One of the most common symptoms of hormone imbalance is trouble sleeping, and stress is probably the number one culprit because it sets off a chain reaction starting with increased cortisol to insulin resistance and adrenal fatigue, which then affects our sleep. We’ve talked about the two hormones that are related to sleep and weight gain in a previous issue, so today I’d like to focus on the steps you can take to improve sleep.

Making sure your sleeping conditions promote a good night’s sleep is the first step. This includes having a quiet room because if you’re woken up by sound it will disrupt your sleep cycle and make it difficult to fall back to sleep. If you live in a noisy city, consider earplugs or a sound machine. Set your thermostat to an appropriate temperature, not too hot or too cold. Keep your room as dark as possible since any light will disturb the production of melatonin, your sleep hormone. Lastly, make sure your room is comfortable and inviting.

One of the most important things about getting a good night’s sleep is making sure your blood sugar level stays stable throughout the night. If your blood sugar level drops during the night, your body interprets that as stress and releases cortisol, which wakes you up and then you have trouble falling back to sleep. Avoid eating refined sugars or drinking caffeine, especially close to bedtime. Despite popular belief that alcohol helps you fall asleep, it actually creates a drop in blood sugar during the middle of the night.

Set yourself up right by doing something relaxing before bed like reading a book, meditating or taking a warm bath. If you get up frequently in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, monitor how much you’re drinking in the evening. If it isn’t that much, speak to your physician because it could be a bladder issue or diabetes. 

Finally, if you’ve followed all of the steps and you’re still having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, there are a few supplements out there you can take – 5-HTP, GABA, Inositol, Magnesium glycinate or Melatonin. I suggest checking with your physician to see if any of these are a good fit for you.

Author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss, Alicia Stanton, MD, offers tips to reduce emotional eating

Enfield, Conn. (November 1, 2011) – The holiday season is meant to be a time of joy, but for some it can be stressful. There’s so much to do and never enough time to do it, and money is tighter than ever for many people. It’s enough to stress out even the calmest personalities and trigger emotional eating. To avoid this annual trap, Alicia Stanton, MD, leading hormone health expert and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss, provides some tips to regain control of eating habits and manage stress during the holidays.

“Stress wreaks havoc on our cortisol and insulin levels, which is why during stressful times our bodies crave sweet and starchy foods,” said Stanton. “People who are normally restrained eaters are more likely than others to eat more during times of stress. Stress eating is a way to soothe or suppress negative emotions, but it can really derail weight loss efforts.”

Dr. Stanton offers these tips for combating stress eating:

• Tame your stress – if stress contributes to your emotional eating, try a stress management technique like yoga, meditation, etc.
• Check to see whether you’re really hungry – Is your hunger physical or emotional? If you ate recently and your stomach is rumbling then you’re probably not really hungry. Give the craving a little time to pass.
• Keep a food diary – Writing down what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat and how you’re feeling when you eat, may show a pattern over time revealing your connection between mood and food.
• Get support – You’re more likely to give in to emotional eating if you lack a good support network. Lean on family and friends or join a support group.
• Remove temptation – Don’t keep supplies of comfort foods in your home if they’re hard to resist. And if you are feeling stressed or sad, postpone your trip to the grocery store until you’re sure that you have your emotions in check.
• Don’t deprive yourself – Let yourself enjoy an occasional, small treat to help curb cravings.
• Get enough sleep – If you’ve tried self-help options, but still can’t get control of emotional eating, consider therapy with a professional mental health provider.

Check out page 99 of the October issue of Shape magazine. Dr. Stanton is quoted in the article “When Weight Gain is a Warning.” Dr. Stanton provides tips for treating an underactive thyroid and preventing a surge in cortisol levels with stress reduction techniques.

When it comes to exercise, it is usually recommended that we partake in 30-40 minutes of cardio alternated with strength training sessions. However, studies are showing that interval training and strength training using complex, functional movements, rather than isolated movements, provides better fitness results in better hormone profiles.

A functional movement is one that mimics the nerve and muscle patterns that we use in everyday life. One of the benefits is that they create a high neuroendocrine response, which means they are helpful in boosting the hormones that we want boosted, such as testosterone and natural human growth hormone.

Today, I’d like to pay particular attention to a form of exercising called Tabata Exercises. Named for Dr. Tabata of the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Japan, Tabata Exercises consist of intermittent training using 8 sets of 20 seconds at maximum intensity and then rest for 10 seconds between each bout. Dr. Tabata found that this high intensity intermittent training improved both anaerobic and aerobic supply systems significantly. And what is really great is that within 4 minutes you get an incredibly intense workout. I often use this method with squats, sit-ups or pushups, but you could do it with almost anything; sprinting, rowing, cycling, pull-ups, jump rope, etc.

These short bursts of exercises, followed by 10 seconds of rest allows the body to recover and doesn’t put too much strain on cortisol.

In this country, it is normal for us to work at least 10 hours a day, try to exercise a few hours a week and try to get by on 5-6 hours of sleep a night. We use alarm clocks, coffee, chocolate, soda, energy drinks and many other tricks to help us “push through” the fatigue and get on with our day. Does this sound like you?

What you don’t know is how exceedingly important sleep is and how not getting enough sleep can cause us to gain weight. Just one or two nights of missed or inadequate sleep are enough to make you as insulin resistant as a Type II diabetic! While adequate diet and exercise can help, your physiology will never be normal without enough sleep. At the end of the day, neglected sleep or poor sleep quality is a significant stressor to your body. It compromises your immune system, reduces your memory and makes you gain weight.

In addition to insulin, two other important hormones related to sleep and weight gain are melatonin and prolactin. Known as the “hormone of darkness,” melatonin is secreted in darkness, at night and tells the body it is time to sleep. Prolactin is critical to our immune systems and one of our first lines of cancer defense. Research shows that longer periods of sleep with increased melatonin production enhanced immunity. Long nights also produced higher levels of prolactin. If we get less sleep at night, more prolactin is produced during the day. And if prolactin is secreted during the day, it leads to autoimmunity and carbohydrate craving.

If you put together the imbalance between insulin, cortisol, prolactin and melatonin, you have a recipe for disaster. The biggest problem with short night sleep is that insulin will stay higher in the dark when it should be flat and cortisol falls so late it will come up normally in the morning. This is the reversal of your normal hormone rhythms. You’re supposed to wake up with high cortisol in the morning to deal with the stress of the day and a low insulin so you’re hungry. However, with reversed hormone rhythms it is easy to skip breakfast because your insulin is high and you’re not hungry. The reversal also causes melatonin and prolactin to be too high in the morning and throughout the daylight hours making it difficult to concentrate. By 3:00 in the afternoon you crave carbohydrates, get inpatient and have even more trouble concentrating.

Now do you see why getting enough sleep is so important? It’s more than just resting. It recharges your body, controls appetite, supports the immune system, balances hormones and improves concentration.

The New Year is upon us, but instead of setting drastic resolutions for yourself, how about making small changes to your diet that will help balance your hormones and improve your overall health? First of all, don’t set a number for the amount of weight you want to lose. Instead make a resolution to eat healthier and measure your success by the way you feel. Do you have more energy? Are your hot flashes getting better? Are you more focused at work? Are you sleeping better at night? Has your libido increased?

Here are some general guidelines to help get you on track this new year so you can feel like a whole new you:

• Drink water! – Water is very important for our bodies to detoxify all the toxins that are stored in our fat. Drinking a glass of water prior to a meal can also help you eat less.
• Plan your meals in advance, even snacks – If you know what you’re going to eat when you’re hungry the less likely you’ll stand in front of the fridge or pantry trying to find something. This is when “less than optimal” foods may enter your mouths.
• Record what you eat – This helps you lose weight by showing food patterns, monitoring areas of improvement and tracking progress.
• Eat breakfast – Breakfast is important because your body needs to restore the fuel it lost during the night. If you don’t eat breakfast your body won’t have fuel to work with and your body sees that as a stressor and your cortisol levels will rise.
• Eat every 3 hours – Small, more frequent meals provide a consistent input of fuel, which won’t trigger an increase in cortisol demand and reduce your metabolism due to lower thyroid hormone.
• Don’t drink your calories – Sodas (even diet), fruit juices, sports drinks, sweet tea, and specialty coffee drinks should be replaced with water, seltzer water, green tea, herbal tea and decaf coffee. The sweeteners and caffeine contribute to insulin resistance and cortisol imbalance. If you can’t function without your morning coffee, start with one cup of caffeinated and then switch to decaf.
• Eat healthy foods 80-90 percent of the time – If you’re eating whole, nutritious foods 80-90 percent of the time, you can indulge in a little something special during the other time. If you’re too rigid, you’ll get frustrated and give up, which is why many diets fail.

Many people find this time of year to be stressful, when in fact it should be a joyous time. It is true, there is a lot going on and a lot of money can be spent, which can lead to more stress, elevated levels of cortisol and eventually weight gain and other symptoms of hormone imbalance. However, with a little planning and stress management techniques, this can be the most wonderful time of the year for you and your family.

To keep spending within your budget and not consuming all your time, make a list and start early. Make a list of everyone you’re buying for and what you’re buying them, and then stick to that list. Start your shopping early, so you’re not running around until the last minute. Just like any other time, find time for yourself to do the things you enjoy, whether that it is getting a manicure, having quiet time to read a book, playing a round of golf, going for a walk or to yoga class, etc. 

In order to not put additional stress on your cortisol levels, keep up with your diet of eating every couple of hours and including lean proteins, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats. I know it’s hard to avoid all of the yummy treats that seem to find you during this time. Just try to limit yourself. A good rule of thumb is to eat some healthy snacks prior to going to a party in order to keep from going overboard. Also try not to drink too much alcohol. Especially avoid the overly sweet or rich drinks and alternate with sparkling water or club soda between alcoholic beverages.

I’ll be participating in a free teleseminar series on hormone health called “Turning Back the Clock: Rejuvenate Your Hormones, Your Health and Your Life – Naturally,” presented by Pomegranate Health and WomenWise International.

The series will take place from October 26-December 7 and feature seven of the natural health world’s leading experts on hormone health. My appearance will take place November 2 and will focus on keeping your mind sharp as a tack.

Here’s more details on my topic: The Brain Hormone Connection – How To Feel Well, Have Fun And Remember What You’re Doing!!

Most people think about menopausal symptoms when they think about hormones. However, hormone balance is very important to the overall health of your brain. Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, cortisol and thyroid all profoundly affect how you think, feel and remember. Attendees will find out how to keep these hormones in balance to optimize your mood, memory and concentration while minimizing your risk for brain health problems like Alzheimer’s. You’ll discover the best nutrients and lifestyle tactics for your mental health.

Sign up and reserve your spot at www.healthywomanseminar.com. All you need is a phone or computer with speakers.