Today’s tribute for Wayne and looking after your health is all about sleep…
Wayne was one who did not prioritize his sleep that’s for sure.
He would be up until all hours of the night playing Xbox, cards or binging on a TV shows.
His circadian rhythm would be out-of-whack. Wayne was not one to rise early and jump out of bed, he would easily sleep in till lunch time if you let him.
So this leads me to a couple of points I’d like to cover today:-
1. Chronotypes
We all have a master biological clock in our brain, and small biological clocks throughout our bodies.
But not everyone’s biological clock keeps the same time, we run at different paces to others.
This is where the early birds(early risers), hummingbirds (neither late nor early), and night owls (late risers) came from.
Our sleep drive is genetic, and it determines how much sleep you need and your depth of sleep (low, medium, high).
Personalities do contribute to chronotypes as well:
-Morning types tend to be more health conscious
-Evening types tend to be more impulsive
-Neither type tends to be easygoing.
Dr Michael Breus has written an interesting book “The Power of When” and this helps to highlight that each chronotype (he broke them down into four: Loin, Bear, Wolf & Dolphin) and when the best time to do everything is, from relationships, eating, working, training, and being creative.
It makes total sense, because I know my energetic times of the day are different to my friends and family, I go to bed early and rise early. My sons are the same, yet my partner is later to bed and in between times to rise.
To understand this helps you to use your potential – there are people that have their most creative time later in the afternoon, or evening – whereas mine is early in the morning.
The way our world works like with school for example, is the children are set on a everyday clock schedule, but some children might be more creative or have their math brains on in the morning, yet their maths subjects may be held in the afternoon. They then lose the opportunity of this class due to their chronotype.
Same thing applied to Wayne, working for himself sometimes allowed him to get the work done at the time that suited him, but being in customer service and servicing trucks, most of the time he had to get it done outside his most productive times.
This leads to stress and also can mess with your circadian rhythm more.
2.Lack of sleep disrupts hormones
Wayne completed wrecked his hormones by not prioritizing his sleep – his gained insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. It was easy to see this now with his lack of control with high sugared foods and the abundance of carbohydrates he ate.
This was due to lack of sleep.
Sleep solidifies our memories, boosts our creativity, increases our willpower, and regulates our appetite.
It resets our hormones, gives neurons a cleansing bath, and ensures “all systems go” in the various regions of our infinitely complex brains.
This is where that “sleep on it” phrase comes from… we make great decisions over night.
If you do not get adequate sleep this doesn’t allow you to release toxins and this places it the same category as vegetable oils and sugar.
Located at the front of your brain is the prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning decision making, expressing one’s personality and self awareness (very important in daily life).
You see our brains are programmed to seek out sugar, lest they die come winter. With sleep deprived prefrontal cortex, say goodbye to your willpower and self control.
If you are prone to overeating and indulging in junk food, just one single night of sleep loss is enough to sidetrack your best efforts at a healthy diet.
This was Wayne every single day.
Recent studies have confirmed sleep deprivation (less than 6 hours sleep) for a single night leads to an unintentional ingestion of an extra 400-500 calories the following day, and those calories almost always come from carbs.
Multiply this by a few nights and you’ve got yourself a spare tyre in a matter of weeks.
The hormones that are affected are :
Ghrelin – The hunger hormone
Your ghrelin level increases just before meals or when stomach is empty and decreases after meals or when stomach is stretched.
Ghrelin surges with just one night of sleep debt, hence taking in those extra 400-500 calories, and being carbohydrates this will increase inflammation, high blood pressure and cognitive problems.
Leptin – The metabolic throttle hormone
Leptin is the satiety hormone that helps regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger, and it plummets with sleep deprivation.
It is secreted by fat cells , the more fat cells one has, the more circulating leptin.
The brain interprets higher levels of leptin as permission to open up the throttle a bit on the rate at which our bodies burn calories – after all food is plentiful.
But with elevated leptin, it can cause leptin resistance and the signal of satiety and the positive benefits of leptin on metabolism becomes lost – we lose the ‘FULL’ signal and keep eating.
This is what happened to Wayne, he overate due to tiredness and then the leptin switch became faulty and never switched off, so he ate and drank loads more calories.
This overloads the pancreas and pretty much put it into meltdown – Wayne’s pancreas then broke down and maybe this is why the Cancer formed inside here?
My call to action is that you prioritize sleep to help keep your hormones regular, your carvings to a minimum and your energy and cognitive powers at their best.
Also take “the power of when quiz” find out your chronotype and try to map out your day of when you get the best out of everything.
This can help you to get things done, and to help you still achieve great sleep.
We don’t all need 8 hours sleep, but what we do need is good deep sleep to help function best each day.
My message is that sleep is the game changer to your health and wellbeing – don’t ignore it like Wayne did xxx
This photo was taken at the airport before Wayne headed away for his overseas adventures 1996.
