17/12/2019
Self Care with eating and sleeping routine times:
From Dr Mark Hyman:
A new study published last week looked at a group of participants who limited their eating window to 10 hours a day. Meaning, if they ate their first meal at 8 am, they ate their last bite at 6 pm.
The results were pretty interesting. Participants experienced weight loss as well as reduction in abdominal visceral fat. They also experienced improved cholesterol and blood pressure which is pretty huge.
Honoring this window gives our body a daily fast where we can repair, detoxify, and rest. Over the last year of studying sleep and our circadian rhythms, I’ve come to understand that there are two really important yet underrated pillars of our health that we need to focus on.
When we eat
When we sleep
Even though routines can seem pretty boring, they can significantly impact our health, especially when we build routines that honor our circadian rhythm.
Your circadian rhythm is a natural, internal clock that sends your body signals to wind down and relax or amp up and energize as part of your sleep/wake cycle. It’s impacted primarily by two things (and you might have already guessed): when you eat and when you sleep.
The more in alignment we stay with our natural rhythms, the better off our health will be. To live in alignment with your natural rhythms, there are two things you can do today.
First, eat the bulk of your meals when the sun is out, and try not to eat heavily before bedtime.
Setting up an eating window is an easy way to implement this practice. We are discovering that when you eat can play a significant role in achieving an optimal weight, balancing your blood sugar, preventing metabolic diseases, and even improving your cardiometabolic status.
By following a daily routine and practicing time-restricted eating, you can make massive strides towards optimal health. I recommend that you create a schedule that works for you and eat your last meal of the day no more than 10 hours after your first. (I know this doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s certainly something to experiment with if your doctor or nutritionist thinks it could work for you.)
Second, use the power of light.
While you are awake, the light from the sun, indoor lights, and electronics goes into your eye, hits your retina, is transmitted to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and then to the pineal gland. This is an area of the brain where serotonin is synthesized into melatonin based on the light/dark signal. If light is hitting this area, melatonin synthesis is suppressed and cortisol production is ramped up. If light is not hitting this area, melatonin is formed and cortisol is suppressed.
This is crucial because melatonin, your rest and relax hormone, makes you feel tired and enhances your sleep quality. Cortisol, on the other hand, is your get-up-and-go hormone. It is responsible for signaling your body to make energy and motivating you to be active. As would make sense, you want the hormone responsible for sleep highest near bedtime and lowest in the morning and vice versa.
To use the power of light, expose yourself to 15 minutes of sunlight each morning, and as the day turns to night, avoid screens and bright lights. Also, pick a bedtime and try to stick to it. For me, it’s 10:00 pm, and then I’m up by 6:00 am. Just following these two principles alone have led to dramatic changes for so many people when it comes to their sleep quality and overall health.
In fact, these two rules have made such an impact on my life that I decided to incorporate them with my patients. I have found after watching the health of thousands of my patients dramatically improve, these aspects are fundamental.
Wishing you health and happiness,
Mark Hyman, MD
