Author: Mikayla Kremer

The average person spends 25 YEARS of their life asleep! With that many years devoted to catching zzzz’s, the act of sleeping must be extremely important for our health. And it is! Sleep is a time for our body to reset and restore! When we are sleeping, we are healing!

How Sleep Works:

Your circadian rhythm talks to every cell in your body to regulate the timing of when you sleep, your temperature, and hormonal production and release. Melatonin is one of the hormones our circadian rhythm tells the pineal gland to produce once it starts to get dark outside. Melatonin orchestrates the activation of all your sleep inducing parts of the brain to get the brain ready for sleep. As we sleep, we begin a series of 90 minute sleep cycles starting in REM and then dropping into NREM stage 1, then stage 2, then stage 3, then stage 4, before coming back up through that same path. In the first half of the night, our brain spends more time in NREM sleep in the 90 minute cycles, but as the night goes on REM sleep begins to dominate the 90 minute cycles.

During NREM sleep, we remove unnecessary neural connection, move short term memories into long term memory storage, and the slow, synchronized waves that characterize this part of sleep helps the furthest away regions of the brain to be able to communicate and collaborate. During REM sleep, we strengthen our neural connections, integrate what we learned throughout the day to create a deeper understanding, and creates a greater capacity for making intelligent decisions and solving complex problems.  

Benefits of Healthy Sleep:

Sleep really has an infinite amount of benefits and we are constantly learning how valuable sleep is for our health and wellbeing. Here are a few benefits healthy sleep offers:

• Strengthens your immune system
• Decreases inflammation in the body
• Supports a healthy flourishing gut microbiome
• Increases growth hormone with stimulates tissue regeneration, restores your liver health, builds muscle, decreases fat stores, and helps stabilize blood glucose.
• Lowers blood pressure
• Increases HDLs to prevent cholesterol build up in your vasculature.
• Increases leptin  (a hormone that makes you feel satiated) and decreases grehlin (a hormone that makes you feel hungry and crave sweets, salts, and simple carbohydrates.
• Accelerates muscle recovery and repair from injury or strenuous exercise
• Lowers the rate of lactic acid build up in muscles, increases blood oxygen saturation, and increases your ability to sweat to allow for adequate temperature regulation while exercising
• Increases your ability to rationally think, regulate your emotions, be more creative, have a greater capacity for learning and memorizing, and make logical decisions.
• Creates time for the glymphatic system (basically your lymphatic system of the brain) to clear away any metabolic toxins generated by your neurons as they perform their functions.
• Helps balance your nervous system and bring you into a more relaxed, calm state.
• Supports healthy testosterone and sperm production.
• Makes us more beautiful!

Healthy Sleep Habits:

• Maintain consistent sleep and wake times, which helps to regulate your circadian rhythm  
• Sleep in a cool, dark room
• Don’t use screens at least 1 hour before bed. Turn off your cell phone when you sleep and turn off your wifi router.
• Only use your bed for sleeping and sex. Make sure your bedroom is void of computers, televisions, worrying, and arguments.
• Spend as much time as you can outdoors. Sunlight hitting our eyes, especially in the morning helps balance our circadian rhythm. Avoid the use of artificial light in your home in the evening.
• Exercise regularly. Exercising during the day or early evening decreases the time it takes to get to sleep and increases the amount of deep sleep obtained. Probably best to avoid strenuous/intense exercising right before bed.
• If you find that you are waking up during the night (and not just to pee), try having a small protein snack (ex. apple and peanut butter or hummus and carrots) before bed to help regulate your blood sugars throughout the night.
• Warm baths with Epsom salts help to relax and subsequently cool the body for bed.
• Breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation (find a video on YouTube), or meditation before bed can help to relax the body and quiet the mind before bed.
• Listen to relaxing sounds, such as thunderstorms, beach waves, or piano music
• Drink herbal tea in the evenings with herbs that support sleep. Herbs to look for in a sleepy tea: lavender, chamomile, skullcap, oat straw, passionflower, valerian, lemon balm.
• Although alcohol may help you fall asleep, the sleep obtained after drinking is typically fragmented and light.
• Avoid caffeine, especially consumption later in the day.

There is so much to love about bacteria! Did you know for every single human cell in your body, there are 10 bacterial cells?! That’s a lot of bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract (making up the gut microbiome), on your skin, on mucous membranes, in your lungs, and on any other body surface that is exposed to the outside world. We tend to think of bacteria as bad (and don’t get me wrong, there are harmful bacteria out there) but there is also a plethora of good bacteria that keep us healthy, nourished, and disease-free. Our bodies need our microbiome to survive and our microbiome needs us to survive, so we work together to survive and thrive.

How we help our microbiome:

• We nourish our gut microbiome with the foods we eat. In addition, goblet cells in our intestinal tract create mucus, which the bacteria consume.
• Our lower intestinal tract is void of oxygen, which is necessary for the survival of anaerobic bacteria.
• We create a warm, dark, moist place for the bacteria to flourish.

How our microbiome helps us:

• Our gut bacteria are quite good at taking up space, leaving no room for bad bacteria to take up residence. If you have ever received an antibiotic, it has killed some of the gut microbiome, leaving space for bacteria that aren’t typically in our microbiome to come in and potentially wreak havoc.
• Our gut microbiome can actively fight off pathogenic bacteria.
• Our gut microbiome helps us to digest foods that are too hard for our own bodies to digest, such as fiber and complex carbohydrates. By doing this, the bacteria create short chain fatty acids which our colon cells use as energy.
• Bacteria in the gut synthesize vitamin K which is mainly used to help our blood clot.
• Our microbiota teaches our immune system which bacteria are helpful and which bacteria are harmful. In doing so, the immune system learns to discriminate between the different types of bacteria to create an immune response to the appropriate microbes.

Ways to support a healthy gut microbiome:

• Eat fiber and complex carbohydrates to feed the microbiome. This means eating a variety of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. We can actually starve and kill off healthy bacteria in our microbiome by not eating fiber and complex carbs.
• Eat probiotic rich foods, such as sauerkraut, sourdough, yogurt, kimchi, kombucha, kefir, tempeh, miso.
• Avoid the use of antibiotics when possible. And take a probiotic supplement if you do have to receive an antibiotic.
• Avoid use of hand sanitizer and wash your hands instead.
• Spend time in nature with your hands and feet in the dirt.
• If you have the ability, grow your own organic food and eat foods right out of your garden.
• Engage in movement everyday.

Even though most of our lives are really busy, we are often busy with activities that keep us sitting in a chair, being indoors, and mostly leading sedentary lives. We are all like busy bees minus all the movement that busy bees do all day every day! Our bodies need movement for our muscles and bones to be strong, healthy, and supportive to the rest of our bodies. Our circulatory system, digestive system, immune system, lymphatic system, respiratory system, and frankly all our systems REQUIRE movement to function properly. So I decided to create a list of ideas to increase movement into your busy-as-a-bee life! Try them all and see which ones are the most sustainable to keep up! Try picking three to do on a consistent basis.

Movement Ideas:

1. Do heel lifts/calf raises when you are brushing your teeth.
2. When you are flossing your top teeth, balance on your right foot. When you are flossing your bottom teeth, balance on your left foot.
3. While waiting at a stop lights, retract your shoulders as you breath in and protract your shoulders as you breath out.
4. Go for a ten minute walk outdoors with your family when you are done eating dinner together.
5. Turn on music and dance around as you cook dinner
6. When you are vacuuming, exercise those vocal cords by singing out your favorite tune. The vacuum is roaring so no one will hear you!
7. As you are sitting down at work, to watch TV, or to drive your car, do Kegel exercises. To do Kegel exercises, contract your pelvic floor muscles for 5 seconds and then release for 5 seconds. Repeat as many times as you want.
8. Every time a commercial comes on, get up from the couch and do whatever form of movement you want. You could keep weights in your living room or a yoga mat to help assist you in this movement.
9. When you wake up in the morning, exercise your breathing muscles by taking 5-10 deep, intentional breaths.
10. If you have a job that requires sitting all day, set a timer on your phone to get up out of your chair every 30 minutes to do 5 squats.
11. During your lunch break at work, get outside and go for a walk if you have time.
12. Every night before bed, stretch whatever in your body feels like it needs some stretching. Maybe do this with your spouse, your parents, your kids, or your siblings. You could take turns choosing different stretches to do together.
13. When you are talking our the phone, put the phone on speaker phone and do neck stretches and neck rolls.
14. If you have the option to take the stairs versus the elevator or escalator, always choose the stairs!
15. Turn meetings into walk-and-talk meetings by walking around in your nearest park.
16. When you go up the stairs, go up as many different ways you can think of; hop the entire way up the stairs, take the stairs 3 at a time, with each step do a squat, grapevine up the stairs, with each step do a heel lift.
17. Instead of your usual evening routine, make a playlist of dance songs and have a family dance party!
18. Come up with your own ideas and message them to Mother Earth Medicine so I can add them to the list.

Happy Movement you Busy Bees!

Brrrrr….It’s cold out there! With the coldness and darkness of the winter settling in, we tend to turn inward and allow our bodies to rest and restore in this slower pace of life. In the summer, our days are chock full of backyard gatherings, days at the beach, evening festivals, and lots of activities and movement. We tend to be constantly moving and grooving, enjoying the long, sunshiny days. In contrast, we like to spend our time in the winter reading by a cozy fire, making homecooked meals, sleeping longer, doing indoor craft projects, playing board games, and watching movies. All of these winter activities are a part of our bodies naturally slowing down to adapt to the changing in seasons. Not only that, but this slowing down supports our body in using its energy towards restoring and healing itself.  

With this slower pace of life, we want to make sure that our circulatory system isn’t slowing down as well. Not only does our circulatory system keep our body warm, but it carries with it oxygen and nutrients that need to travel to every single part of our bodies to keep us healthy. There are many fundamental ways we can support the optimal functioning of our circulatory system:

1. Move your body every single day. This could be anything from yoga to stretching to snowshoeing to skiing to indoor rock climbing to dancing in your living room.
2. Drink clean water. As a rule of thumb, you should drink half your body weight in ounces of water every day. Our bodies absorb water best when it is plentiful with minerals. If you have a purification system in your home, try adding a sprinkle of salt in each glass of water you drink to help your body absorb the water you drink.
3. Take deep, invigorating breaths every morning upon rising or when you are feeling cold to increase your circulation bringing warmth into your body.
4. Add cinnamon, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, black pepper, rosemary, onion, and cayenne into your everyday cooking as these are all herbs that stimulate the movement of your circulatory system. You could also add these herbs into hot water to make a tea! Have you ever heard of fire cider? It is apple cider vinegar infused with circulatory stimulating herbs that you would take a spoonful of once per day. Try looking for recipes online to create your own! If you like the convenience of just picking up a bottle of apple cider vinegar versus making your own, one of my favorite local businesses, Soul Shine Healing, sells an invigorating fire cider!
5. Sit in a sauna for at least 20 minutes everyday. The heat of a sauna will increase your circulation and help in the detoxification of your body. This one may be hard because a lot of individuals don’t have access to a sauna. Some places to find a sauna in your community may be your local gym, YMCA, spas, or use a friend’s. Or if you can’t take a sauna, enjoy a warm bath before bed to increase your circulation and help you sleep.
6. Sleep at least 8 hours per night. Sleep has a significant impact on our cardiovascular health. It is crucial to get a good night’s sleep every single night!
7. Dry skin brush your body before showering to stimulate the movement of your circulatory system and lymphatic system. Always brush the skin on your legs towards your groin and the skin on your arms towards your armpits as this is where most of your lymph nodes are located.
8. Spend time in gratitude thanking your circulatory system for pumping blood, oxygen, nutrients, and life throughout your entire body.

I hope you stay warm, safe, healthy, happy, and gratitude-filled this winter season!