Camping to Fix Sleep Issues!

 

You heard that right - camping can improve sleep by helping to synchronize your body with the natural daily cycle of the earth!    Camping is a great way to reset your daily sleep/wake cycle known as your Circadian Rhythm.  This cycle is critical for your health and longevity - everything in your body responds to this rhythm. 

Ideally your daily cycle should be in sync with the earth with wake cycles controlled by exposure to high levels of “blue light” early in the day and lack of exposure to Blue or Green light during the evening.

Many aspects of our modern lifestyle can wreak havoc on our ideal circadian rhythm with potentially deadly consequences if continued over the long haul.  Three of the biggest disrupters of a healthy circadian rhythm include:

Overexposure to blue and green light spectrum in the evening and night

Underexposure to Blue and Green light early in the day

Out of sync feeding cycles with a lot of eating occurring in the evening and night

Blue and green light are part of the spectrum of light given off by the sun, digital screens (including phones, tablets, TV’s and computers, electronic devices and fluorescent and LED lighting.      Early exposure to sunlight is the ideal source with an early walk outside.

In the normal course of human evolution prior to the advent of electricity humans got no blue/green light exposure at night and this is important because Blue and/or Green light signals “wake-up” to the pineal gland in the brain and shut off melatonin production.    

This is a very big deal because melatonin does a whole lot more than make you sleepy including supporting the healthy functioning of all our cells and specifically the energy powerhouse of your cells the mitochondria.

Out of sync prolonged eating – another key element of our evolutionary heritage is that humans rarely ate anything at night.     There was no light so people tended to eat during the day and go to sleep relatively early.      In addition, modern life includes a daily eating window that is way to long with most Americans eating during a 15-hour window of constant food/calorie intake.

This prolonged eating window coupled with late night eating is also out of sync with our genetic heritage.   Constant food supply and lights are a very new phenomenon for humans beings considering that this is only something that happened over the last 50 – 100 years whereas for hundreds of thousands of years people never at a night and consumed all their calories during a much shorter time window each day and also were forced to fast on a frequent basis.

Camping to the Rescue!

Believe or not something as simple as going camping for one week has been proven to rapidly fix all of these issues!   A 2013 Study in “Current Biology” showed that people’s circadian rhythm will synchronize to a natural, midsummer light-dark cycle if given the right stimulus (camping).  For the first week of the study participants went through their normal routines of work, school, social activities and their normal sleep schedules.

For the second week participants camped in tents outdoors with only natural light and campfires (no blue or green light!).    No digital devices were allowed.     The response was pretty amazing:  they shifted their wake up time approximately 2 hours earlier and melatonin release and shut-off was optimized with light/dark cycles of the earth.    This was true even for self-proclaimed “night owls”. 

Needless to people almost always adjust their food intake timing while camping as well with the strong tendency to not eat during darkness.

So as we approach summer - think about a camping trip to help reset your daily rhythm!

Can Stretching Increase Muscle Growth?

 

The short answer is YES – if done correctly for this purpose.   Muscle fibers increase in size primarily from mechanical tension.    This tension can come from force production where a muscle is producing force such as performing a resistance training exercise or from passive tension that occurs when stretching the structural elements of the muscle fiber itself.

To make things even more interesting muscle growth from mechanical tension from these two different methods is additive – meaning that when a muscle produces tension and is stretched at the same time more growth is triggered than from just producing tension or just stretching.

So the very best results come from making sure we use a full range of motion when performing resistance training and emphasize loading the target muscle at longer muscle lengths.

For example a review of 26 studies found that isometric exercises done in a position where our muscles are elongated (like the bottom of a bicep curl or the bottom position of a dumbbell fly) stimulate nearly 3 times as much muscle growth!

How to Incorporate Stretching Into a Muscle Building Routine

Incorporating stretching into your resistance training is actually pretty simple – choose exercises that challenge your muscle in a deep stretch position at the bottom of the lift and keep constant tension on the target muscle throughout the range of motion – including lowering slowly and smoothly.   This means never unloading like resting a bar on your chest when doing a bench press. 

Make sure to fully stretch the target muscle at the bottom of the movement – the key is challenging our muscles in that stretched position!

Isometric Training to Reduce Blood Pressure

 

You heard that right – Isometric Training has been proven to be the MOST successful form of exercise to lower blood pressure!     This flies in the face of what most of us have been told about Isometrics increasing blood pressure, but the key is understanding how the body responds to isometric muscle exercise both short and long term.

In the short-term when we tense our muscles strongly without movement – such as during an abdominal plank – our blood pressure goes up as the muscles press against the blood vessels.   However, the body responds to this challenge after the exercise by opening up the blood vessels wider which lowers blood pressure!

Multiple studies including a large research review have proven that isometric exercise is MORE effective than cardiovascular exercise or regular movement-based resistance training workouts.    This does not mean that you should not do cardiovascular exercise or movement-based strength training because there are many other benefits to these forms of training.

Isometric Hand Grip to Reduce Blood Pressure

Even isometric hand-gripping exercise has been shown to be highly effective at lowering blood pressure.   A recent systemic review showed that isometric handgrip training was superior to traditional endurance and strength training in lowering resting systolic blood pressure.    Multiple studies have shown that a simple handgrip exercise protocol (no sweating required!) can be highly effective in lowering blood pressure within 6 to 12 weeks when done just 3 times per week!

For example in a 1992 study where men trained using 30% of their maximum grip strength for two minutes and then resting two minutes done three times in a row conducted three times per week men in the study showed a 12.5 point drop in systolic blood pressure and 14.9 point drop in diastolic blood pressure!

Isometric Handgrip Protocol for Blood Pressure

Here is a simple protocol that you can do anywhere anytime.     Ideally purchase a handgrip dynamometer (handgrip exerciser that shows your force production during exercise) – such as this one:  shorturl.at/glKWZ

Using the gripper warm up doing a few test grips gradually increasing intensity and then do a couple of maximum efforts making sure you do NOT hold your breath.     Take note of your best effort and the force you produced.

Multiply your maximum grip force by .3 to determine your exercise grip level.   For example if you can produce 60lbs of force in your maximum effort – your exercise grip level would be 60 X .3 = 20lbs of pressure.

Take the dynamometer and squeeze with either hand to your grip level and hold it there for 2 minutes (setting a two-minute repeating countdown timer makes this protocol super simple).     Then rest for the next two minutes and repeat for a total of 3 sets.  Switch hands between sets and do this 3 – 4 times per week.

Here is a great video explaining the science and showing you exactly how to do the protocol:  https://youtu.be/8Kw4olWsYzs  

Consult with your physician before starting any exercise program.

Sleep and Heart Health

 

Recent research has uncovered yet another reason to focus on getting a good night’s sleep.  Columbia University researchers looked at approximately 2,000 middle to older age adults from another U.S. Study of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors and obtained sleep data from participants.  

Lead study author Nour Makaren, Phd. Stated that  “Our results show that sleep health is integral to heart health, and that an expanded definition of cardiovascular health that includes sleep is more predictive of future heart disease risk.”

The study suggests that you need 7 – 9 hours of sleep daily for optimal cardiovascular health.     People who slept less were also found to have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure – all of which are clear risk factors for heart disease.

Not surprisingly the study found that 47% of people had moderate to sever sleep apnea – which can be devastating for sleep and heart health including dramatically increased rick of heart attacks, hypertension, depression, and stroke.

Do you have Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea refers to episodes where breathing repeatedly stops and starts.    Common symptoms include:

Loud snoring

Episodes where you are told by a partner that you stop breathing

Gasping for air during sleep

Awakening with a dry mouth

If you think you may have sleep apnea it pays to get it tested.    There are now effective in home tests that your doctor can order.    To order a test just google sleep apnea tests or ask your doctor.

Treating sleep apnea can be life changing and can quite literally save your life  – better rest, lower blood pressure, depression eliminated, and more energy all the time are common benefits!

   

Quercetin for Allergies and Viral Infections

 

For seasonal allergy sufferers Spring and Fall can be a very challenging time.  The good news is that there is a research-proven nutritional supplement that can help mitigate allergy symptoms without the side effects of over the counter (OTC) antihistamines. Quercetin is also safe to use with antihistamines. 

Unfortunately even OTC antihistamines are not without potential issues particularly for older people since they have been linked to the progression of dementia (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-drugs-like-benadryl-linked-increased-dementia-risk-201501287667)

Quercetin is a polyphenol found in apples, plums, red grapes, green tea, elder flower, and onions to name a few.   In addition to acting as an effective antihistamine quercetin is proven to be highly effective for the treatment and prevention of viral infections such as the common cold, flu and even Covid (see this previous blogpost:    http://workoutanytime.blogspot.com/2021/08/quercetin-your-key-to-minimizing-covid.html )

In fact, a 2007 study from Appalachian State University researchers did a study funded by the Department of Defense.   The study used had 40 cyclists divided into two groups with one group receiving 1,000mg per day along with vitamin C and niacin while the other group got a placebo.

They had the athletes ride a bicycle for three hours per day, three days in a row.    45 percent of the placebo group contracted a viral illness after the physical stress compared to just 5 percent of the quercetin supplement group.

In a 1985 Study, researchers found that quercetin reduces the infectivity and replication of Herpes Simplex Type 1, Polio-Virus Type 1, and parainfluenza type 3 along with respiratory syncytial virus.

A 2016 Study found that quercetin inhibited a wide range of influenza strains including H1N1, H3N2, and H5N1. 

How Quercetin inhibits viruses:

Inhibiting a virus’s ability to infect other cells (viruses literally infect your cells then take control of them and make them produce more virus!)

Inhibiting replication of already infected cells

Reducing infected cell’s resistance to treatment with anti-viral medication

Quercetin Supplements

Like many polyphenols – quercetin has very poor bioavailability meaning it is hard to get enough where it needs to go to produce its many benefits.     The great news is that there are research proven delivery systems that dramatically improve quercetin bioavailability.    

Look for “Quercetin Phytosome” which is quercetin bound to phytosomes or “Quercetin EMIQ” which is enzymatically modified quercetin.    Both are game changers when it comes to quercetin absorption and effectiveness. Some great products include:

Quercetin Phytosome by Thorne – recommended dosage for effects – 600mg per day – 2 – 3 capsules

Quercetin LipoMicel Matrix by Natural Factors – 500mg per day – 2 capsules per day

Bioactive Quercetin EMIQ by Natural Factors – 200mg per day – 4 capsules

These supplements are all available on Amazon and both Natural Factors and Thorne produce supplements of the highest quality in direct compliance with pharmaceutical good manufacturing production guidelines so you know what you are taking!

As with all supplements speak to your physician first and those taking any medication should search for drug nutrient interactions with Quercetin before supplementing.   For example, quercetin may amplify the effects of blood thinning medication so people on this type of medication should NOT take quercetin at all with speaking to their physician.