Tagged: Your Guide to Better Sleep

We know that diet and sleep are deeply connected. But the truth is, we don’t know nearly enough yet about how individual nutrients impact our sleep. Here, I look at 5 vitamins that appear to play a role in how much sleep we get and how restful and high-quality that sleep is. As you’ll see, several of these vitamins may affect our risk of sleep disorders, including insomnia and sleep apnea. And at least two of them appear to play a role in regulating our circadian rhythms, the 24-hour bio rhythms that control our sleep-wake cycles.

I’m a big believer in leveraging a healthy diet to improve sleep. Often, diet alone doesn’t give us all the nutrients we need. Supplements can play an important role in filling those gaps. (I wrote recently about 10 of the most effective supplements for sleep.)

But before you run out and add the vitamins below to your supplement list, I encourage you to do two things. Look for ways to improve your vitamin intake through your diet. And talk to your doctor. Getting the

As I talked about in my previous article of this series on sleep and cancer, our circadian clocks oversee many processes that are critical for healthy cell function. In our daily circadian cycles, or rhythms, our bodies are equipped with a master regulator that keeps our cells functioning properly. When those cycles are thrown off course—by poor sleep or other factors—those key cellular functions can also go awry.

If the timing of circadian clocks can throw the body into cancer, could circadian clocks be used to treat cancer? That’s a question that scientists are investigating.

When to treat disease

Research into the power of circadian timing as a factor in disease treatment stretches back decades, to our earliest understanding of circadian biology. The scientist who pioneered chronobiology and coined the term “circadian rhythms” – Dr. Franz Halberg – studied the daily bio rhythms of disease and healing and investigated how to time medications and treatments in order to deliver the greatest benefit and the least harm. (Halberg personally oversaw his wife’s cancer treatment, and she lived well beyond initial

A lot of us are just about one month into our new year, shape-up, eat-right plans. Whether you’ve started the new year with Paleo, Keto, Whole 30, or intermittent fasting, your new-and-improved healthy eating and weight-loss strategy is guaranteed to involve reducing sugar.

These days, I’m hearing from a lot of my patients that their sleep has improved a lot since they started their version of eating clean. One of the most potent, underrated benefits of eating well, especially when paired with exercise? A big boost in sleep. Many of my patients tell me that since they gave their diets a reboot they’re finding it easier to fall asleep, they wake less often, and they rise in the morning feeling better rested and much more energized.

(A lot of today’s popular diets also come with potential hazards for sleep. You can read up on the pros and cons of Keto, Paleo, and intermittent fasting  here, and here.)

For all its benefits, staying away from sugar isn’t easy! I have a serious sweet tooth, so I totally

In the first part of my series on sleep and cancer, I talked broadly about the risks that poor quality and disrupted sleep can have on our risk for the disease. Here, I’ll dig in a little deeper, to look at some of the different pathways and mechanisms by which sleep might affect our risk for developing cancer. Some of these may surprise you. For example, a lot of my patients are startled to learn that melatonin, a hormone that’s so strongly aligned with sleep, has an impact on how cancer cells grow.

Cancer remains one of the most frightening and difficult diseases of our time. Sleep can play a powerful and protective role in helping us manage and even reduce our cancer risk. It’s my hope that the more you understand about the different the ways sleep may affect cancer, the more attention you’ll give to your sleep every day.

Let’s jump in and explore the connections between sleep and some of the major underlying factors that drive cancer development. 

Circadian rhythms

How circadian rhythms relate to sleep

It’s a question I’m asked a lot: what is the connection between sleep and cancer?

People are often really asking: if I sleep poorly, does my cancer risk go up? That’s one important aspect of the relationship between sleep and cancer. But there are others, too. Sleep can be a key preventative strategy that may help reduce your risk of cancer. Thanks to scientific breakthroughs that have deepened our understanding of circadian rhythms, sleep is now being used as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of cancer. And for people living with cancer, sleep can be both a challenge and an opportunity—a challenge to sleep well, and an opportunity to use sleep to strengthen the body’s natural powers to push back against cancer.

In a series of articles, I’ll unpack and explore the complex relationship between cancer and sleep, and look at some of the cutting-edge scientific discoveries that are informing how we approach cancer prevention, and making sleep an emerging player in the world of cancer therapy.

Sleep and cellular health

Before we jump into looking at how