From early morning to lunchtime and into the evening, on Facebook and blogs and Twitter, I am one of many many friends and contacts that are
tired and need more sleep.
It is probably the common cry, the golden thread, that links all my real life and blog and internet friends.
I have lost count of the times I have sent someone virtual hugs and prayed that individuals get some sleep, for fear of them descending into total meltdown.
Hell, I have
posted it about it a fair handful of times too......
And of course I know that this craving for more sleep, and lack of it, goes with the territory of small children and too much social networking temptation.
The old proverb of "
One hours sleep before midnight's worth two hours after".....is there any truth in it, do you think?
And equally, does sleep help you lose weight? Or if you
don't get enough sleep, does this prevent you from losing weight?
(You can see now, how and why, my curiosity in this sleep business is piqued!)
It seems that there may be a bit of truth in the old proverb, and that is it more than just an old wives tale:
The liver is crucial to the body's energy cycle. The liver follows the cycle of the sun. When the sun goes down in the evening, the liver wants you to rest, as the liver needs its own rest, in order to to store up sugars (glycogen) to be used for energy for the next days activities.
With me so far?
When we stay up late at night, we stuff around with our liver’s natural rhythm. We muck up it's groove. And in turn, we stuff up our own metabolism. If we stay up too late, we force the liver to keep going, and so it's unable to get on with the job of storage of glycogen. Instead, by staying up after dark, we force the liver to dip into our existing glycogen stores, to break down the glycogen for a burst of energy that we need NOW.
We get a second wind, a burst of sugar in our blood stream, (and so happily blog and Twitter for another few hours......) and yet what we are
really doing is depleting our energy for the next day. Going into energy overdraft. Maxing out the energy credit limit before pay day, so to speak.
Our liver doesn't get the time or opportunity to store up the glycogen it needs for the next day, and so the next day we have a liver that is depleted of glycogen. Our body then requires us to release stress hormones from our adrenal glands to keep us functioning. These hormones act to provide more sugar in the blood, but they also accelerate our heart rate, increase our blood pressure, and suppress our immunity so that we get poorly more easily. (And send us craving sugar and carbs........).
So whilst the stress hormones do give us energy, it is like the
understudy to the real deal. Emergency use only. If we use this method to source our energy all the time, we get run down and sick. And we are tempted to eat crap. And we are STILL tired.
They say that any sleep you get before midnight is restorative and counts for double. I reckon they might be right.
SO, from today I am going to set myself a little challenge.
I cannot, sadly, get to bed at sunset, as this would mean leaving my kids to get their own dinner and bath themselves and read their own stories.(And whilst this is tempting, I had better not risk them being left to their own devices?)
BUT, I am going to make a concerted effort to get to bed
before 9.30pm at the latest at least 3 nights a week. Use myself as a test case?
I'll let you know how I go..............
