1. Eat a big breakfast
This is a vital first step in correcting any sleep issues. The circadian clock is all about good habits and eating at the same time every day. Doing so helps entrain the circadian clock.
Skipping breakfast causes a struggle with insulin sensitivity and perpetuates insulin resistance (Farshchi, H. et al, 2005). You will be hungry again at night and then overeat. This exacerbates poor sleep and perpetuates the metabolic syndrome you are trying to outrun. It makes sense to have your largest meal earlier in the day and to thus eat your supper early as well.
The BB is designed as a tryptophan- rich meal and encourages people to get up with the sun and get sunlight in the morning. The benefits of this on the hormonal system are massive (Fukushike, H. et al, 2014). Not only does the BB help with serotonin production, but also with the secretion of melatonin at night (see above). It is no use to enter your day and not produce the correct hormones to deal with its stresses and then try to remediate that at night. It is too late then.
2. Reduce blue light at night
The chronically ill and night owls can benefit from eliminating blue light toxicity. LED lights and TV screens emit an unnatural dose of blue light at night. Although blue light is a healthy part of the spectrum of natural sunlight, artificial light contains too much blue light at the wrong time. This is a known circadian disruptor (Richard G. Stevens, et al, 2007). Television time should be restricted and you should avoid bright lights after sunset if
possible.
At night time any web surfing or texting people on mobile devices with blue- lit screens should be limited, especially in the hours before bed.
“The use of light-emitting devices ... before bedtime prolongs the time it takes to fall asleep, delays the circadian clock, suppresses ... melatonin, reduces the amount and delays the timing of REM sleep, and reduces alertness the following morning" (Chang, 2014).
It has long been known that in the hospital environment one of the factors holding back the recovery of patients, in wards like the ICU, is their exposure to unnatural environmental factors such as high non-native electromagnetic forces and blue light (Knauert,2015).
There are many recorded adverse effects of night-time light and it has been linked to cancer and other immune diseases (Stevens, Richard. et al, 2013).
This extends to any environment where you are spending many hours under artificial light and in front of screens. The negative impact of blue light on the secretion of melatonin is even greater than what scientists suspected and a recent inquiry has confirmed this (Vartanian G.V. et al, 2015).
Exposure to blue light for much of the day under fluorescent lighting in your office and then at home in front of blue-lit screens through the night will make a fat person obese. Riding a treadmill in front of the telly is not going to do you much good either.
Prolonging daily light through artificial means will lead to a person being more obese than the person who has normal daylight exposure (Kooijman, 2015). During day and night you should have a blue light reducer application on your PC screen. Flux is good as it follows the sun and adjusts. Android and Apple also have free blue blocking software, but this is a patch and not a solution. Some people with chronic sleeplessness use blue blocker spectacles. Sunglasses do not work. Blue should only really be blocked at night, anyway.
3. Sleep in a dark room
Light at the wrong time can disrupt circadian clocks (Wright K.P.et al, 2013). A single pulse of light in the middle of the night can cause virtual time travel in that it causes a phenomenon called ‘phase returning’. It pushes your circadian clocks ahead of time, disrupting everything (Roberts, 2015).
So, remove any flashing lights from your bedroom including cell phones. And try replacing any lights that you need to switch on at night to go to the bathroom with orange or red lights or very warm and dim bulbs. If you must have your phone in your room then do not keep it near your head. If you read in your bed use a low
wattage incandescent lightbulb in your lamp.
4. Sleep in a cold room
At night when we sleep and Melatonin rises the temperature drops in the human brain and body. This dropping temperature increase the regenerative DC current in our nervous system to regenerate its dendrites and strengthen synaptic networks. Sleep and weight loss are coupled in nature (Kruse, 2013). We sleep when it is colder at night.
Some of my best sleep has been after Cold Thermogenesis in which I have bathed in very cold water. Our bodies just seem to function better, electrically, from cold exposure. Cold also diminishes inflammation allowing the body to recover faster.
Cold is our primordial state and becoming cold-adapted is an amazing means of getting your metabolism back into shape (Kruse, 2012). I highly recommend a read of the Cold Thermogenesis series by Dr. Jack Kruse. Sleep works better in the
cold.
Take Moringa and Gut Rescue to assist in deep sleep:
5. Get morning sun and befriend your body clock
As mentioned, light entrains the circadian cycles (Wright K.P. et
al, 2013). Getting exposure to sun helps night owls recover good sleep (Fukushike, H. et al, 2014). Morning sun is also beneficial to the hormone cycles and sulfation in which we get vitamin D3 (Kruse, 2013).
I get sunshine on my face as early as I can in the mornings. It helps my circadian clocks to synchronize as I couple to my environment. Doing this barefoot is even better as we get a magnetic sense of our environment by earthing or grounding our bodies and receiving electrons from the earth; a good 20 minutes and more in the sun before 12am helps me sleep like a log at night (Kruse, 2015).
Vitamin D3 is a hormone and critical for good health. Dr. Kruse labels it “The Immunity Steroid” with good reason (Kruse, 2011). Your body makes D3 from sunlight.
Studies have proved that morning sun helps keep off the weight. People who had most of their daily exposure to even moderately bright light in the morning had a significantly lower fat mass than those who had most of their light exposure later in the day.
A lack of morning sun desynchronizes the body clocks, which leads to poor sleep and weight gain (Paul, 2014).
Starting your morning with bright light cues to your central pacemaker – the SCN, and then not eating breakfast, which cues your clocks in your peripheral tissues, is what can be labelled as a circadian mismatch. It is the pathway to bad health (Lagakos,2015).
Circadian mismatches include eating at the wrong times, eating foods out of season or doing activities during the wrong times of the day.
Bright light and breakfast in the morning is great medicine and if you can see how the BBB gets this then you will get something that many people in the Banting and Paleo communities do not.
Nutrients, light and rest are three key components of great health.
ref: BBBD ebook