The secret to getting your winter Zzzzz’s… in 3 easy steps
White stuff falling in Florida? Kids building snowmen in Houston?
Ice canceling flights all across the south… from Texas to Tennessee?
Plus that, the remnants of that “blizzard-cane” from a couple of weeks ago are still melting in some locales.
It’s like we’ve all suddenly packed up and moved to the Arctic Circle!
But aside from the known hazards of this kind of winter weather — which can increase the risk of everything from falls to heart attacks — there’s another that you may not have heard of.
And it’s something that could be keeping you up at night.
Here’s how to survive the deep freeze and still get your Zzzzz’s.
A recipe for insomnia
Let’s face it: We’re a nation of insomniacs!
Forget Sleepless in Seattle. It seems we’ve been losing sleep from Boston to Los Angeles!
But here’s where something that’s already present in our own bodies can come to the rescue, a hormone — the “sleep hormone” — called melatonin.
Melatonin runs the show when it comes to getting your Zzzzz’s. And several hours after sunset, your brain’s pineal gland should go into action and start producing this amazing hormone, which is controlled by the cycle of light and dark.
But as a team of biologists recently found out, lots of things can interfere with that, and pollution is one.
Like human beings, tiny plankton known as water fleas have circadian clocks, and they’re disrupted when conditions outside are as icy as they are right now all across the country.
No, it’s not the air temperature that does it when it’s literally freezing outside. One of the culprits behind the water flea’s disrupted sleep/wake cycle turns out to be something we all encounter.
It’s on the roadways… our driveways… and even our own front steps.
It’s road salt! More specifically, it’s the runoff that results when it melts ice.
And it appears that this type of environmental pollution (and yes, that much salt is considered pollution) can do the same thing to our internal clocks, too.
And when that’s on the blink, you might as well hang an “out of order” sign on your pillow — because falling asleep at night is going to be quite a challenge.
And that can be a killer. Because not getting enough sleep has been linked to everything from diabetes and depression to heart disease and cancer.
While we really can’t do much about all the pollution we’re constantly exposed to, there are some “tricks” we can use to try to get our sleep/wake cycles back on schedule.
Unfortunately, the older we get, the less melatonin our bodies crank out. On top of that, we seem to be doing everything in our power to cut off our God-given supply.
So, if you want to sleep well at night, it’s vital that you find ways to boost your production of it.
You can kickstart that process by taking these three steps:
- Don’t cart your gadgets to bed with you! Unplug before you hit the pillow.
- Keep your bedroom as dark as possible. Even a small amount of light can tank your melatonin production. Activities such as watching TV late at night or taking your phone or iPad to bed with you expose you to a type of light that zaps melatonin production. (The same holds true for those “energy-saving” CFL bulbs that we were supposed to use in our homes).
- Enjoy more melatonin-boosting treats like pineapple, oranges, and tart cherry juice.
Of course, you can also take melatonin supplements. But if you’re taking that route to get your supply revved up, you should know that just popping a pill or chewing a gummy might not do the trick.
To get this hormone into your body more effectively — with a delivery method that’s more FedEx than Pony Express — you might need a different approach.
Keep an eye on eAlert for more information on how to make your supplements and vitamins work even better. It’s a secret that Big Pharma has kept all to themselves — until now!
And you’ll hear it here first.
“Can road salt and other pollutants disrupt our circadian rhythms?” Jennifer Marie Hurley, January 4, 2018, Scientific American, scientificamerican.com
