Tag Archive for: energy

A Little More About Sleep

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After last week’s memos on short sleepers, I got a couple of questions about other types of sleep. Let’s take a look.

One person asked if sleeping over 10 or 12 hours per night is problematic. The answer is that it could indicate a problem if done on a consistent basis. Sleep apnea can contribute to more time in bed because the person isn’t able to sustain rhythmic breathing; conditions that result are hypertension and other forms of heart disease. People with metabolic disorders who don’t produce enough energy can also spend more time attempting to sleep. Overall, that much sleep is less than desirable unless there’s a reason, such as a loss of sleep occasionally due to stress or travel.

The second was something called bi-phasic sleep patterns. This is legit; it’s a carryover from before the industrial revolution when lighting became more prevalent. Back in the time before regular lighting, people would go to sleep at sundown, sleep for several hours, get up in the middle of the night and do chores, check on animals, etc., then return to bed until sun-up. With the way the world is regulated these days, that doesn’t happen very much unless individuals are free to set their own schedules. Is that healthy and acceptable? I found nothing to suggest otherwise if it’s a natural pattern. If you find yourself temporarily caught in that pattern, such as with a newborn, don’t worry about it; this, too, shall pass, so adapt as well as you can for now. Avoid doing things that will make you more wakeful, such as watching something exciting on a bright screen or drinking coffee, so you can get back to sleep more smoothly.

I hope that clarifies sleep a little more for you. It seems like the correct duration is what fits you the best. If you have the mental and physical energy to do all you need to do, it’s probably fine.

We’re taking next Tuesday off, so I’ll be back in a week.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Sleep: Your Body Decides

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Before we get back to sleep (today’s topic), a reminder: don’t forget to sign up for the Kids’ Top Health Issues webinar tomorrow afternoon! And if tomorrow isn’t convenient, the replay will be available after the webinar ends. You can watch it as many times as you want to take more notes or absorb more info.

Now, about sleep—the question remains: how do you know how much sleep your body needs? After all, we’ve all been told that we need at least eight hours per night. Or do we?

My mother-in-law Ruth had a particular aide in the nursing home who just loved her, and the feeling was mutual. Molly said she never got more than four hours of sleep per night; due to the nature of her job, she could come in at 4 a.m. and be on her way home by noon to spend time with her young children. In fact, her dad was the same way—never more than four hours, and they had all the juice they needed to do all they wanted to do.

That’s why I used to give the answer I gave as indicated in the last Memo: “Don’t worry about it, because that’s apparently all your body needs.” But was there any science to support that? Turns out, there was.

The Science of Sleep

Thanks to an excellent article in Knowable magazine, I had a direction to look for the science behind sleep. (If you have the time, read the article in the reference below.) Two researchers in San Francisco have been researching sleep for about 15 years. The initial part of the research was to find people with different sleep patterns. They found a group that were early risers, but the group that caught their attention was the one they termed “short sleepers”; their research focused on that group for the most part.

The research didn’t stop there. Researching that term yields over 380 papers in PubMed alone. I reviewed the first 50 abstracts. To be blunt, there is a lack of clarity in the research; the primary reason seems to be because there’s no clear definition of what a short sleeper actually is. It can be someone who doesn’t get more than seven hours of sleep. They also mix in people with diagnosed insomnia and sleep apnea and associated conditions such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.

What is clear is that when researching families with at least two generations of short sleepers, defined as four to six hours per night, there are at least seven gene mutations involved. Further, this group of short sleepers doesn’t seem to be at risk for any debilitating condition and spend the extra time doing more work or tasks.

The Bottom Line

Should you be concerned about how much sleep you get? Yes, if it interferes with your life and you walk around fatigued all the time. The occasional loss of sleep is expected, but habitual loss is the problem. The actual number of hours of sleep you need is the amount that allows you to recover, renew, and get on with the next day. Forget about how much sleep you’re supposed to get.

One of the researchers was quoted stating it this way: “Saying everyone should get eight hours of sleep every night is like saying everyone should be 5 feet 10 inches tall.” Can’t say it any better than that.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Marla Broadfoot. 2024. The Ones Who Need Little Sleep.  www.knowablemagazine.org

Do You Worry About Sleep?

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We’ve all been there—an occasional night when you just can’t get to sleep. Judging from the questions I get, a whole lot of you are worried about getting enough sleep. I’m not talking about chronic sleep issues, which may require working with physicians and sleep specialists (as Paula has done). I’m talking about people who can’t seem to get more than four or six hours of sleep per night.

My first question is always, “How do you feel? How’s your energy level? Are you tired all the time, or can you do all you need to do every day?” The answer to that question is critical. If the answer is something along the lines of “I feel fine—I just can’t sleep any longer than that.” My typical response is “Don’t worry about it, because that’s apparently all your body needs.”

The problem is that I didn’t have a good explanation beyond that. Turns out it may all be genetically determined, and I’ll explain that on Saturday.

Coming Up

Tomorrow night is the Insider Conference Call. For those of you not familiar with Insider membership, the monthly calls are designed to answer health, nutrition, and product questions; I also dig into the health headlines to give detailed answers based on the research behind those headlines. You can join the call if you become an Insider by 8 p.m. ET tomorrow.

Also, the Kids’ Top Health Issues webinar is Sunday afternoon. I’m going to cover the relationship between gut health and constipation, ADHD, and autism. If you have kids or grandkids or work with kids, you don’t want to miss it; if that time doesn’t work for you, you can watch the replay at your convenience.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Help for Long-Haulers

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Many people suffer from a myriad of symptoms after contracting a COVID infection. Muscle and mental fatigue seem to be common among these “long-haulers”—more technically called post-viral fatigue syndrome. Based on prior research by the investigators, they randomly selected twelve subjects with long-haul COVID symptoms. Half the subjects took four grams of creatine monohydrate for six months; the control subjects took inulin fiber.

Every measure of energy production in muscle and brain demonstrated improvement. Questionnaires on fatigue and muscular pain matched the improvement in energy production in the tissues that were tested. Did increased energy account for the benefit? While the study was small, mostly due to the complexity of the research methods, it appears that’s a reasonable conclusion, although larger studies should be done.

Creatine is just one of the modalities I’m going to cover in this weekend’s Managing Pain webinar. Pain can be the result of several body systems that are not working properly; the objective is to use a step-by-step approach considering many systems to manage pain. Sign-up today for the live webinar Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Food Science & Nutrition. 2023. 11(11):6899-6908

2022 Super Bowl Webinar

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The first Super Bowl Webinar I did examined the energy systems of the body and how to train each one for a specific purpose, a concept called “specificity of training.” Now, 12 years later, we’re going back to examine the part of the cells that produces the most energy: the mitochondria.

Recent research has focused on what happens to mitochondria over our lifetime. Free radicals, the by-products of energy production in the mitochondria, interfere with energy production. More than that, they can damage the mitochondria, prevent the production of new mitochondria, and prevent the normal recycling of mitochondrial components to be reused in the body. The result is a lack of energy that impacts all phases of our lives.

That’s the problem. Is there any solution? That’s the topic of this year’s Super Bowl Webinar: Reclaiming Your Power! Based on the most recent research, I’m going to explain what goes wrong and the potential solutions, which include exercise, diet, and supplements. And it’s not just the over-65 crowd that may produce less energy; from early adulthood, you can start feeling the effects. No matter what your age, if you feel you don’t have the energy you used to have, join me for this year’s Super Bowl Webinar.

The webinar will be held live on Super Bowl Sunday, February 13, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time; your cost is only $12.95. If you can’t join live, you’ll get access to the replay for a week after the live webinar. Of course, Insiders and Members get the usual discounts.

If you want to reclaim your power, join me on the 13th to find out how.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Short-Chain Fatty Acids: DIY Nutrition

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Short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) are critical to your health and well-being, yet you may not really know where they come from or what they do. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about SCFA is that they’re not generally found in our diet; we make them ourselves! We do that when bacteria in the microbiome work to ferment digestible fiber.

By definition, SCFA contain less than six carbon molecules. The three you may have heard about are acetate, propionate, and butyrate. SCFA can provide us with up to 10% of our energy needs. They’re especially important to colonocytes, a type of endothelial cells of the large intestine that need energy to digest and absorb food that we use to produce the rest of the energy we need.

I’ll cover what else SCFA do on Thursday. In the meantime, one way to increase the production of SCFA is to get more fiber, whether from foods or supplements. It’s especially important after a course of antibiotics; research has shown that after the microbiome is upset by antibiotics, the production of SCFA can be impaired, which impacts many biological processes.

The monthly Insider Conference Call is tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. You can still participate by becoming an Insider by 8 p.m. tomorrow night. If you have questions about COVID-19 or any other health topic, this is your chance to get answers. I hope to talk with you then.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Benoit Chassaing, Andrew T. Gewirtz, in Physiology of the Gastrointestinal Tract (Sixth Edition), 2018.

Energy Thieves: Stress

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The final energy thief is stress. It can range from everyday stress such as the traffic on the way to work to your kid having the flu and you have to find someone to watch him or miss work. We adapt to those types of stress, but what about the big stressors? Illness, for you or a loved one, or worse, death. A bad boss. Divorce. Or one that I think affects more of us than we want to admit: the fear that you’re not accomplishing what you wanted to in your life or that your future is precarious. These can steal your energy. Stress can make you sick.

The first step is to get your mind right. This has nothing to do with grief or other emotions that you’re going to feel; those are natural and necessary. But your kids still need braces or your spouse may need extended rehabilitation after surgery. Those are stressful. And you will still have to put food on the table and pay the rent or mortgage in addition to those stresses. With all that, you may be facing the busiest time at work or in your business. You may feel overburdened, but you don’t have the luxury of sitting and feeling bad for yourself. This is when you have to dig deep and step up.

You cannot let this thief called stress steal your energy just when you need it the most. It’s not going to be easy, but you can do it. You can’t perform at full throttle all the time, but you can pick the times during a day, a week, or a month and match your energy levels with the demand to accomplish those tasks. You have to perform at your best to get the job done, and you can train to do that. But before you begin, you have to get your head right to deal with stress.

One way to begin is to identify when you have to perform your best. In Tuesday’s post, I told you I chose this week to perform at a high level all week. I trained for it. Now I’m using the strategy to perform 14 hours per day this week until I finish the webinar tomorrow. I didn’t have to have maximal energy all 14 hours per day; just when the task at the moment required it. Most of the time, I needed to have the mental clarity to read, write, and speak at my best.

It began with deciding what I had to do this week. I wrote it all on the white board in my office to keep my focus. I wrote it in my planner so I can see it. I eliminated all the distractions I could to focus on this week. Once you have your mind right, you have to know what you have to do and when you’re going to do it. And just getting that figured out helps relieve the stress because the problems have been defined and you’ve decided to act. The training to achieve that will seem easy.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Energy Thieves: Medications

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Another class of energy thieves is medications. This may not apply to everyone but based on the latest CDC stats, close to 50% of all American adults take at least one prescription drug and almost one-quarter take three medications or more. There are three ways medications can steal your energy when you need it to perform your best.

  • Some medications can directly affect energy levels. Beta-blockers used for hypertension are an example; they’re supposed to slow down heart rate. They can also affect beta-receptors in other areas of your body. The net effect saps energy.
  • Other medications indirectly steal energy. An extreme example would be chemotherapy and radiation during cancer treatment, but some medications such as statins can cause muscle discomfort which can also steal energy levels.
  • Not taking the medications as directed can also steal energy. The simplest example is thyroid medication for hypothyroidism. It’s designed to be taken in the morning (unless otherwise specified by your doctor). If it’s not taken when it’s supposed to be taken, it can’t help with energy levels.

There are numerous medications that can impact energy. The first step is a discussion with your physician to address your concerns; schedule that today. I’ll be discussing strategies to minimize energy loss due to medications in the Super Bowl Webinar on Sunday, but it all begins with a discussion with your doctor.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-therapeutic.htm

 

Energy Thieves: Food

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This week I’m focusing on potential energy thieves, and I’ve identified three areas that can hinder performance; one of those is the foods we eat. The two primary food thieves that affect me and many others are refined carbohydrates and deep-fat fried food, but the reasons are polar opposites:

  • Refined carbohydrates and some starchy foods raise blood sugar quickly, but then you suffer a rebound drop. Eating too many refined carbs can put you in a carb coma.
  • High-fat foods, especially deep-fat fried foods, can take hours to digest, redirecting blood from the rest of the body to the digestive system to digest and absorb the fatty foods. Less blood to the brain means your mental acuity drops.

All this week, I’m using the techniques I developed for Energy on Demand in the Optimal Performance Program to have all the energy I need to focus and work 14-hour days through the end of the next webinar. My goal is to eat to perform at a high level, and part of that is knowing what not to eat. If you participate, either live or by listening within the following week, you’ll get the complete story.

Spend some time thinking about how the foods you eat affect your energy levels. There may other foods and dietary factors that affect you in addition to the two I’ve listed; for example, maybe it’s not so much which foods as when you eat them. How food affects energy for the times you really need to be at your best will be one of the topics this Sunday in the Super Bowl Webinar. I hope you’ll join me.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Power Up with Vitamin B12

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The final supplement I’ll cover this week is vitamin B12, sometimes called the energy vitamin. Many vitamins are involved with energy production, but a lack of B12 can certainly cause problems with energy and other issues.

Vitamin B12 is also known as cobalamin and if you’re wondering, yes, this vitamin does include the mineral cobalt. There are two primary functions of B12 in the body. The first is to help reduce the chemical homocysteine to methionine while helping folate be converted into a usable form in the same reaction. Without enough B12, homocysteine increases inflammation in the body . . .

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