In this final episode of Developer Weekly, the host announces the end of the podcast and shares his plans for the future. He will focus on Azure and technology consulting, as well as health and wellness. The episode also includes audio clips from his course on burnout, where he discusses improving sleep and nutrition. The host encourages listeners to visit his website for more content and offers tips on improving sleep and eating a healthy diet.
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Hey, friends. This is it. This is the final episode of Developer Weekly. I've decided to end the podcast because I had a good run, we had lots of great guests on the podcast, I learned a lot, and now it's time to move on and focus on different things. So I will still be Azure Barry and focusing on Azure stuff and technology and consulting in that way. But I will also be focusing on health and wellness. That's one of my favorite topics, and I love to create content about that and learn more about that to Become more healthy myself as well and to help people to become healthy as well.
So I'll be doing all of that type of stuff over at improvingberry.com, that is improvingberry.com. In the beginning, I will post blog posts and articles on that platform and you can subscribe to the newsletter there. Later on, I will also create courses about health and also do podcasts and videos, and I'm very excited about that. But for now, this is the final episode of the Developer Weekly Podcast. In this special episode, I will share with you some clips, some audio clips from my course over at Pluralsight that is about burnout. In these clips I talk about improving your sleep and improving your nutrition.
So As this is the audio for a video course, you might hear some references to the slides that I'm talking about and obviously you can't see those. If you are interested in this course, in the full length course, you can go to improvingbarrie.com/burnout, There you'll find a link to the course as well. If you do not have a Pluralsight subscription, you can ask me on Twitter or e mail or wherever you find me, and I will send you a 30 day trial code so that you can watch the course and any other courses as well. Thank you all very much for listening to the Developer Weekly Podcast over the last year.
It's been inspiring to me to see all of the reactions from people that learned from my incredible guests. So thank you very much. The podcast itself will still be available on developerweeklypodcast.com. I will keep it up for a couple of years so that you can browse all the episodes and listen to them. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy this final episode. Let's take a look at how you can improve your sleep to reduce stress and become healthier. Sleep is driven by hormones like Cortisol, which peaks in the morning and decreases throughout the day. Its lowest point is just before you go to bed.
There's also adenosine, which is a molecule that creates sleep pressure in your body. It builds up during the day and makes you more and more sleepy. Some things like exercise increase adenosine, which helps you to sleep better. When you sleep, adenosine is released. There's also the well known hormone melatonin, which also helps you to fall and stay asleep. This also builds up throughout the day and peaks when you go to bed. Melatonin is sensitive to light and follows the circadian rhythm. So there's more melatonin when it becomes dark to signal you to go to sleep. Now, when you sleep, you go through different stages like this.
These stages come in cycles which start with light sleep. This is non rapid eye movement sleep of types It's 1 and 2 and prepares you for deeper sleep. It lowers your heart rate, cools you down, and makes you doze off. After light sleep, you experience deep sleep, which is also non rapid eye movement sleep. In deep sleep, your body repairs itself and grows. It is also during deep sleep that your brain cleans itself by flushing fluids through its glymphatic system, clearing out plaques and toxins. Next, you'll experience REM sleep. This is rapid eye movement sleep where your eyes, well, move rapidly. This is where you dream.
During REM sleep, you consolidate memories and learn things and prepare for creativity and learning more the next day. When you don't get enough REM sleep, you'll immediately notice more irritability and stress as it also buffers you against mental stress. By the way, the picture here is my actual sleep from yesterday. I could use more REM sleep and my son woke me up right here. Well, that's how it goes sometimes. Another thing to understand about sleep is sleep efficiency. When you go to bed at 10 in the evening and wake up at 6 in the morning, you have spent 8 hours in bed. That doesn't mean that you've slept for 8 hours.
No, you probably slept for something like 7 hours as it takes Some time to fall asleep and you might wake up once or twice during the night even without you noticing it. This is called sleep efficiency, Efficiency goes down when you get older, so you need to give yourself more sleep opportunity to still sleep enough. So what are the facts? How much sleep do you actually need? Well, around 8 hours and it is slightly different for everybody. You sleep more when you're younger and you sleep less when you are older, but 8 hours is a good average. When you are awake, You start building up adenosine and lose cognitive functionality over time. In fact, when you've been awake for about 16 hours, Your abilities have peaked and are declining.
Your reflexes and cognitive abilities will go down from there. If you are sleep deprived, for instance, if you didn't sleep well the night before, you experience a lot of symptoms. For instance, your immune system doesn't function as well. You'll feel more hungry as your body up regulates the hormone ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, You'll also experience higher stress levels as your body is more inflamed, didn't recover as well, and your brain isn't ready to cope with mental stress. Sleep impacts your health a lot. Okay. Let's pause a minute for an exercise.
Think about your sleep. Are you an early bird, a night owl, or somewhere in between? Which one fits you best? All right. How long do you typically sleep? Maybe you track this with a device already. If you don't, think about it for a minute. How long do you think you sleep? How much time do you need to lie in bed for that sleep? Do you fall asleep easily? Do you wake up during the night or lie awake in bed? Finally, when you wake up, do you feel refreshed and relaxed? Do you feel like you sleep well? If you do, then sleep might not be an important area to improve upon. But if you don't sleep well, the tips in the next clips can help you.
Okay. Let's look at things that can disturb sleep. We've already seen that stress can disturb sleep. When you are worrying in bed, you don't fall asleep as fast as you might wake up more. Heat also disrupts sleep. Even when you think you sleep well when it is warm, you probably don't. Your body needs to cool down to Prepare for sleep and stay asleep. Exercising late can also disrupt sleep because exercise is a stressor and increases cortisol. When that's high, when you go to bed, you feel wired and unable to sleep. Eating and drinking late keeps your digestive system active.
This disrupts sleep a lot. Also, artificial light from your television and other screens decreases melatonin which disrupts sleep. This light tricks your body into thinking it is still daytime, and also alcohol and caffeine mess with your sleep. Let's talk about that. Adenosine builds up sleep pressure during the day, which makes you fall and stay asleep. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors of your cells which blocks the effect of adenosine. Caffeine typically is out of your system after 10 hours Depending on how well your body deals with it, caffeine doesn't make adenosine go away, it just blocks your cells from using it. So when caffeine is out of your system, the build up adenosine hits even harder and makes you more sleepy.
But when you consume caffeine late in the day, let's say after dinner, you'll block adenosine too much for a good night's sleep. Even when you think you still sleep well, your sleep quality will be impaired. Alcohol is also bad for sleep. It might not seem like it because it helps you to relax and fall asleep quickly, which is called a low sleep latency. But alcohol is a toxin which raises your heart rate, body temperature, and breathing whilst your body tries to deal with it. As a result, you wake up a lot without you noticing it, and it decreases your REM sleep, which is why people that drink a lot don't remember what happened as you consolidate memories during REM sleep. Often, caffeine and alcohol end up forming a vicious cycle.
You drink coffee or tea during the day which wakes you up, and you drink some alcohol at night to relax and wind down. Because both impact sleep, you wake up more tired. So you drink more coffee to wake you up, maybe even for longer in the day. As you become more stressed, you drink a bit more at night to relax. This reduces your sleep even more, making you more tired, and so you drink more coffee and alcohol. This happened to me. At some point, I drank 8 cups of coffee during the day. How much caffeine do you consume in a day? Okay. We're finally here. Let's talk about things that we can do to improve sleep. We've seen that exercising late can be bad for sleep, So exercise early in the day, at least 3 hours before you go to bed.
Exercise builds up adenosine which helps with sleep as long as you don't do it too late. Also, you should be in the sun every day. I know it might be hard, But try to get natural sunlight in your eyes as early as you are awake. This will start your circadian rhythm. In the morning, don't wear sunglasses if you can because they block sunlight and decrease your sleep quality. Avoid alcohol. As we've seen, it is bad for sleep. If you must drink alcohol, do it very early in the day so that it is out of your system when you go to bed. Caffeine has many health benefits, but enjoy it early in the day as it interferes with your sleep pressure.
Don't eat late and don't eat large meals before bed. When you are still digesting food when you go to bed, Your body is busy and not ready to sleep. This increases heart rate, temperature, and breathing. Food also contains water, which makes you go to the bathroom at night, eat and drink your last meal at least 3 hours before going to bed. Adenosine builds up throughout the day and is released by sleep. If you take a nap after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, You won't get enough sleep pressure to sleep well. Naps are great, but try to take them earlier in the day.
Create a sleep schedule that works for you and stick to it even in the weekend. Your body's circadian rhythm is ingrained in your cells, and if you keep to it, It will give you your best possible sleep. Sunlight contains a lot of blue light, which tells us that we should be awake, and most of our devices emit blue light as well. This tricks the body into thinking that it is daytime by lowering melatonin production. Avoid screens in the evening if you can and turn down your lights or set them to a warm color like red. If you need to look at a screen before bed, use blue light filters. Amongst these, there are software programs that filter out blue light You can also wear special blue light blocking glasses.
Another thing that improves your sleep is to Train your brain to associate your bedroom with sleep. Human brains are great at association. So when you have a TV and phone in your bedroom, It associates the bedroom with those not with sleep. So keep your bedroom simple. No television, no books, no phone. Melatonin is crucial to make you fall asleep and keep you asleep. When your body registers light, melatonin decreases and wakes you up. So it is very important that your bedroom is very dark. You can get blackout curtains to do that and also remove all lights that are on at night, including turning off the light of your alarm clock. Your body follows the natural circadian rhythm. When it cools off at night, It signals you that it is time for bed. When it warms up, it's time to wake up. So you need to keep cool at night. For most people, this should be around 18 degrees Celsius, which is 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can do that By using air conditioning, opening your window, or using a cool pad that you stick under your mattress. And To make your sleep even better, you should measure it with a sleep tracker. When you do this, you'll find out what works for you and what doesn't. I use a ring to track my sleep, which is the aura ring, and there are lots more tracking options available. That was a lot. Let's break that down into simple things that you can do. Here are the simplest things that you can do. I recommend that you try them for at least 14 days. That seems long, but I'm sure you can do it. You can pick which ones you do. 1st, no alcohol for 14 days.
If you usually drink alcohol and you can leave it for 14 days, I promise you that it will improve your sleep. Also, minimize your caffeine to 1 cup a day, which can be coffee or tea for instance, and enjoy it early, at least before noon. Remember that chocolate also contains caffeine. Also, make your bedroom dark if it isn't already. Get blackout curtains. They are one of the best investments in your health that you can make. Finally, get rid of distractions in your bedroom. No TV, no phones, no books. Pick 2 or more of these steps and stick with them for 14 days.
And if you're up for it, you can also implement more difficult steps like turning off your TV and other screens at least 1 hour before bed. I know this is a hard one for me. Also, as soon as you can after waking up and when the sun is up, go outside for at least 15 minutes. I know it can be cold and dreadful, but this will help even if it's cloudy. Finally, try to exercise early. This can be difficult, especially if you have lots of things to do in the morning. Maybe you can exercise during lunch. Finally, you can implement some of the advanced Steps like track your sleep, invest in a sleep tracker like an Oura Ring or track your sleep with a smartwatch.
Most modern ones are okay at sleep tracking. Also, optimize your sleeping temperature by keeping cool. This can be as easy as choosing the right clothes to sleep in and as hard as buying a cooling mat or installing air conditioning. Pick the ones that you can implement easily and that you can stick with for 14 days. If you notice an improvement after 14 days, Keep it going and make it a habit. Let's move on to the next pillar of health. Let's talk about food and stress. This is such an underestimated topic when it comes to burnout. Food is medicine and there are several ways to use it for good.
Food can also be complicated. Let's try to keep it simple. Nutrition consists out of several things, including dietary restrictions, which are simply the things that you eat. There are many diets like keto, vegan, paleo, carnivore, and so on. They all have a common ground which we'll cover in more detail. Another aspect is time restriction. This is when you eat. For instance, if you start eating at 7 in the morning and stop at 6 at night, That's your eating window. Finally, there is calorie restriction, which is how much you eat. Pretty simple, right? So when you don't take care of any of these, you are in poor health.
You should always take care of one of these like what you eat or when you eat. Sometimes you can take care of 2 things at the same time or even 3, and you can change that as you like. Before we go any further, let's pause to think about how you are eating. Do you feel like you eat healthy? What do you typically eat? Do you feel healthy and energized after a meal? Or does food make you tired and sleepy and gives you stomachaches? Also, think about your eating window. When do you start eating every day, and when is your last bite or drink? How long is that?
Okay. Let's start by talking about dietary restrictions. So what you eat? What should you eat? I think the author Michael Pollan said it very well. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That covers it all. Let's dive into that. So what should you eat? Michael Pollan says food, by which he means real food or whole food. This seems like common sense, but it's pretty difficult to do. Because in the supermarket, You seldom find actual real food. You'll find lots of processed food that looks like food. Processed food contains lots of ingredients. When a food item has more than 3 ingredients, leave it. It's not food. It's something made in a science lab.
That makes sense, right? You shouldn't eat processed foods because they are high in sugar and salt, contain toxins, and don't provide a lot of nutritional value. They are literally designed so that you want more of them. If you think about it, you know perfectly well which Foods are good for you and which aren't. Real whole foods are things that you can find in nature, things that our ancestors would eat like eggs and plants. Eating whole foods also means eating real meat and fish. That means meat from animals that eat natural foods Like grass fed cows, cows that eat grain are basically made up of grain and don't contain a lot of nutrients, and you eat those. You kind of are what you eat.
So whole foods. Okay. What else? Well, don't eat toxic foods. They raise your stress level. When you try to eat an animal, it can run away. A plant can't do that, so it figured out a different way to protect itself with toxins. Most plants secrete toxins that are called lectins. These can kill insects and bother us in that they stress our body and cause inflammation. Foods that contain a lot of lectins are tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants, also legumes like lentils and beans, and everything made of wheat and grains, including bread and pasta. Wheat contains gluten, which is a type of lectin, and dairy products like milk and cheese contain high levels of lectins.
So what can you do? You can avoid these foods or minimize them in your diet. However, some of them are really nutritious. So you can also soak them like soaking lentils in water for a day and cook them. This reduces the lectins. Other toxins in food can be found in meat, like in these chickens. They are fed antibiotics and growth hormone. When you eat a chicken like this, you eat all of those toxins as well. On top of that, plants are treated with pesticides, which are very bad for you. You can avoid plants like that by buying organic vegetables. All right. Still makes sense, right? Eat real food and don't eat toxins.
Also, eat mostly plants. What does that mean? Our ancestors hunted animals but didn't always catch 1. So their diet consisted out of a lot of vegetables and meat and fish when they had it. As our bodies evolved to thrive on such a diet, we should eat that way as well. We haven't had enough time to adapt to our newly invented processed food diet, which is just a 100 years old. So what should you pay attention to when eating plants? Try and eat colorful plants. Red, yellow, green, purple, All signal plants with lots of nutrients. Pale see through iceberg lettuce doesn't do you much good, so look for deep colors.
Try to eat things that you normally wouldn't. Your gut microbes will love you for that. They love a variety of food Instead of the 15 types of vegetables that we usually eat, also eat low lectin vegetables like we discussed earlier or prepare them very well, Eat organic vegetables where you can, which aren't treated with harmful pesticides. Remember, potato fries and ketchup Don't count as vegetables. Okay. The next thing is to include meat and fish in your diet. I understand that you might not want to do this because of your beliefs or Personal reasons. If you don't eat meat, you might become deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, and you need to supplement those.
If you do eat meat, make sure that you eat meat from free animals, animals that eat natural food. This type of meat is more expensive, but it is much better for you and it tastes amazing. Look for grass fed and free range meat. Fish should be a staple in your diet. They are a great source of good fats, vitamins, and protein. Make sure to buy wild fish, not farmed fish, and try to eat smaller fish like sardines and mackerel. Larger fish like Tuna live longer and eat more of the smaller fish. Because of that, they contain more toxins like mercury and microplastics. We've just talked about it with fish and it is very important.
You should eat good fats and eliminate bad fats. Fats can be complicated. The food industry made us believe that fat was bad and carbohydrates and sugar were good. The opposite is true, but only for good fats. Most processed foods contain lots of bad fats like vegetable oils, like sunflower and corn oil. These are bad because they contain high levels of omega-six fatty acids, which cause inflammation if you consume too much of them. You need omega-six fatty acids, but only in small amounts, not the amounts that most people consume today. Instead, eat lots of good fats From coconuts, avocados, fish, olive oil, and grass fed meat.
These actually decrease inflammation, and you can also use these good fats to cook in. Most of them have high smoke points, which mean that they don't oxidize easily and become damaged under high heat. What else should you eat? Complex carbohydrates. Let's take a look. Your body needs fuel. It can use glucose as fuel or ketones from fat or both. When you eat food that contains carbohydrates Like a potato, your body turns those carbs into glucose. So far so good. Next, your pancreas produces the hormone insulin, which binds to receptors on your cells and allows glucose to enter them.
This is a great mechanism. Unfortunately, when you eat too many carbs and Carbs of low quality for a long time, you become what's called insulin resistant. Your body still produces insulin, but the receptors on your cells Don't pick it up anymore. Glucose doesn't enter cells and is stored as fat on your body. Body fat, Especially abdominal fat is inflammatory by itself. When insulin resistance goes on for a long time, it can turn into Type 2 diabetes. What are low quality carbs that can cause this? Well, foods that have a high glycemic index. Let me explain.
Carbohydrate foods convert into glucose fast or slow. The more complex a carbohydrate is, the slower this process goes, thereby giving you time to create insulin. So you should avoid high glycemic foods. High glycemic foods are things like bread, white rice, Cornflakes and soda and foods that have a lower glycemic index are sweet potatoes, lentils, and carrots. These are complex carbohydrates which convert more slowly into glucose. It's easy to see the difference between these groups. High glycemic foods are often man made processed foods, and low glycemic foods are natural whole foods.
All right. This is what you should eat. These rules fit into most diets and you should try out what works for you. This all still sounds complicated, right? Well, it doesn't have to be. For instance, on a typical day, I eat for breakfast, eggs with avocados, For lunch, maybe a big salad with leafy greens, some fish, tomatoes, and olive oil. Tomatoes don't bother me that much, so I eat them. For dinner, something like sweet potatoes with broccoli and other vegetables. In the morning, I drink a cup of coffee Throughout the day, water and sometimes herbal tea. This is clean and healthy, and it doesn't stress my body. It is also simple to make and delicious.
I get ideas for recipes from the vegan diet, which really isn't a diet but more a common sense way of eating. This comes down to filling 75% of the volume of your plate with vegetables and adding quality protein and fats for the rest. So we've talked about what you eat. Besides that, you can also work on when you eat. Let's say, you start eating at 6 in the morning, Eat throughout the day and eat your last bite at 10 in the evening. This is an eating window of 16 hours. This stresses your body because eating takes a lot of energy and your body needs time to clean things up and start healing processes. Instead, you can decrease your eating window to, let's say, 12 hours and don't snack at night.
This gives your body 12 hours to relax To heal, make sure that you fast for 12 hours each day. This will reduce stress and heal you. Fasting for longer like for 16 hours can help as well, but is also a stressor. I wouldn't do that when you are burnt out or on your way to burnout. The final mechanism is calorie restriction or how much you eat. In general, when you have chronic stress, You should avoid restricting your calories too much because that provides extra stress. But really, when you focus on what you eat and when you eat, It's not that important to focus on how much you eat. When we talk about nutrition, we also need to talk about dietary supplements.
I consider these food. You can often find articles in the news that state that vitamins are a waste of money and you just pee them out. Let's just make it simple. Should you take supplements? The simple answer is yes, you should. Why? Well, because our modern food is manufactured in ways that it doesn't contain enough vitamins and minerals. The soil that we use to grow food is depleted, and processed foods don't contain enough nutrients. Most people are overfed and undernourished. This leads to most people having 1 or more vitamin or mineral deficiencies, and most people have never tested their levels.
What should you take? That is highly personal and depends on many factors, but there are some things that everybody should take With minimum risk of being harmful. For instance, vitamin D. This is a hormone precursor that performs thousands of functions in your body. Your skin makes it when it is exposed to sunlight and you can also find it in foods like fatty fish. But most people don't get enough sunlight for sufficient vitamin D levels. So you should take a vitamin D supplement. Always take vitamin D in the morning as it interferes with melatonin, and also take it with a fatty meal as it dissolves in fat.
Another supplement that everybody should take is vitamin C. This is a powerful antioxidant that performs many functions in the body. Your body can only absorb so much vitamin C before it starts peeing out the rest. So you should take it throughout the day, for instance, with every meal. The final supplement that I recommend for everybody is magnesium. This is also called the relaxation mineral. Most people are deficient in it and it is a harmless supplement. Magnesium is needed for most processes in the body and is used up by stress and also by caffeine and alcohol. A great way to supplement magnesium is to go floating in a sensory deprivation tank. You'll sleep like a baby afterwards.
Besides these, you should find out if you have deficiencies like vitamin B and minerals. Your doctor can test you for deficiencies and prescribe supplements. Your doctor can also prescribe additional supplements like nootropics and adaptogens that can help to reduce stress. Again, that was a lot. Let's break that down into simple things that you can do. Let's start with the easy things. I recommend that you stick with these for at least 14 days. 1st, figure out what food you and your family like and plan your meals. Write down what you will eat for each meal of the day. This will at least reduce the times that you ordered takeout.
Next, create a shopping list for your meal plan and buy what you need. The next thing is to eat vegetables with every meal, even with breakfast. You can do this. And remember, ketchup is not a vegetable. And if you feel up to it, you can also try these more difficult steps. For 14 days, supplement vitamin D, C, and magnesium. Try to buy quality supplements by looking at reviews online or by asking your pharmacy. Next, don't eat for at least 12 hours per day. You can make this window bigger, but don't overdo it if you are already Trust. Finally, cut out all added sugar.
So no sugar in your coffee or tea and no food that contains added sugars. Read the label on packaged foods. You'll find out that most packaged foods contain added sugar, usually a lot. This one is hard, but it will make you a lot healthier. If you are not too stressed, try any one of these. No dairy or gluten for 14 days. A lot of people have gluten intolerances and are bad at metabolizing dairy. These two categories are responsible for a lot of stress and symptoms including headaches, bloating, acne, tiredness, and more. Just try it for 14 days and see how you feel. What do you have to lose?
Also, for 14 days, don't eat any processed food. This one is really difficult. This means making every meal with whole food. Try the ones that you think you can do for 14 days. If you find that something helps you feel better after 14 days, stick with it, make it part of your daily routine. Next, we'll dive into exercise.
Hey, friends. This is it. This is the final episode of Developer Weekly. I've decided to end the podcast because I had a good run, we had lots of great guests on the podcast, I learned a lot, and now it's time to move on and focus on different things. So I will still be Azure Barry and focusing on Azure stuff and technology and consulting in that way. But I will also be focusing on health and wellness. That's one of my favorite topics, and I love to create content about that and learn more about that to Become more healthy myself as well and to help people to become healthy as well.
So I'll be doing all of that type of stuff over at improvingberry.com, that is improvingberry.com. In the beginning, I will post blog posts and articles on that platform and you can subscribe to the newsletter there. Later on, I will also create courses about health and also do podcasts and videos, and I'm very excited about that. But for now, this is the final episode of the Developer Weekly Podcast. In this special episode, I will share with you some clips, some audio clips from my course over at Pluralsight that is about burnout. In these clips I talk about improving your sleep and improving your nutrition.
So As this is the audio for a video course, you might hear some references to the slides that I'm talking about and obviously you can't see those. If you are interested in this course, in the full length course, you can go to improvingbarrie.com/burnout, There you'll find a link to the course as well. If you do not have a Pluralsight subscription, you can ask me on Twitter or e mail or wherever you find me, and I will send you a 30 day trial code so that you can watch the course and any other courses as well. Thank you all very much for listening to the Developer Weekly Podcast over the last year.
It's been inspiring to me to see all of the reactions from people that learned from my incredible guests. So thank you very much. The podcast itself will still be available on developerweeklypodcast.com. I will keep it up for a couple of years so that you can browse all the episodes and listen to them. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy this final episode. Let's take a look at how you can improve your sleep to reduce stress and become healthier. Sleep is driven by hormones like Cortisol, which peaks in the morning and decreases throughout the day. Its lowest point is just before you go to bed.
There's also adenosine, which is a molecule that creates sleep pressure in your body. It builds up during the day and makes you more and more sleepy. Some things like exercise increase adenosine, which helps you to sleep better. When you sleep, adenosine is released. There's also the well known hormone melatonin, which also helps you to fall and stay asleep. This also builds up throughout the day and peaks when you go to bed. Melatonin is sensitive to light and follows the circadian rhythm. So there's more melatonin when it becomes dark to signal you to go to sleep. Now, when you sleep, you go through different stages like this.
These stages come in cycles which start with light sleep. This is non rapid eye movement sleep of types It's 1 and 2 and prepares you for deeper sleep. It lowers your heart rate, cools you down, and makes you doze off. After light sleep, you experience deep sleep, which is also non rapid eye movement sleep. In deep sleep, your body repairs itself and grows. It is also during deep sleep that your brain cleans itself by flushing fluids through its glymphatic system, clearing out plaques and toxins. Next, you'll experience REM sleep. This is rapid eye movement sleep where your eyes, well, move rapidly. This is where you dream.
During REM sleep, you consolidate memories and learn things and prepare for creativity and learning more the next day. When you don't get enough REM sleep, you'll immediately notice more irritability and stress as it also buffers you against mental stress. By the way, the picture here is my actual sleep from yesterday. I could use more REM sleep and my son woke me up right here. Well, that's how it goes sometimes. Another thing to understand about sleep is sleep efficiency. When you go to bed at 10 in the evening and wake up at 6 in the morning, you have spent 8 hours in bed. That doesn't mean that you've slept for 8 hours.
No, you probably slept for something like 7 hours as it takes Some time to fall asleep and you might wake up once or twice during the night even without you noticing it. This is called sleep efficiency, Efficiency goes down when you get older, so you need to give yourself more sleep opportunity to still sleep enough. So what are the facts? How much sleep do you actually need? Well, around 8 hours and it is slightly different for everybody. You sleep more when you're younger and you sleep less when you are older, but 8 hours is a good average. When you are awake, You start building up adenosine and lose cognitive functionality over time. In fact, when you've been awake for about 16 hours, Your abilities have peaked and are declining.
Your reflexes and cognitive abilities will go down from there. If you are sleep deprived, for instance, if you didn't sleep well the night before, you experience a lot of symptoms. For instance, your immune system doesn't function as well. You'll feel more hungry as your body up regulates the hormone ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, You'll also experience higher stress levels as your body is more inflamed, didn't recover as well, and your brain isn't ready to cope with mental stress. Sleep impacts your health a lot. Okay. Let's pause a minute for an exercise.
Think about your sleep. Are you an early bird, a night owl, or somewhere in between? Which one fits you best? All right. How long do you typically sleep? Maybe you track this with a device already. If you don't, think about it for a minute. How long do you think you sleep? How much time do you need to lie in bed for that sleep? Do you fall asleep easily? Do you wake up during the night or lie awake in bed? Finally, when you wake up, do you feel refreshed and relaxed? Do you feel like you sleep well? If you do, then sleep might not be an important area to improve upon. But if you don't sleep well, the tips in the next clips can help you.
Okay. Let's look at things that can disturb sleep. We've already seen that stress can disturb sleep. When you are worrying in bed, you don't fall asleep as fast as you might wake up more. Heat also disrupts sleep. Even when you think you sleep well when it is warm, you probably don't. Your body needs to cool down to Prepare for sleep and stay asleep. Exercising late can also disrupt sleep because exercise is a stressor and increases cortisol. When that's high, when you go to bed, you feel wired and unable to sleep. Eating and drinking late keeps your digestive system active.
This disrupts sleep a lot. Also, artificial light from your television and other screens decreases melatonin which disrupts sleep. This light tricks your body into thinking it is still daytime, and also alcohol and caffeine mess with your sleep. Let's talk about that. Adenosine builds up sleep pressure during the day, which makes you fall and stay asleep. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors of your cells which blocks the effect of adenosine. Caffeine typically is out of your system after 10 hours Depending on how well your body deals with it, caffeine doesn't make adenosine go away, it just blocks your cells from using it. So when caffeine is out of your system, the build up adenosine hits even harder and makes you more sleepy.
But when you consume caffeine late in the day, let's say after dinner, you'll block adenosine too much for a good night's sleep. Even when you think you still sleep well, your sleep quality will be impaired. Alcohol is also bad for sleep. It might not seem like it because it helps you to relax and fall asleep quickly, which is called a low sleep latency. But alcohol is a toxin which raises your heart rate, body temperature, and breathing whilst your body tries to deal with it. As a result, you wake up a lot without you noticing it, and it decreases your REM sleep, which is why people that drink a lot don't remember what happened as you consolidate memories during REM sleep. Often, caffeine and alcohol end up forming a vicious cycle.
You drink coffee or tea during the day which wakes you up, and you drink some alcohol at night to relax and wind down. Because both impact sleep, you wake up more tired. So you drink more coffee to wake you up, maybe even for longer in the day. As you become more stressed, you drink a bit more at night to relax. This reduces your sleep even more, making you more tired, and so you drink more coffee and alcohol. This happened to me. At some point, I drank 8 cups of coffee during the day. How much caffeine do you consume in a day? Okay. We're finally here. Let's talk about things that we can do to improve sleep. We've seen that exercising late can be bad for sleep, So exercise early in the day, at least 3 hours before you go to bed.
Exercise builds up adenosine which helps with sleep as long as you don't do it too late. Also, you should be in the sun every day. I know it might be hard, But try to get natural sunlight in your eyes as early as you are awake. This will start your circadian rhythm. In the morning, don't wear sunglasses if you can because they block sunlight and decrease your sleep quality. Avoid alcohol. As we've seen, it is bad for sleep. If you must drink alcohol, do it very early in the day so that it is out of your system when you go to bed. Caffeine has many health benefits, but enjoy it early in the day as it interferes with your sleep pressure.
Don't eat late and don't eat large meals before bed. When you are still digesting food when you go to bed, Your body is busy and not ready to sleep. This increases heart rate, temperature, and breathing. Food also contains water, which makes you go to the bathroom at night, eat and drink your last meal at least 3 hours before going to bed. Adenosine builds up throughout the day and is released by sleep. If you take a nap after 3 o'clock in the afternoon, You won't get enough sleep pressure to sleep well. Naps are great, but try to take them earlier in the day.
Create a sleep schedule that works for you and stick to it even in the weekend. Your body's circadian rhythm is ingrained in your cells, and if you keep to it, It will give you your best possible sleep. Sunlight contains a lot of blue light, which tells us that we should be awake, and most of our devices emit blue light as well. This tricks the body into thinking that it is daytime by lowering melatonin production. Avoid screens in the evening if you can and turn down your lights or set them to a warm color like red. If you need to look at a screen before bed, use blue light filters. Amongst these, there are software programs that filter out blue light You can also wear special blue light blocking glasses.
Another thing that improves your sleep is to Train your brain to associate your bedroom with sleep. Human brains are great at association. So when you have a TV and phone in your bedroom, It associates the bedroom with those not with sleep. So keep your bedroom simple. No television, no books, no phone. Melatonin is crucial to make you fall asleep and keep you asleep. When your body registers light, melatonin decreases and wakes you up. So it is very important that your bedroom is very dark. You can get blackout curtains to do that and also remove all lights that are on at night, including turning off the light of your alarm clock. Your body follows the natural circadian rhythm. When it cools off at night, It signals you that it is time for bed. When it warms up, it's time to wake up. So you need to keep cool at night. For most people, this should be around 18 degrees Celsius, which is 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can do that By using air conditioning, opening your window, or using a cool pad that you stick under your mattress. And To make your sleep even better, you should measure it with a sleep tracker. When you do this, you'll find out what works for you and what doesn't. I use a ring to track my sleep, which is the aura ring, and there are lots more tracking options available. That was a lot. Let's break that down into simple things that you can do. Here are the simplest things that you can do. I recommend that you try them for at least 14 days. That seems long, but I'm sure you can do it. You can pick which ones you do. 1st, no alcohol for 14 days.
If you usually drink alcohol and you can leave it for 14 days, I promise you that it will improve your sleep. Also, minimize your caffeine to 1 cup a day, which can be coffee or tea for instance, and enjoy it early, at least before noon. Remember that chocolate also contains caffeine. Also, make your bedroom dark if it isn't already. Get blackout curtains. They are one of the best investments in your health that you can make. Finally, get rid of distractions in your bedroom. No TV, no phones, no books. Pick 2 or more of these steps and stick with them for 14 days.
And if you're up for it, you can also implement more difficult steps like turning off your TV and other screens at least 1 hour before bed. I know this is a hard one for me. Also, as soon as you can after waking up and when the sun is up, go outside for at least 15 minutes. I know it can be cold and dreadful, but this will help even if it's cloudy. Finally, try to exercise early. This can be difficult, especially if you have lots of things to do in the morning. Maybe you can exercise during lunch. Finally, you can implement some of the advanced Steps like track your sleep, invest in a sleep tracker like an Oura Ring or track your sleep with a smartwatch.
Most modern ones are okay at sleep tracking. Also, optimize your sleeping temperature by keeping cool. This can be as easy as choosing the right clothes to sleep in and as hard as buying a cooling mat or installing air conditioning. Pick the ones that you can implement easily and that you can stick with for 14 days. If you notice an improvement after 14 days, Keep it going and make it a habit. Let's move on to the next pillar of health. Let's talk about food and stress. This is such an underestimated topic when it comes to burnout. Food is medicine and there are several ways to use it for good.
Food can also be complicated. Let's try to keep it simple. Nutrition consists out of several things, including dietary restrictions, which are simply the things that you eat. There are many diets like keto, vegan, paleo, carnivore, and so on. They all have a common ground which we'll cover in more detail. Another aspect is time restriction. This is when you eat. For instance, if you start eating at 7 in the morning and stop at 6 at night, That's your eating window. Finally, there is calorie restriction, which is how much you eat. Pretty simple, right? So when you don't take care of any of these, you are in poor health.
You should always take care of one of these like what you eat or when you eat. Sometimes you can take care of 2 things at the same time or even 3, and you can change that as you like. Before we go any further, let's pause to think about how you are eating. Do you feel like you eat healthy? What do you typically eat? Do you feel healthy and energized after a meal? Or does food make you tired and sleepy and gives you stomachaches? Also, think about your eating window. When do you start eating every day, and when is your last bite or drink? How long is that?
Okay. Let's start by talking about dietary restrictions. So what you eat? What should you eat? I think the author Michael Pollan said it very well. Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That covers it all. Let's dive into that. So what should you eat? Michael Pollan says food, by which he means real food or whole food. This seems like common sense, but it's pretty difficult to do. Because in the supermarket, You seldom find actual real food. You'll find lots of processed food that looks like food. Processed food contains lots of ingredients. When a food item has more than 3 ingredients, leave it. It's not food. It's something made in a science lab.
That makes sense, right? You shouldn't eat processed foods because they are high in sugar and salt, contain toxins, and don't provide a lot of nutritional value. They are literally designed so that you want more of them. If you think about it, you know perfectly well which Foods are good for you and which aren't. Real whole foods are things that you can find in nature, things that our ancestors would eat like eggs and plants. Eating whole foods also means eating real meat and fish. That means meat from animals that eat natural foods Like grass fed cows, cows that eat grain are basically made up of grain and don't contain a lot of nutrients, and you eat those. You kind of are what you eat.
So whole foods. Okay. What else? Well, don't eat toxic foods. They raise your stress level. When you try to eat an animal, it can run away. A plant can't do that, so it figured out a different way to protect itself with toxins. Most plants secrete toxins that are called lectins. These can kill insects and bother us in that they stress our body and cause inflammation. Foods that contain a lot of lectins are tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants, also legumes like lentils and beans, and everything made of wheat and grains, including bread and pasta. Wheat contains gluten, which is a type of lectin, and dairy products like milk and cheese contain high levels of lectins.
So what can you do? You can avoid these foods or minimize them in your diet. However, some of them are really nutritious. So you can also soak them like soaking lentils in water for a day and cook them. This reduces the lectins. Other toxins in food can be found in meat, like in these chickens. They are fed antibiotics and growth hormone. When you eat a chicken like this, you eat all of those toxins as well. On top of that, plants are treated with pesticides, which are very bad for you. You can avoid plants like that by buying organic vegetables. All right. Still makes sense, right? Eat real food and don't eat toxins.
Also, eat mostly plants. What does that mean? Our ancestors hunted animals but didn't always catch 1. So their diet consisted out of a lot of vegetables and meat and fish when they had it. As our bodies evolved to thrive on such a diet, we should eat that way as well. We haven't had enough time to adapt to our newly invented processed food diet, which is just a 100 years old. So what should you pay attention to when eating plants? Try and eat colorful plants. Red, yellow, green, purple, All signal plants with lots of nutrients. Pale see through iceberg lettuce doesn't do you much good, so look for deep colors.
Try to eat things that you normally wouldn't. Your gut microbes will love you for that. They love a variety of food Instead of the 15 types of vegetables that we usually eat, also eat low lectin vegetables like we discussed earlier or prepare them very well, Eat organic vegetables where you can, which aren't treated with harmful pesticides. Remember, potato fries and ketchup Don't count as vegetables. Okay. The next thing is to include meat and fish in your diet. I understand that you might not want to do this because of your beliefs or Personal reasons. If you don't eat meat, you might become deficient in certain vitamins and minerals, and you need to supplement those.
If you do eat meat, make sure that you eat meat from free animals, animals that eat natural food. This type of meat is more expensive, but it is much better for you and it tastes amazing. Look for grass fed and free range meat. Fish should be a staple in your diet. They are a great source of good fats, vitamins, and protein. Make sure to buy wild fish, not farmed fish, and try to eat smaller fish like sardines and mackerel. Larger fish like Tuna live longer and eat more of the smaller fish. Because of that, they contain more toxins like mercury and microplastics. We've just talked about it with fish and it is very important.
You should eat good fats and eliminate bad fats. Fats can be complicated. The food industry made us believe that fat was bad and carbohydrates and sugar were good. The opposite is true, but only for good fats. Most processed foods contain lots of bad fats like vegetable oils, like sunflower and corn oil. These are bad because they contain high levels of omega-six fatty acids, which cause inflammation if you consume too much of them. You need omega-six fatty acids, but only in small amounts, not the amounts that most people consume today. Instead, eat lots of good fats From coconuts, avocados, fish, olive oil, and grass fed meat.
These actually decrease inflammation, and you can also use these good fats to cook in. Most of them have high smoke points, which mean that they don't oxidize easily and become damaged under high heat. What else should you eat? Complex carbohydrates. Let's take a look. Your body needs fuel. It can use glucose as fuel or ketones from fat or both. When you eat food that contains carbohydrates Like a potato, your body turns those carbs into glucose. So far so good. Next, your pancreas produces the hormone insulin, which binds to receptors on your cells and allows glucose to enter them.
This is a great mechanism. Unfortunately, when you eat too many carbs and Carbs of low quality for a long time, you become what's called insulin resistant. Your body still produces insulin, but the receptors on your cells Don't pick it up anymore. Glucose doesn't enter cells and is stored as fat on your body. Body fat, Especially abdominal fat is inflammatory by itself. When insulin resistance goes on for a long time, it can turn into Type 2 diabetes. What are low quality carbs that can cause this? Well, foods that have a high glycemic index. Let me explain.
Carbohydrate foods convert into glucose fast or slow. The more complex a carbohydrate is, the slower this process goes, thereby giving you time to create insulin. So you should avoid high glycemic foods. High glycemic foods are things like bread, white rice, Cornflakes and soda and foods that have a lower glycemic index are sweet potatoes, lentils, and carrots. These are complex carbohydrates which convert more slowly into glucose. It's easy to see the difference between these groups. High glycemic foods are often man made processed foods, and low glycemic foods are natural whole foods.
All right. This is what you should eat. These rules fit into most diets and you should try out what works for you. This all still sounds complicated, right? Well, it doesn't have to be. For instance, on a typical day, I eat for breakfast, eggs with avocados, For lunch, maybe a big salad with leafy greens, some fish, tomatoes, and olive oil. Tomatoes don't bother me that much, so I eat them. For dinner, something like sweet potatoes with broccoli and other vegetables. In the morning, I drink a cup of coffee Throughout the day, water and sometimes herbal tea. This is clean and healthy, and it doesn't stress my body. It is also simple to make and delicious.
I get ideas for recipes from the vegan diet, which really isn't a diet but more a common sense way of eating. This comes down to filling 75% of the volume of your plate with vegetables and adding quality protein and fats for the rest. So we've talked about what you eat. Besides that, you can also work on when you eat. Let's say, you start eating at 6 in the morning, Eat throughout the day and eat your last bite at 10 in the evening. This is an eating window of 16 hours. This stresses your body because eating takes a lot of energy and your body needs time to clean things up and start healing processes. Instead, you can decrease your eating window to, let's say, 12 hours and don't snack at night.
This gives your body 12 hours to relax To heal, make sure that you fast for 12 hours each day. This will reduce stress and heal you. Fasting for longer like for 16 hours can help as well, but is also a stressor. I wouldn't do that when you are burnt out or on your way to burnout. The final mechanism is calorie restriction or how much you eat. In general, when you have chronic stress, You should avoid restricting your calories too much because that provides extra stress. But really, when you focus on what you eat and when you eat, It's not that important to focus on how much you eat. When we talk about nutrition, we also need to talk about dietary supplements.
I consider these food. You can often find articles in the news that state that vitamins are a waste of money and you just pee them out. Let's just make it simple. Should you take supplements? The simple answer is yes, you should. Why? Well, because our modern food is manufactured in ways that it doesn't contain enough vitamins and minerals. The soil that we use to grow food is depleted, and processed foods don't contain enough nutrients. Most people are overfed and undernourished. This leads to most people having 1 or more vitamin or mineral deficiencies, and most people have never tested their levels.
What should you take? That is highly personal and depends on many factors, but there are some things that everybody should take With minimum risk of being harmful. For instance, vitamin D. This is a hormone precursor that performs thousands of functions in your body. Your skin makes it when it is exposed to sunlight and you can also find it in foods like fatty fish. But most people don't get enough sunlight for sufficient vitamin D levels. So you should take a vitamin D supplement. Always take vitamin D in the morning as it interferes with melatonin, and also take it with a fatty meal as it dissolves in fat.
Another supplement that everybody should take is vitamin C. This is a powerful antioxidant that performs many functions in the body. Your body can only absorb so much vitamin C before it starts peeing out the rest. So you should take it throughout the day, for instance, with every meal. The final supplement that I recommend for everybody is magnesium. This is also called the relaxation mineral. Most people are deficient in it and it is a harmless supplement. Magnesium is needed for most processes in the body and is used up by stress and also by caffeine and alcohol. A great way to supplement magnesium is to go floating in a sensory deprivation tank. You'll sleep like a baby afterwards.
Besides these, you should find out if you have deficiencies like vitamin B and minerals. Your doctor can test you for deficiencies and prescribe supplements. Your doctor can also prescribe additional supplements like nootropics and adaptogens that can help to reduce stress. Again, that was a lot. Let's break that down into simple things that you can do. Let's start with the easy things. I recommend that you stick with these for at least 14 days. 1st, figure out what food you and your family like and plan your meals. Write down what you will eat for each meal of the day. This will at least reduce the times that you ordered takeout.
Next, create a shopping list for your meal plan and buy what you need. The next thing is to eat vegetables with every meal, even with breakfast. You can do this. And remember, ketchup is not a vegetable. And if you feel up to it, you can also try these more difficult steps. For 14 days, supplement vitamin D, C, and magnesium. Try to buy quality supplements by looking at reviews online or by asking your pharmacy. Next, don't eat for at least 12 hours per day. You can make this window bigger, but don't overdo it if you are already Trust. Finally, cut out all added sugar.
So no sugar in your coffee or tea and no food that contains added sugars. Read the label on packaged foods. You'll find out that most packaged foods contain added sugar, usually a lot. This one is hard, but it will make you a lot healthier. If you are not too stressed, try any one of these. No dairy or gluten for 14 days. A lot of people have gluten intolerances and are bad at metabolizing dairy. These two categories are responsible for a lot of stress and symptoms including headaches, bloating, acne, tiredness, and more. Just try it for 14 days and see how you feel. What do you have to lose?
Also, for 14 days, don't eat any processed food. This one is really difficult. This means making every meal with whole food. Try the ones that you think you can do for 14 days. If you find that something helps you feel better after 14 days, stick with it, make it part of your daily routine. Next, we'll dive into exercise.
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