧒🥤

Our caffeine journey often begins in childhood, through a seemingly harmless sip of soda. This early and continuous exposure make it really challenging for us to understand the full effect of caffeine on our bodies, as our bodies have been adapting to its presence since we were really young.

Navigating your caffeine consumption with informed choices ensures that you can still enjoy some of the benefits of coffee... without jeopardizing your sleep health. 🛌✨ Here's to fostering a balanced relationship with our most ancient beverage while preserving our valuable sleep.

10/03/2023

💊Melatonin is not as simple a substance as you might think! Melatonin is simply what signals the body that it’s time to sleep soon - and after that, it’s up to *other* systems in the body and brain to actually make you feel sleepy and start to sleep. 🥱 Millions of people take melatonin in pill or liquid form - but this type of melatonin isn’t processed as well as that which we produce in our own bodies.

☀️Light suppresses the production of melatonin, so getting light early on in the morning helps you get past the sleepy morning hours, and encourages your body to start melatonin production earlier in the evening.

👀 BUT! The “feel good” chemical, serotonin, is produced in larger quantities with exposure to sunlight…and serotonin is converted into melatonin. So more serotonin ➡️ more melatonin ➡️ earlier sleep onset. 🛌

🌎In the northern hemisphere, our days are getting shorter and the nights longer, so it’s even more important to get more sunlight during the day… even 20 minutes a day will help. I’m lucky enough to live where I can get out for sun-filled walks, but even just standing outside is enough. And - ditch the sunglasses for those 20 minutes as well. Your eyes (and brain) know the difference! 😎

10/01/2023

09/30/2023

Sleep journals are not for everyone! In some cases, even writing about your sleep can contribute to orthosomnia, or the preoccupation of perfect sleep. Link below from the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 📖👇

09/30/2023

Need a coffee to get through the day? It’s possible that you might get similar benefits from a placebo decaf. Invest in a good quality decaf coffee and you might not notice the difference. Link to study in the comments 👇

09/29/2023

Nothing on Netflix? Spend an hour with this excellent clip from the Royal Institution of Great Britain (featuring what seems to be the Wish version of Simon Cowell, oddly enough):

Russell Foster, Debra Skene and Stafford Lightman discuss the science of sleep. Why do we need sleep and what are the physiological processes driving our cir...

09/29/2023

Flying a lot these days? Eating might be part of your jet lag strategy:

Northwestern University researchers have developed a mathematical model to better understand how the distinct internal clocks that effect how we sleep and eat work in tandem and used it to demonstrate that travelers could ease jetlag by eating a large breakfast in the time zone of their destination.

09/28/2023

Cannabis products (at least the recreational variants commonly available) generally do not lead to increased sleep quality, but this talk on current research at The University of Western Australia shows some promising initial results:

In a world-first study we have the first indications of whether medicinal cannabis can benefit people with insomnia. It’s early days, so the evidence is stil...

09/28/2023

Just to show you that even us “experts” are still at the mercy of our bodies: I scored “moderate” on my latest Obstructive Sleep Apnea test!

09/27/2023

Posting Matt Walker's TED talk on the powers of sleep. There may be a *few* inaccuracies in here, probably in the name of edutainment, but overall it's an excellent bit to watch. https://youtu.be/5MuIMqhT8DM

09/27/2023

🎉 Excited to finally have the FB page and the new website up -- still needs a few tweaks but I'm looking forward to working with my first clients.

You live in a world where it's impossible to avoid stress. You also live in a world that tries its best to prevent you from recovering from stress.