Okay, so we’re going to talk about insomnia and hashimoto’s and i can’t believe i haven’t talked about this one yet because it’s so huge i mean really. Sometimes when people will, you know, they’ll, say: okay, doc.
You know they know who i am or something like that. I’M talking to people and they’re like wow. Well, i can’t go to your. You know this can’t go through your program or whatever i can’t. I can’t do my diet or whatever.
What’S what’s like one of the one things you would have me change and really sleep is like way way way on top of the list of things that i would have them change relative to um relative to their their immune problem.
I mean, if i i put it right up there with gluten and i’d put it right up there with uh um. Certain supplements that are really really really can be really powerful in autoimmunity. It’S way up there, because when you get into rem sleep, when you get into that right, sleep pattern, um, it’s it’s called restorative sleep.
Basically, that’s when healing accelerates, so whatever you’re doing with your diet and whatever you’re doing during the day relative to your supplements, your diet, your other triggers your your exercise, your not over training.
All these other things are they kind of come together. When you sleep, i i this is for me this excuse me for me, this is like top top top. I strive to always get my sleep and i have to sleep more than eight hours for those of you who have seen this for the first time.
I have hashimoto’s and a number of other autoimmune issues, so i have to um. I have to sleep more than eight hours and sometimes it’s a long time. So i make sure i get to bed early. I make sure i get through the night.
I make sure that when i wake up, i’m feeling refreshed and if i’m not i’ll stay there until i am i’ll know when it when it is so there’s not an exact number of hours for sleep for an patient probably is relative to how severe you are Suffering how many tissues are being damaged sleep, so sleep is very restorative.
It also is it’s controlled by a part of your brain called the hippocampus. The same part of your brain that is relative to short-term memory loss same same area, because short-term memory turns into long-term memory when you sleep so the same part of the brain is involved in your sleep rhythm, sleep rhythm is huge, circadian rhythm is huge, so i’ve Had several patients um over the years who have inconsistent work schedules so there’s there’s there’s working normal day time and then they switch over to uh night shift and then they switch over to daytime and then they switch over to swing shift.
I’M in reno nevada, where we have several casinos and casino workers, will we’ll have that happen to them regularly. They start getting sick, they start getting injured. They can’t think as well, because it’s it’s screwing up their brain and they’re, not getting the proper rem, sleep and they’re, probably not getting the proper restorative sleep, so it it makes them much more susceptible to getting sick, so the and and the and the and the The latest studies – and, i always say latest because studies seem to change, but the latest studies that are being used in the field of brain rehabilitation are that the ideal rem sleep is between 10 a.
m. I’M sorry, 10 pm and 2 a.m in the morning give or take an hour there, nine to nine to three, but the course seems to be ten to two. So the recommendation is definitely to get to bed by ten o’clock, preferably nine, thirty or nine o’clock, and be asleep by by ten o’clock and then sleep through that cycle.
If you’re, if you’re, if you’re, i just had a patient i’ve, i was just looking at his stuff yesterday and one thing he failed to tell me that i was trying to figure out why his assessment for him why his symptoms look the way they looked after About six weeks, because he had so many things that were so much better but there’s there were these weird symptoms.
I’M like this doesn’t make any sense why these are not getting better well, he sometimes he doesn’t go to bed until five in the morning and sometimes he goes to bed at one in the morning and sometimes he goes to bed at three in the morning and Sometimes he goes to bed at 9 30 at night that doesn’t work you who never get better doing that like never it’s it’s uh, you you! You should use this gauge of um because and it takes like.
Let’S just say you were on a night shift going to a day shift and you’re, not feeling so good. It takes somewhere between one and three months to reset that circadian rhythm, that circadian rhythm, is like.
I go to bed at night, i’m supposed to go to bed like when the sun goes down and get up like when the sun comes up. That’S the original circadian rhythm, but but at this point it’s it’s more like you should be going to bed at like nine o’clock to ten o’clock at night and then you should be getting up somewhere when you’re arrested, um people argue there.
People argue that could be six to twelve hours depending on on who that individual is. But you ought should always keep your basic going to bed time as close to normal as possible, and and it takes anywhere from like four to 12 weeks to reset that in your brain and if, during that period of time, your short-term memory isn’t very good.
You’Re running in the doors and you’re falling asleep at the office at the wrong times. This is going to be why? Because because you’re you’re resetting something in the brain that controls when you wake up the things that control the true truly, what controls sleep uh in general is stress and blood.
Sugar, okay, but both stress and blood sugar directly affect this hippocampus part of your brain. That controls your circadian rhythm, that’s sleep, you’re, gonna i mean you could have good sleep hygiene which you should, which is uh not having your computers on until you uh look at not having your cell phones on.
If you go right to bed or not doing excitatory things before you go right to bed and having a dark room and not having led lights in there and not having your dog sleep on your head and stuff like that um.
But if you have these, but but you you could you can have if you have the other three, if you have the uh, if you have the blood sugar under control and your stress responses are under control and you’re going to bed at 10 o’clock, even poor Sleep hygiene isn’t going to stop you from sleeping, so it’s really it’s sleep.
Hygiene is so huge and then, when all of that happens, it creates inflammatory processes. When you get up. Not only are you not healing okay but relative to hashimoto’s you wake up, you can’t go back to sleep you’re in kind of a little mini fight flight response that causes inflammatory responses, and now it’s that’s stress and now that will set off immune antibodies against your Thyroid um a lot of you when you wake up in the middle of the night and and you can’t come back to sleep it’s because you have managed your blood sugar properly during the day, it’s dropped in the middle of the night.
Your brain needs blood sugar. Your brain tells your adrenal glands. I need blood sugar and your adrenal glands, put you in fight flight and when you go into fight flight, your body vomits out just tons of blood sugar from your liver, where it’s stored for emergencies like fight flight and for famine and and things of that nature And now you’re you’re in fight flight, same thing now, you’re now you’re putting out stress hormone cort, that’s the stress hormone.
It’S called cortisol now you’re, putting out stress hormones that flares up inflammation boom attack to the thyroid. So so insomnia is a big one. It’S to me, sleep is like the number one lifestyle change that has to happen for a person to really get the types of results they want um when they’re trying to get treated for hashimoto or, if you’re not trying to get treated for ashimoto’s.
It’S like the number one lifestyle change that you need to make you
