Insomnia is the most common of all sleep disorders. This is followed by obstructive sleep apnoea – a condition in which breathing stops for 30 to 120 seconds intermittently during the night impairing a person’s day time functioning.  The third most common sleep disorder is restless leg syndrome.

Overall, insomnia represents 8/10 sleep disorders managed in clinical settings. Untreated insomnia can lead to depression, stroke and even heart attack.

Medication as Sleep Remedies

The table below shows common sleep medications prescribed for treating insomnia (figures from the Australian Family Physician Vol 38, No.5, May 2009):

The above table shows that an alarming 95.2% of doctors treat insomnia with bensodiazapines. “Benzos” are addictive. We need higher and higher doses to get the same effect. Long term use can literally turn us into “drug addicts”.  “Benzos” withdrawal have been known to occur in individuals taking these drugs on a regular basis for as short a duration as 2 weeks!

Common bensodiazapines withdrawal symptoms are:

1. Insomnia (how very nice!)
2. Anxiety
3. Irritability
4. Restlessness
5. Agitation
6. Depression
7. Tremor
8. Dizziness
9. Headache

Managing addiction and withdrawal can be very difficult.  To avoid being caught in this vicious cycle, other methods of managing insomnia should be explored.

Natural Sleep Remedies

Following are the main remedies that I recommend to my clients.

• Learn to wind down with relaxation and meditation before bed time. Yoga can be very effective, meditation or relaxation hypnosis.
• Have a cup of Valerian tea/warm milk to soothe your nerves.
• Take 150mg of melatonin supplement. Melatonin is a substance naturally produced by our body to induce sleep. As we get older, we produce less and less of it. Therefore supplementation can be an effective sleep remedy. Best of all, it is natural and non-addictive.
• Try sleep hypnosis to train your body to relax and sleep when you go to bed. Below is the one that I recommend to my clients – many of them have reported success with this inexpensive hypnosis session. Best of all the company producing it offers a 90-day money back guarantee:
  

Also some general tips:

• Take the TV (and computer) out of the bedroom!
• Establish a routine of when to go to bed and when to get up and stick to it.
• Ensure the bedroom is as dark as possible – perhaps use some sleep/eye shades.

Finding What Works For You

As with all things concerning the human body, there usually is no one answer that works for everyone. However, you should be able to find a combination of these sleep remedies that works for you. I hope you will wake up each day feeling fully rested and refreshed.

 
Following is the Hypnosis product I talk about in the video. You know the battle for ideal weight is mostly played out in the mind, and it is about your overall health. Hence I recommend giving this avenue a good go. Click on the graphic below to check out the Perfect Health Hypnosis:

Taking Stock

As explained in the video, create a sheet of paper and put down notes on what you did (and thought) over two weekdays and one weekend day, in the following areas:

• Sleep – How many hours of actual sleep did you have?
• Hydration – How much liquid did you drink?
• Drinking – How much alcohol did you consume?
• Food – What foods did you consume and how much of it?
• Exercise – What kind and quantity of physical exercise did you get up to? Include things like “10 mins walk to train station”. This is not just gym.
• State of Mind – How did you feel? Happy, calm, relaxed, nervous or angry?
• Physical State – For example, tired, fresh, in pain, numb?
• Drugs – Substances like medication, cannabis, anti-depressants, sleep medication, tobacco?

The key is to take stock for just three typical days of your life. Be brutally honest. Only when you have completed the three days’ log do you start reviewing what you are actually doing. You will probably be surprised by what you see, and most likely there will be a few things that you can immediately improve on WITHOUT requiring a truckload of permanent willpower and/or self-denial.

Oh, and as I mention in the video – since you are about to lose weight – if you do want to destroy your log once you’ve viewed it, go ahead. Burn it, flush it down the toilet, whatever. Just don’t eat it. After all, we want to have good nutrition and eat less junk, right?

Did you find this useful? If you’d like to share your thoughts or even some findings from your own taking stock to achieve sustainable permanent weight loss, I’d love to hear from you. Simply leave me a comment below.

Start with the light activities and gradually make your way down the list to the high intensity exercises. Carefully choose those activities you can easily incorporate into your lifestyle that you enjoy and get going now!

Success begets success. Click here for a copy of my Concept Nutrition Physical Activity Tracker and start moving more today!

I have also completed my own Activity Tracker as an example. Check it out. You might be surprised how little it seems, but that’s really the secret – a little bit here and there adds up to a heck of a lot over a year and may well be all it takes to lose that weight!

If you are looking for a complete exercise program, I’d encourage you to check out the iTrain product. They provide a great selection of workout video and audio on demand, by personal fitness trainers. Click on the image below to find out more.

Co-dependency and Overeating

stop binge eating

If you are tired of spinning in the same spot in the mouse wheel I have just described, now is the time to say unequivocally STOP.  According to Professor Gould, co-dependent individuals are more likely to overeating.  Co-dependent individuals give till they hurt and have the tendency to remain in harmful situations or relationships way too long; significantly compromising the quality of their lives.

Nurture Yourself

When was the last time you thought about your own needs and went out of your way to fulfil them?  Do you feel guilty and selfish when you think about your own needs?  If you do, I urge you to think again.  Being selfish is not the same as being self-caring.  You have a responsibility to yourself to be self-nurturing.

If you keep giving without looking after yourself, you may become resentful, revengeful, self-righteous, frustrated and even depressed.  You feel taken for granted, abused and burnt out physically and mentally.  Negative emotions like these invariably lead to turning to food for comfort. Unfortunately, no amount of food can take away the pain and anguish you experience.  Food is not a replacement for other ways of nurturing yourself.

Kindness and Compassion

Therefore, the best way to stop binge eating is to develop a new level of kindness and compassion for yourself.  In other words, be especially gentle and forgiving with yourself.  Below is a list of self-nurturing activities you can do to ensure your “cup is totally full or overflowing”:

1. Do nothing, learn to be still
2. Pursue a hobby you absolutely love
3. Rest and take a nap
4. Laugh often
5. Relax – meditate, sit in a bubble bath
6. Go on mini-vacations
7. Listen to music
8. Love unconditionally with all your heart (negative emotions lead to destructive hostile actions like bingeing!)

Walk Down a Different Street

Lastly, have a look at this video – it’s fun and so true!

A friend sent this to me, and I signed up for the program myself. I am now at day 11 and loving it! Yeah, I do not have a problem with binge eating, but I am still human with plenty of other problems! And I can tell you, this program is full of positive, empowering messages that truly propel you each day to live a life you love! (Even my kids are now into it.) Create your own breakthroughs, go for your dreams – and walk down a different street!

Our immune system is like a dormant volcano, when it is quiet, it is all lush, green and peaceful.  But when it is active, it ruptures and wreaks great havoc carving a path of wonton destruction everywhere.  An over-active immune system may present in any of the following ways e.g. asthma, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, allergies, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Graves disease, fibromyalgia and Crohn’s disease just to name a few. 

Note that all these illnesses are characterised by one thing – over-active immune systems attacking our very own healthy tissues giving rise to sometimes fatal disease states, causing premature aging.  Remarkably, it is almost like we “try to kill ourselves and implode”!

So, why do our immune systems specifically produce antibodies to actively seek out and destroy the tissues they were supposed to protect?  If you can answer this question you have the key to reversing the aging process!

Reversing the Aging Process

According to Dr. Mark Liponis, all the latest scientific research seem to point to the fact that soothing your immune system or living in harmony with it provides the best answer to reversing the aging process.  And the way to do that is to ensure that you practice the pillars for healthy living every single day of your life:

1. Maintain a healthy weight
2. Maintain healthy teeth and gums, floss, rinse and brush your teeth thoroughly everyday
3. Remove all potential allergens from the environment and your diet as they induce inflammation
4. Eliminate inflammatory processed foods that are nutrient-poor and energy-rich
5. Have a generous serve of anti-inflammatory foods and probiotics (good bacteria from foods like yoghurt) 3 times a day, consider taking an antioxidant supplement to boost your circulating antioxidants
6. Take 1 hour out to relax (meditation, tai chi, yoga, deep breathing exercise)
7. Laugh often (laughter is the best medicine)
8. Get sufficient sleep and preferably be in harmony with the circadian rhythm
9. Exercise (resistance training, stretching and endurance)
10. Love with all your heart (negative emotions lead to hostile immune systems)

I attribute this to the power of planning and staying focused.  Regular inputs in your journal make an enormous difference to your weight management outcome.  Commit 5 minutes each day to making an entry and reap your rewards in 6 months to a year.

Creating a working structure is your cornerstone for staying on task.  This journal provides a structure for your physical activity and eating plan.  Your entries help you stick to your goals, monitor your progress, keep your actions consistent, steer you away from your sporadic vices and identify some destructive patterns that might be consistently sabotaging you. For instance, finding the link between drinking coffee after dinner and poor sleep quality and excessive tiredness the next day, could be a powerful pattern that is zapping you of your energy to stay focused on self-care. If this regularly undermines your exercise regime and food choices, you might want to sit up and take notice and make some changes.  Do not underestimate the power of small changes in making big differences.  In this instance, cutting out the coffee after dinner could change a whole series of events for the next 24 hours.  Picture these events recurring for a whole year, how could that not cost you dearly in terms of effectiveness and generating results?  But before you can tweek your lifestyle in this manner, you must first make regular entries and then identify the problem areas before you can make the necessary changes. You cannot change what you do not know.   As you make these entries, you will find your self progressing in your stamina and food choices.  Success begets succeess.

For a free copy of Australian Food and Heart Week Exercise Record go to:

http://www.healthyweightweek.com.au/files/Food%20and%20Exercsie%20Chart%20FINAL.pdf

Action:

• Increase uptake of glucose from the blood (taken with meal or after meal)
• Reducing glucose production by liver
• Mild appetite suppressant

Side effects:

• Nausea
• Diarrhoea
• Upset stomach
• Metallic taste in mouth

Action:

• Stimulate pancreas to release insulin and lower blood glucose levels

Side effects:

• Weight gain
• Skin rashes
• Gastric upsets
• Jaundice

Action:

• Slow down digestion of carbohydrates (taken just before meal)

Side effects:

• Flatulence
• Bloating
• Diarrhoea

Action:

• Increase effect of insulin (taken any time; slow onset, may take 1 to 2 months)

Side effects:

• Weight gain
• Fluid retention

Action:

• Stimulate pancreas to release insulin (taken before meal)

Side effects:

• Blurred vision
• Gastrointestinal upset
• Constipation
• Diarrhoea
• Nausea

Action:

• Slows stomach emptying (injectable 1 hour before morning or evening meals; may be used with metformin, sulfonylurea, TZDs)
• Slow down release of glucose from the liver
• Increase insulin release

Side effects:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Diarrhoea
• Dizziness
• Headache
• Feeling jittery
• Acid stomach

Action:

• Slows down release of glucose from liver (taken orally any time; may be prescribed with sulfohylureas)
• Increase insulin released

Side effects:

• Respiratory tract infection
• Stuffy or runny nose
• Sore throat
• Headache

Always use your medications as directed.  If you miss a dose or accidentally take two doses, monitor your blood sugar level closely.  These medications are rarely prescribed for pregnant women with gestational diabetes.  Insulin treatment is recommended when these medications cease to be effective.

If you are like the millions of sedentary people out there who are going to begin an exercise program after New Year’s Day, here’s the bad news for you.  It may be worse to have started and stopped than never have begun at all!

Occasional exercisers, who push themselves to the limits of endurance, get bored and chuck in the towel may be putting their health in unnecessary jeopardy.  A study by Professor Judith Stern at the University of California, Davis, showed that exercised rats taken off their regime soon overate and gained weight like the sedentary rats.  Not a surprising outcome you might say but this bit of the study might make you sit up and take notice.  The blood test results of the exercised rats showed much poorer biochemical profile than the sedentary rats with much higher percentage body fat!

Therefore if you are gearing up for your New Year’s Fitness Resolution only to give it all up by February, my advice is don’t bother.  Some weight gain may be the least of your concerns!

Reference

Animals on an exercise program:  J.S. Stern and E. A. Applegate, “Exercise Termination Effects on Food Intake, Plasma Insulin and Adipose Tissue Lipoprotein Lipase Activity in the Osborne-Mendel Rat,” Metabolism, 1987, 36, pp. 709-714.

P. Lowney, V. M. Lee, R.J. Hansen, et al., “The Effects of Exercise,  Detraining, Starvation and Refeeding on the Lipogenic Capacity of the Osborne-Mendel Rat,” American Journal of Physiology, 1988, 254, pp. 648-654.

“Concept Nutrition wishes all subscribers a joyful Christmas;

And happiness and health in 2010!”