Gloom and Doom

Well, we're back to the dark season... and in the weeks ahead the days will go so short that I'll start to wonder if they even started. 

When we moved across the country from Maine to Washington I had thought that the weather would be similar... I mean both states are kind of located way up there in the tippy-top corners of the US.  But no, Washington (at least where we live) is much more mild with little shifts in the temperature, but huge shifts with the amount of sunlight we get -  in comparison to Maine.  We get a bad rep for being rainy, but really it's just super drizzly starting about now (September) through to the spring.  Once we hit November there will be days when the sky seems to go dark by 4:00P.

Now that I've properly depressed everyone, I'm desperately trying to figure out how I'm going to keep my energy level up this year while the weather encourages everyone to walk around in comfy sweat pants and never quite crawl out of bed.

I'm stocked up on Vitamin D... popping my 2000 IU's daily since there's zero chance my skin will be making any with the sun not making appearances for weeks at a time.

I even started taking it earlier this year, ordered up my first bottle about 3 weeks ago now.  I feel better... maybe it's all in my head... but who cares if I feel like I have more energy then I'm all for it.  I snag mine off Amazon.  Have you ever used their Subscribe & Save thing?  So you go on their website, you look around for stuff you would normally grab at the grocery store or a Walmart/Target store, stick it in your cart and then decide how frequently you need to get more (it ships as frequently as once a month).  I love it for a couple of reasons. 

1. It's cheaper!  Hello!  I hate giving away my money when I don't have to.  So I just make sure I've got 5 or 6 items coming each month and I save an extra 15% off the price... and BTW the price is already cheaper than Walmart's prices, so double bonus!
2. I don't have to think about it.  I am notorious for getting to snag the paper towels or toilet paper when I'm grocery shopping.  And let me tell you, it's horrible to be the one who finds out you've used the last square and there's no backup supply.
3. My shopping trips are super quick now... and that is an incredibly great thing especially when you're a military wife (whose husband is constantly deployed) who is having to make trips to the grocery store with a pair of insatiable elementary school-age boys!  Grah!  At this point I really just have to hit up the chicken, meat and dairy sections of the store and I can head home - because I have our toiletry products being delivered by Amazon, and I get a weekly produce delivery from a local organic farm - genius!

Wow, I totally went off on a tangent there... back to the task at hand - figuring out how to keep energy levels up while the dark season creeps in.  A couple years ago I had some nursing aid at my doctor's office tell me I should put in daylight light bulbs.

To preserve your sanity, please don't do this!  Maybe this would work well for a desk lamp, or for the occasional light bulb here and there, but my kitchen has approximately 12 recessed lights and replacing all of these with daylight flood bulbs was not only a little expensive for an experiment, but also created the worst lighting ever!  It was bright, that's for sure.  But bright in a sterile, operating room, going to perform brain surgery... and then later make dinner... kind of way.  It was super irritating.  It reminded me of being in a Walmart.  Do those lights make you feel pissed off and angry too?  So lesson learned.  Won't be doing that again.

 

Exercise seems like a good way to keep the energy levels up, so I'll be making a point of getting in the habit of heading over to the gym - as outdoor exercise becomes infrequent.

 

Anyone have any other ideas or things they resort to when the days get super short?

A little heavy reading (pun intended)

So I'm reading pages and pages of research articles that have been done in the realm of sleep, sleep deprivation, and ghrelin.  Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by your stomach that lets your body know that it needs to eat something.  Ghrelin is complimented by Leptin which tells your body you are satisfied.  Okay, so what have I found so far.  Well, we need approximately 7 hours of sleep each night.  No kidding, right?  Getting more sleep than that and you are at risk for being overweight/obese.  Getting less than that... same problem.  But it's not just a matter of crawling into bed 7 hours before you need to wake up in the morning.  You also need to be getting quality sleep.  Quality sleep means you drift frequently from the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 and 2) to the deepest stage of sleep (REM - rapid eye movement).  How can you tell if you're doing this?  Well, I found an application for my smart phone that senses it if you really want to test yourself.  Or if you share your bed with a very light sleeper you could ask them if you toss and turn a lot.  Movement during sleep (unless you have a sleep disorder) indicates you are in the upper levels of sleep, whereas sleep paralysis happens in REM sleep (thus you move about as much as a big rock).  Okay, so if you are getting 7 hours of quality sleep, with nice sleep waves, then you are setting yourself up for a good day with normal levels of ghrelin.  What happens if you aren't getting a good night's sleep?  Well, first thing in the morning your ghrelin levels will be depressed.  So the lower the ghrelin levels are, the less internal encouragement you have to eat.  Which sounds great... however, mid-afternoon into the early evening these ghrelin levels will spike up.  A low ghrelin in the morning lends itself to a high level at the time of day when we have the hardest time denying our cravings. 

Oh, but it gets better.  Okay, so let's say you are doing a great job getting plenty of rest at night.  This generally means that you would be on track for a great day with ghrelin showing up at meal times letting you know you're hungry but not encouraging you to overdo it.  For this next scenario, we are going to assume that you have started a diet and exercise program so you can shed a few extra pounds.  You've lost a little and are feeling good.  Now Mr. Homeostasis seems to want to add in his opinion.  Homeostatis is the body's natural way of trying to "maintain".  It doesn't like change and it wants things to stay just as they are.  In order for this guy to maintain your weight, he kicks in ghrelin as a last ditch effort to make you put that weight back on.  Ghrelin tells you that you are ravenously hungry and need to eat eat eat!!!  Everytime I think about this, all I can say is "where the heck was homestasis when I was putting the weight on????" and why didn't he want me to stay lean?  No use thinking about it now.  Just need to remember this information when you are starting to lose some weight and want your efforts to continue.  I think if you're anticipating that little push of hunger (from ghrelin) then you can be better prepared to handle it, instead of throwing in the towel and hitting up that bag of Halloween candy.

Coming soon, I will fill you in on the dirty little secret of gender differences in weight gain in regards to ghrelin.  Dumb female body!!!  For now, just "digest" the sleep and ghrelin tid bit.  It's exhausting to think about it.  Almost makes me want to take a nap (but don't since it doesn't count towards your 7 hours at night).

Pandora's Box

Last week's topic in my MNT (Medical Nutrition Therapy) class was pharmacology.  We read up on what sorts of drugs may have direct interactions with foods we eat, and also what side-effects drugs may have that involve our nutritional health.  So for the weekly assignment, I was supposed to look for two research articles that involved a drug of choice and discuss its effect on food consumption, absorption, etc.  While this is pretty easy to find, I didn't want it to be easy, I wanted to look at something new that I hadn't researched before.  And didn't I manage to open Pandora's box.

So I looked into weight loss associated with ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) because I had seen individuals lose significant amounts of weight when their medication for this was adjusted.  Granted the people I had seen were adults, so the weight loss might not have been as serious as it would be for a child.  I wanted to look at the kids on these meds.  The first article I came across showed significant weight loss and height loss in the first year of ADHD medication use.  The greatest losses were for the heaviest and/or tallest kids (as expected).  What the study did not and could not show was whether these losses prevented these kids from reaching their expected height/weight in adulthood.  This concerned me.  The prevalent use of ADHD meds as of late hasn't yet had enough time to show what the long-term effects are in this realm.

I investigated further.  No not into more information about what the drugs can do, but what the alternatives might be.  Along came a different study that followed kids who were newly diagnosed.  Each of these children were also evaluated and found to have very mild cases of OSA (obstructive sleep apnea).  Does that mean all children with ADHD have OSA?  Who knows, anything is possible.  So the parents of these children were given the option to not treat the ADHD, treat with medication, or treat by giving the child an adenotonsillectomy (removal of the adenoids and tonsils).  What did they find?  Well the kids who received no intervention, showed no improvement.  The kids who received medication or surgery both showed significant improvement in their symptoms, but those who received the surgery showed even greater benefits over those who received medication.  Oh, and the ones who received surgery weren't having to deal with possible medication side-effects!!

This put a lot of thoughts into my head.  First, wow sleep is so important.  Look what lack of sleep or poor sleep is doing to our kids!  Second, if there is a way to correct this problem without the use of medication, why wouldn't everyone use this?  So I went to visit a friend to pick her brain about it.  She has a child who takes medication for ADHD, and also a husband who had recently undergone surgery to correct his sleep apnea.  I asked her, when she visited the medical clinic and her child was diagnosed with this condition, if he was ever referred to a sleep clinic or an Ear/Nose/Throat (ENT) doctor.  And ask I suspected, he wasn't.  The diagnosis of ADHD was arrived at with a 20 page questionnaire completed by the parents and a short visit with an over-worked physician - I imagine their circumstances for diagnosis weren't unique.  As my mind began to wander I came across one thought:  Do you remember how removal of the tonsils was like a right-of-passage when our parents were kids?  Everybody had them out.  These days it's not the case but look at what a large number of kids could possibly benefit from it. 

Now where do I take this information?  I have absolutely no idea.  I don't work at the local medical clinic.  I can't change their protocol and have a sleep clinic or ENT consult occur before medication prescriptions are given out, but what I can do is put the word out here.  We, as parents, are our child's best advocates.  A lot of people are not aware that there are alternatives for some children with ADHD.  If your child was recently diagnosed or had been diagnosed a while ago, ask your doctor about a referral to rule out mild obstructive sleep apnea.  It's just one more doctor's appointment that could provide incredibly valuable information if your child is affected by this.

Day Dreams

I'm a big fan of sleep.  I don't stay up late, because I know my days start early.  So why then don't my boys share this appreciation for rest?  My 3-year-old starts waking up anywhere between 2 and 4, coming in to make sure I'm aware that he's up.  If I try to settle him back down into his bed I risk waking my 5-year-old and if I let him lay down in my bed then somehow I end up with approximately 3 inches of my king-sized bed... there's just no good option.  My 5-year-old then decides to start his day around 5 or 6.  If he was a high school student, this would be great, but I'm sure his desire to do this will have stopped by then. 

So what is it then?  What makes them wake up, when it's still dark out, and decide that it's time to get up?  They must not realize what this is doing to mommy.  Not only does it make it impossible for me to re-establish my patience reservoir but it also makes them into moody little monsters that put an even bigger strain on my nerves.  How am I supposed to cut down on my coffee consumption when clearly the reason I need so much of it isn't changing?  I just keep telling myself that tonight they will drift off to sleep early and easily, and there will be nothing that encourages them out of bed before 7... ah silly day dreams.