Heal & Reenergize Your Brain With Optimized Sleep Cycles
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Sometimes 8 hours sleep can result in grogginess while 6 hours can result in waking up fresh as a daisy, so what gives? Dr. Tracey Marks explains, in this short video.
Getting more than Zs in
Sleep involves 90-minute cycles, usually in 4 stages:
- Stage 1: (drowsy state): brief muscle jerks; lasts a few minutes.
- Stage 2: (light sleep): sleep spindles for memory consolidation; 50% of total sleep.
- Stage 3 (deep sleep): tissue repair, immune support, brain toxin removal via the glymphatic system.
- Stage 4 (REM sleep): emotional processing, creativity, problem-solving, and dreaming.
Some things can disrupt some or all of those. To give a few common examples:
- Alcohol: impairs REM sleep.
- Caffeine: hinders deep sleep even if consumed hours before bed.
- Screentime: delays sleep onset due to blue light (but not by much); the greater problem is that it can also disrupt REM sleep due to mental stimulation.
To optimize things, Dr. Marks recommends:
- 90-minute rule: plan sleep to align with full cycles (e.g: 22:30 to 06:00 = 7½ hours, which is 5x 90-minute cycles).
- Smart alarms: use sleep-tracking apps with built-in alarm, to wake you up during light sleep phases.
- Strategic naps: keep naps to 20 minutes or a full 90-minute cycle.
- Pink noise: improves deep sleep.
- Meal timing: avoid eating within 3 hours of bedtime.
- Natural light: get morning light exposure in the morning to strengthen circadian rhythm.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep
Take care!
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Food for Life – by Dr. Tim Spector
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This book is, as the author puts it, “an eater’s guide to food and nutrition”. Rather than telling us what to eat or not eat, he provides an overview of what the latest science has to say about various foods, and leaves us to make our own informed decisions.
He also stands firmly by the “personalized nutrition” idea that he introduced in his previous book which we reviewed the other day, and gives advice on what tests we might like to perform.
The writing style is accessible, without shying away from reference to hard science. Dr. Spector provides lots of information about key chemicals, genes, gut bacteria, and more—as well as simply providing a very enjoyable read along the way.
Bottom line: if you’d like a much better idea of what food is (and isn’t) doing what, this book is an invaluable resource.
Click here to check out Food for Life, and make the best decisions for you!
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The How Not to Die Cookbook – by Dr. Michael Greger
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Greger’s “How Not To Die”, which is excellent and/but very science-dense.
This book is different, in that the science is referenced and explained throughout, but the focus is the recipes, and how to prepare delicious healthy food in accordance with the principles laid out in How Not To Die.
It also follows “Dr Greger’s Daily Dozen“, that is to say, the 12 specific things he advises we make sure to have every day, and thus helps us to include them in an easy, no-fuss fashion.
The recipes themselves are by Robin Robertson, and/but with plenty of notes by Dr Greger; they clearly collaborated closely in creating them.
The ingredients are all things one can find in any well-stocked supermarket, so unless you live in a food desert, you can make these things easily.
And yes, the foods are delicious too.
Bottom line: if you’re interested in cooking according to perhaps the most science-based dietary system out there, then this book is a top-tier choice.
Click here to check out The How Not To Die Cookbook, and live well!
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Metabolic Health Roadmap – by Brenda Wollenberg
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The term “roadmap” is often used in informative books, but in this case, Wollenberg (a nutritionist with decades of experience) really does deliver what can very reasonably be described as a roadmap:
She provides chapters in the form of legs of a journey [to better metabolic health], and those legs are broadly divided into an “information center” to deliver new information, a “rest stop” for reflection, “roadwork” to guide the reader through implementing the information we just learned, in a practical fashion, and finally “traveller assistance” to give additional support / resources, as well as any potential troubleshooting, etc.
The information and guidance within are all based on very good science; a lot is what you will have read already about blood sugar management (generally the lynchpin of metabolic health in general), but there’s also a lot about leveraging epigenetics for our benefit, rather than being sabotaged by such.
There’s a little guidance that falls outside of nutrition (sleep, exercise, etc), but for the most part, Wollenberg stays within her own field of expertise, nutrition.
The style is idiosyncratic; it’s very clear that her goal is providing the promised roadmap, and not living up to any editor’s wish or publisher’s hope of living up to industry standard norms of book formatting. However, this pays off, because her delivery is clear and helpful while remaining personable and yet still bringing just as much actual science, and this makes for a very pleasant and informative read.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your metabolic health, as well as get held-by-the-hand through your health-improvement journey by a charming guide, this is very much the book for you!
Click here to check out the Metabolic Health Roadmap, and start taking steps!
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How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
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How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
In Greek mythology, Prometheus suffered the punishment of being chained to a rock, where he would have his liver eaten by an eagle, whereupon each day his liver would grow back, only to be eaten again the next day.
We mere humans who are not Greek gods might not be able to endure quite such punishment to our liver, but it is an incredibly resilient and self-regenerative organ.
In fact, provided at least 51% of the liver is still present and correct, the other 49% will regrow. Similarly, damage done (such as by trying to store too much fat there due to metabolic problems, as in alcoholic or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) will reverse itself in time, given the chance.
The difference between us and Prometheus
In the myth, Prometheus had his liver regrow overnight every night. Ours don’t recover quite so quickly.
Indeed, the science has good and bad news for us:
❝Liver recolonization models have demonstrated that hepatocytes have an unlimited regenerative capacity. However, in normal liver, cell turnover is very slow.❞
~ Michalopoulos and Bhusan (2020)
Read more: Liver regeneration: biological and pathological mechanisms and implications
If it regenerates, why do people need transplants, and/or die of liver disease?
There are some diseases of the liver that inhibit its regenerative abilities, or (as in the case of cancer) abuse them to our detriment. However, in the case of fatty liver disease, the reason is usually simple:
If the lifestyle factors that caused the liver to become fatty are still there, then its regenerative abilities won’t be able to keep up with the damage that is still being done.
Can we speed it up at all?
Yes! The first and most important thing is to minimize how much ongoing harm you are still doing to it, though.
- If you drink alcohol, stop. According to the WHO, the only amount of alcohol that is safe for you is zero.
- You might like our previous article: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- Consider your medications, and find out which place a strain on the liver. Many medications are not optional; you’re taking them for an important reason, so don’t quit things without checking with your doctor. Medications that strain the liver include, but are by no means limited to:
- Many painkillers, including acetaminophen (Tylenol), paracetamol, and ibuprofen
- Some immunosuppresent drugs, including azathioprine
- Some epilepsy drugs, including phenytoin
- Some antibiotics, including amoxicillin
- Statins in general
Note: we are not pharmacists, nor doctors, let alone your doctors.
Check with yours about what is important for you to take, and what alternatives might be safe for you to consider.
Dietary considerations
While there are still things we don’t know about the cause(s) of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, there is a very strong association with a diet that is:
- high in salt
- high in refined carbohydrates
- e.g. white flour and white flour products such as white bread and white pasta; also the other main refined carbohydrate: sugar
- high in red meat
- high in non-fermented dairy
- high in fried foods.
So, consider minimizing those, and instead getting plenty of fiber, and plenty of lean protein (not from red meat, but poultry and fish are fine iff not fried; beans and legumes are top-tier, though).
Also, hydrate. Most people are dehydrated most of the time, and that’s bad for all parts of the body, and the liver is no exception. It can’t regenerate if it’s running on empty!
Read more: Foods To Include (And Avoid) In A Healthy Liver Diet
How long will it take to heal?
In the case of alcoholic fatty liver disease, it should start healing a few days after stopping drinking. Then, how long it takes to fully recover depends on the extent of the damage; it could be weeks or months. In extreme cases, years, but that is rare. Usually if the damage is that severe, a transplant is needed.
In the case of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, again it depends on the extent of the damage, but it is usually a quicker recovery than the alcoholic kind—especially if eating a Mediterranean diet.
Read more: How Long Does It Take For Your Liver To Repair Itself?
Take good care of yourself!
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- If you drink alcohol, stop. According to the WHO, the only amount of alcohol that is safe for you is zero.
Dreams: Relevance, Meanings, Interpretations
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I have a question or a suggestion for coverage in your “Psychology Sunday”. Dreams: their relevance, meanings ( if any) interpretations? I just wondered what the modern psychological opinions are about dreams in general.❞
We’ll indeed do that one of these Psychology Sundays! Thanks for suggesting it.
What we can say in advance is that there’s certainly not a single unified scientific consensus yet, but there are two or three prevailing views definitely worth covering, e.g. randomly generated, a by-product of reorganizing information in the brain, or expressions of subconscious thoughts/feelings.
There are also differences between a top-down/bottom-up approach to understanding dreaming, and efforts to tie those two together.
Watch this space!
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5 Self-Care Trends That Are Actually Ruining Your Mental Health
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Ok, some of these are trends; some are more perennial to human nature. For example, while asceticism is not a new idea, the “dopamine detox” is, and “bed rotting” is not a trend that this writer has seen recommended anywhere, but on the other hand, there are medieval illustrations of it—there was no Netflix in sight in the medieval illustrations, but perhaps a label diagnosing it as “melancholy”, for example.
So without further ado, here are five things to not do…
Don’t fall into these traps
The 5 things to watch out for are:
- Toxic positivity: constantly promoting positivity regardless of the reality of a situation can shame or invalidate genuine emotions, preventing people from processing their real feelings and leading to negative mental health outcomes—especially if it involves a “head in sand” approach to external problems as well as internal ones (because then those problems will never actually get dealt with).
- Self-indulgence: excessive focus on personal desires can make you more self-centered, less disciplined, and ultimately dissatisfied, which hinders personal growth and mental wellness.
- Bed rotting: spending prolonged time in bed for relaxation or entertainment can decrease motivation, productivity, and lead to (or worsen) depression rather than promoting genuine rest and rejuvenation.
- Dopamine detox: abstaining from pleasurable activities to “reset” the brain simply does not work and can lead to loneliness, boredom, and worsen mental health, especially when done excessively.
- Over-reliance on self-help: consuming too much self-help content or relying on material possessions for well-being can lead to information overload, unrealistic expectations, and the constant need for self-fixing, rather than fostering self-acceptance and authentic growth. Useful self-help can be like taking your car in for maintenance—counterproductive self-help is more like having your car always in for maintenance and never actually on the road.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read, and yes these are pretty much one-for-one with the 5 items above, doing a deeper dive into each in turn,
- How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
- Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- The Dopamine Myth
- Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
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