If you find yourself feeling tired all the time, you’re not alone. Life can be insanely busy in this day and age. Many people tend to skip out on sleep to get more done, so it’s no surprise tiredness is so prevalent. However, there is a difference between feeling tired and feeling fatigued. One happens after a long and stressful week, while the other is often chronic and results in exhaustion no matter what you do.

Getting to the bottom of your excessive tiredness can be difficult because so many different things could be at play. To help, here are 11 possible reasons you may be feeling tired.

What causes fatigue?

Various things can cause fatigue, such as the following…

1. Sleep Quality

Most people assume that a lack of sleep is the culprit behind their tiredness, but that’s not always the case. Getting the recommended seven to nine hours a night is important – but you might as well be pulling an all-nighter if your sleep quality isn’t where it needs to be. Sleep quality is more important than quantity. As you cycle through the sleep stages, your body uses that time to repair and rejuvenate itself. Without good quality sleep that allows you to go through all of these stages, you’re going to feel tired. End of story.

2. Diet

What you eat plays a huge role in your energy levels. If you find yourself consuming a diet that lacks essential nutrients, your body is going to feel it. This leads to excessive tiredness. Some nutrient deficiencies are more closely connected to energy, such as:

• Iron
• B vitamins
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin C
• Magnesium

Imbalances in your diet can also contribute to chronic fatigue. For example, if you undereat, your body doesn’t get all the calories it needs to function. When it lacks calories, it lacks energy.

3. Stress

Being chronically stressed will severely deplete your energy levels. Research shows that people with chronic stress can develop stress-related exhaustion disorder. This disorder is marked by – you guessed it! – high levels of stress that cause severe tiredness. Learning stress reduction techniques can help combat this.

4. Medical Conditions

Not all medical conditions will lead to fatigue. However, some can zap your energy levels and keep you running on empty a lot of the time. If you feel tired all the time, you could simply have an undiagnosed disorder. Conditions such as sleep apnea, anxiety, and diabetes can all deplete your energy levels.

5. Caffeine

Many people drink caffeinated beverages to wake themselves up. But depending on the amount you drink, you could be doing yourself a disservice. Drinking too much caffeine throughout the day affects how well you sleep at night. This makes you more tired the next day. Then, you drink more caffeine to help wake up again – and the cycle continues. Reducing your caffeine intake can help break the cycle.

6. Dehydration

Staying hydrated is important for a variety of reasons. When it comes to fatigue, hydration (or a lack thereof) could play a large role. As the day goes on, the body uses its stores of water to help keep things running properly. If you fail to replenish yourself, your body has to work harder to perform those same functions. Because of that, you’re going to feel tired.

7. Weight

If you are carrying some extra weight, you may feel fatigued a lot of the time. This is because obesity can actually increase the risk of developing chronic fatigue. It also plays a role in other health disorders that could hinder your ability to get good quality sleep. Mood disorders, type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea are all connected to obesity and sleep quality.

8. Drugs and Alcohol

Using drugs and alcohol or suffering from dependence can cause you to feel tired all the time. People who are dependent on substances are far more likely to suffer from fatigue than those who are not.

9. Work Schedule

The body runs on an internal clock that is set to daylight and nighttime hours. When the sun goes down, the body readies for sleep. When it comes back up again, your body gears up for another day. That’s all well and good for people who keep a typical 9–5 schedule – but for people who have varied hours, the body’s internal clock gets disrupted.

This internal disruption can lead to sleep disorders that drive excessive fatigue. When the circadian rhythm in the body isn’t cycling as it should, your body and mind will suffer from excessive tiredness.

10. Lifestyle

People who live sedentary lifestyles are often subject to chronic tiredness. Research has found that daily movement can make a big difference in your energy levels. In some cases, exercise can even improve symptoms of fatigue.

Basically, people who move more experience better energy levels, while people who fail to exercise regularly are often lacking in the energy department.

11. Medications

Medications are often behind chronic tiredness. Of course, this depends on the type of medication you take. Blood pressure and mood disorder meds are notorious culprits behind excessive tiredness. When looking at antidepressants, studies show that they can hinder sleep and lead to fatigue.

Feeling tired all the time is not fun and it can make even the simplest of tasks that much more difficult. If you’re suffering from chronic fatigue or tiredness, the best thing you can do is make an appointment with your doctor, who will be able to investigate further. When they come to a conclusion, you can work on restoring your energy levels.

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Sleep is essential for our bodies and minds. We can’t operate optimally if we don’t get enough good quality sleep. During sleep, the body repairs itself; cells repair and rebuild, hormones are secreted that promote bone and muscle growth, the immune system is strengthened, and any illnesses are fought against.

Also during sleep, our brain consolidates memories and processes information; new learning occurs when the brain experiments with novel new connections (hence our often bizarre dreams!); and emotions and emotional memories are processed. The power of sleep is pretty clear – but are you aware of how your quality of sleep can influence fitness levels? Read on to learn more.

Sleep Stages

There are four stages of sleep. This includes three stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and one stage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We cycle through these stages several times each night.

• NREM stage 1: Lasts for about 5 to 10 minutes. The body relaxes and the brain, heartbeat, breathing, and eye movements all slow down.
• NREM stage 2: We spend about 20 mins in this stage every cycle. We become less aware of your surroundings, our body temperature drops, our eye movements stop, and our breathing and heart rate become more regular. The brain begins to produce bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity, which are known as sleep spindles and are thought to play a major role in memory consolidation.
• NREM stage 3: Also referred to as delta sleep or deep sleep. During this stage, muscles are completely relaxed, blood pressure drops, breathing slows, and the body starts its physical repairs. The brain consolidates memories about personal experiences, general knowledge, facts or statistics, and things we have learned during the day.
• REM: REM sleep is also known as dream sleep. During REM sleep, the body is paralyzed but the brain is active. The body is relaxed and immobilized, the breathing is fast and irregular, and the eyes move rapidly. Dreaming occurs, emotions and emotional memories are processed and stored, and information is locked into memory.

How Much Sleep Is Enough?

How much sleep we need depends on our age. It is recommended that:

• Infants below age one get 12 to 16 hours’ sleep
• 1–2-year-olds get 11 to 14 hours’ sleep
• 3–5-year-olds get 10 to 13 hours’ sleep
• 6–12-year-olds get 9 to 12 hours’ sleep
• 13–18-year-olds get 8 to 10 hours’ sleep
• People over age 18 get at least 7 hours’ sleep

How Does Sleep Affect Physical Fitness?

How your quality of sleep can influence fitness levels is an important topic to understand. So in what ways does sleep affect physical performance?

Research suggests that sleep deprivation, even for short periods of time, can have a very detrimental effect on physical and mental performance. Essentially, not getting enough quality sleep causes a reduction in the quality of physical performance by impairing cognitive or motor performance.

Further research suggests that with insufficient sleep, accuracy levels decrease. Research also shows that with enough sleep, general athletic performance increases, as do mood and alertness. Research even indicates that poor quality sleep can lead to obesity.

The Relationship Between Sleep And Exercise

Getting enough sleep means that your body and mind will be optimally repaired and rejuvenated, and ready to engage in physical exercise. Research suggests that the more you exercise (as long as it’s not too close to bedtime), the better quality of sleep you will have.

Why Does A Lack Of Sleep Affect Your Body’s Performance?

A lack of sleep affects the body’s performance because it means that the body has not had enough time to repair and rejuvenate itself. It has not had a chance to heal any injuries or general wear and tear. Also, learning has not had a chance to take place, and memories and experiences have not had a chance to be fully consolidated if sufficient sleep has not taken place.

Lifestyle Factors That Prevent Good Quality Sleep

For many people, lifestyle factors prevent them from getting enough good quality sleep. This has a negative impact on their health and fitness. Some lifestyle factors that prevent people from getting enough sleep are:

• Shift work
• Consuming caffeine late in the day
• Lack of a sleep schedule
• Not allowing yourself enough time in bed
• Overwork
• Exercise too close to bedtime
• Alcohol too close to bedtime
• Marijuana and other recreational drug use
• Eating too close to bedtime
• Drinking fluids too late in the day and needing to urinate during the night
• Sharing a bed
• Sleeping with a partner who snores
• Sleeping in a noisy or not sufficiently dark room

How To Improve Your Quality Of Sleep

You can improve your quality of sleep, and with it your fitness levels, by implementing the following guidelines:

• Have a consistent sleep schedule. Studies suggest that an irregular sleep schedule can reduce sleep quality.
• Make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, and cool. Research shows that noise and temperature have a negative effect on sleep quality.
• Don’t eat too close to bedtime. Research shows eating too close to bed spikes insulin and reduces sleep quality.
• Avoid caffeine in the second half of the day. Research shows that caffeine causes sleep disturbance.
• Avoid alcohol before bed. Studies show that alcohol reduces circulating melatonin and reduces sleep quality.
• Increase light exposure during the day. Research suggests this helps to keep your circadian rhythm healthy.
• Decrease light exposure from screens close to bedtime. Research suggests blue light from screens delays sleep onset.
• Avoid long daytime naps. Napping for extended periods during the day has been shown to reduce nighttime sleep quality.
• Unwind before bed with a bath or shower and perhaps some reading.
• Get regular exercise, but not too close to bedtime. Research suggests that regular exercise improves sleep quality and reduces the time it takes to get to sleep.

How To Improve Fitness Levels

Here are our top tips to improve your fitness levels:

• Get copious amounts of good quality sleep!
• Get plenty of cardiovascular exercise – go for runs and cycles; take the stairs where possible.
• Reduce alcohol intake.
• Stretch daily.
• Eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and other wholefoods.
• Do some weight training.
• Sauna bathe regularly.
• Implement an intermittent fasting regime.

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People often fail to recognize just how important sleep is for overall health. In today’s busy world, it can feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, and often sleep falls by the wayside for other things that are seemingly more important. However, sleep is crucial to your health and wellbeing in a variety of ways.

As well as letting the body rest, sleep repairs damage throughout the night, which is helpful for both immune health and cognitive function. Sleep also plays a role in weight management, memory, exercise performance, mood, heart health, and liver health. To put it simply: a person who doesn’t get adequate sleep is not going to stay healthy for very long.

Many people are also hyper-focused on the length of time they spend asleep, completely disregarding the quality of sleep they’re getting. But quality of sleep is far more important than quantity. So what does quality of sleep mean, exactly? And when it comes to things like liver health, what do we know about how your quality of sleep can influence liver function?

What is quality of sleep?

When we lie down for some shuteye, we cycle through various stages of sleep several times per night. These cycles include light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. Each stage in the cycle is as important as the last and is required for the best quality of sleep to occur.

Light sleep acts as a primer for deep sleep. During this time, the muscles begin to relax, and respiration and heart rate both decrease. Body temperature begins to drop during light sleep as well. All these processes occur so that the body is ready to transition into the next cycle.

Deep sleep is the stage dedicated to restoring the body. Blood flow increases, hormones are released, and the brain gets rid of waste. All of the physiological actions that take place during this phase are designed to repair tissue and cells – a crucial process.

The final stage before cycling back into light sleep is REM (or rapid-eye-movement) sleep. During this stage, heart rate and respiration speed back up, and your body’s temperature may begin to fluctuate as the regulation that occurs in light sleep is turned off.

REM sleep is the type of sleep that dreams occur in, and because of this, the body essentially becomes paralyzed (to stop you moving around according to what you’re doing in your dreams!). REM sleep is designed to help your brain process events and restore itself.

Combined, these sleep stages last roughly 90 minutes, and each person must cycle through them three to four times per night. When the body goes through these cycles adequately and performs all its tasks to prepare the body for another day, sleep is considered “good quality”.

How does sleep affect liver function?

According to research, quality of sleep plays a large role in how well your liver functions. The liver breaks down nutrients and other substances that are in the blood so that they can be either used by the body or excreted as waste. This process is important because without a proper filtering system, toxins can build up within the body, causing health issues. This filtering is referred to as liver metabolism.

Studies have shown that a person’s liver metabolism can be severely affected by losing just six hours of shuteye. One particular study found that one night of sleep loss caused the liver to lose its ability to produce glucose (which the body needs for energy) and process insulin (which helps the body’s cells use that glucose as energy). This can lead to a higher risk of developing diabetes.

Sleep and liver health are also connected in other ways. It’s thought that if a person has difficulties with sleep, their liver health may already be compromised in some way. This is because the liver helps to regulate the circulation of melatonin, a substance designed to help maintain the sleep–wake cycle and thus encourage good-quality sleep. It’s quite common for people with liver disease to experience sleep disturbances as well.

Can lack of sleep cause liver problems?

As mentioned above, sleep and the health of the liver are closely tied together. While sleep has been shown to be affected in people with existing liver issues, the opposite can also be true. People who have poor quality sleep not only increase their risk of diabetes, as mentioned above, but also their risk of developing fatty liver disease.

This is because, much like the glucose/insulin issues, the way the liver metabolizes fat is also compromised in people who do not get enough sleep. Fat can build up within the liver and bring on fatty liver disease. Inadequate sleep can also play a role in the way that liver enzymes, which are proteins that speed up important chemical reactions, do their job. Enzymes in people who are not getting enough sleep are less able to perform, increasing the risk of liver disease significantly.

There are many reasons you should get good-quality of sleep, and liver health is just another to add to the long list to ensure that your body is working as it should. 

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Getting enough sleep in today’s fast-paced world is a challenge. We have to maintain social, professional, and family lives, take care of household duties, make food, exercise… The list goes on. Because of all these factors, many people are unable to get the quality and quantity of sleep that they need to wake up feeling rested, restored, and ready to take on another day.

What many people don’t consider when they think about their personal sleep habits is the detrimental effects that poor sleep can have on overall health. Several health issues can be tied to a lack of good-quality sleep, including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases.

Considering how serious these diseases and conditions can be, it’s important that we think more critically about our sleep. As well as the specific issues mentioned above, sleep can also affect how well your body’s general defense system functions. But how does sleep influence immunity, exactly? Read on for all you need to know about how your quality of sleep can influence immune function.

Sleep quality and immune function

It can be difficult to commit to proper sleep habits if you don’t properly understand how sleep affects your body overall, or how it contributes to keeping you as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

The reason why sleep is so important for immunity is because of the way it ties into the circadian rhythm, which is the body’s internal clock. Also known as the circadian cycle, this function regulates the body’s sleep–wake cycle – the natural cycle that prepares you for sleep and then wakes you back up again. This natural cycle is crucial in giving the body the time it needs to rest and refresh for the upcoming day.

When considering the circadian rhythm to the immune system, studies have found a symbiotic link between the two. The circadian rhythm plays a role in the processes that need to be constantly regulated for immune cells to be properly produced.

For example, the immune system relies heavily on T-cells, which are produced to fight off pathogens and ward off disease and infection. The circadian rhythm’s role to make sure that T-cells are produced and released into the bloodstream in proper amounts and at the right time so that the body can use them effectively.

Other aspects of the immune system known as cytokines are also heavily influenced by sleep. Cytokines are specific proteins released by immune cells that help with proper immune function. They also aid the body in cell signaling processes, which are important for many other systems.

When it comes to the immune system, these proteins can control the deployment of other immune cells that are needed to fight off infection when a pathogen invades the body. Essentially, they are the alarm system that goes off to alert the immune cells to respond to the threat. When someone gets proper sleep, their cytokines work as they should, and the immune system can fight another day. However, when they don’t, this aspect of immunity is compromised.

How are proper sleep and immunity linked?

Proper sleep and immunity are linked because of how sleep affects the action of immune cells and other processes that are required to alert the immune system to take action against pathogens.

T-cells, which we mentioned above, are designed to fight against pathogens that can reproduce inside the cells of the host they have infected. One particular study examined how T-cells were affected by sleep, and found that it is essential for a person to get enough good quality shut-eye in order for these cells to work. This is because of the way T-cells rely on certain molecules known as integrins.

Integrins provide adhesion that allows T-cells that come into contact with a pathogen to target, attach, and obliterate it. Without proper “stickiness”, this task becomes much harder and some pathogens can evade T-cells entirely. So what does this have to do with sleep?

When the body and brain are at rest, the adhesive capabilities of these molecules are much higher than when you’re awake. During sleep, immune cells also peak in specific areas of the body, such as in the lymph nodes. This peak is due to the hormone known as cortisol, otherwise known as the stress hormone. Levels of cortisol go up and down at various points of the day. Right before falling asleep, they are lower, and as soon as a person wakes up, levels peak to their highest of the day.

The reason why this is all tied to immunity and T-cells is because high levels of cortisol make integrins less adhesive. This means that if a person isn’t getting proper sleep and their cortisol cycle is out of tune, integrins may not be able to produce the adhesion that T-cells need to fight off pathogens. 

How many hours of sleep is good for the immune system?

Many studies have examined how much sleep each person needs for optimal health, and the agreed-upon number sits anywhere between seven to nine hours. While all people are different, this is typically the time it takes to go through the proper sleep cycles and receive all the benefits that sleep has on the immune system. However, it isn’t just quantity of sleep that’s necessary. Good quality sleep is far more important than the length of time a person spends asleep.

At the end of the day, sleep is vital to your immunity and your overall health, so getting enough good-quality shut-eye is something that everyone should prioritize.

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Sleep is an unavoidable and crucial part of life. When people think of sleep, they often think of recommended amounts as a kind of suggestion – but what they might not know is that if you want to stay healthy, it’s just as important to get proper sleep as it is to eat the right foods. In fact, sleep is right up there with breathing as a vital basic function!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 30% of adults don’t get the sleep that they need for their bodies and brains to function at their best. The type of sleep also needs to be factored in here – a person can get eight hours of sleep every night and still not have the adequate quality of sleep they need. So, even if you’re sleeping the amount you think is necessary, you could be missing out on the benefits of good-quality sleep and not even realize it.

But what is sleep quality, exactly? And what do we know about how quality of sleep can influence energy levels and general health?

What does sleep quality mean?

While sleeping may seem simple, it can actually be quite complex. During sleep, the body goes through various stages. These patterns of sleep are designed to help you get the most out of your shut-eye.

There are five particular stages through which each person cycles throughout the night:

• Stage 1: Stage 1 is light sleep and is the shortest of all the stages, only lasting up to 10 minutes or less. This stage is marked by a slowdown of the mind and body to help prime you for the rest of the sleep cycle.
• Stage 2: Stage 2 is also considered light sleep, but other areas of the body begin to decrease here to prepare you for the rest of the cycle. These areas include eye movement, brain waves, and muscle activity. Brain waves actually spike during this stage, though – it’s thought that these spikes are involved in long-term memory and sensory processing. This stage is responsible for forming memories. 
• Stages 3 and 4: The next two stages are considered deep sleep and are marked by a fully relaxed body and a decrease in breathing rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. During this time, the body works on a cellular level to release hormones designed to regulate the immune system and develop and repair tissue.
• Stage 5: Stage 5 is REM sleep. The REM phase is the dream phase, and during it, the brain and body actually act similarly to when a person is awake. It is thought that during this stage, the brain reactivates to help process and store information.

Sleep quality revolves around the stages of sleep. When a person gets through the full sleep cycle several times a night and then wakes up in light sleep, they’re likely to have experienced good-quality sleep. However, if the cycles are disrupted, or if a person wakes up without going through enough cycles or from deep or REM sleep, this can lead to inadequate sleep quality.

How does sleep affect energy levels?

Sleep and energy often go hand in hand because without adequate sleep, you’re likely to wake up tired and drained. When looking at the stages of sleep, the time where the body replenishes the energy lost throughout the day is stages three and four – the deep sleep portion of the cycle. During this deep sleep stage, the body’s ability to produce an energy molecule known as ATP is enhanced. As mentioned above, deep sleep is also the time when other areas are repaired for the following day.

When the body cycles through sleep properly, all the repair that needs to take place does so, and enough ATP is produced to help you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. When cycles are disrupted, you will experience groggy wake-ups that make it feel as though you haven’t gotten enough sleep, even if you’ve spent the entire night in a sleep state. In this case, it’s not the amount of sleep that’s the problem – it’s the poor quality, which has resulted in a lack of energy that was supposed to be produced while you slept.

Does more sleep mean more energy?

As mentioned above, the amount of sleep a person gets does not necessarily play a role in how refreshed they are, because there are sleep cycles that need to be experienced in order for energy to be there upon waking. If you sleep too little, you will not have gone through an adequate number of cycles in the night for your body to prepare for the next day.

The same issues can arise when you sleep too much. This is because sleep cycles depend highly on the internal biological clock that every person has. If you sleep for too long, that clock can be thrown off. On a cellular level, the clock is supposed to tell certain cells how to regulate energy levels, and too much sleep gives those cells misinformation that leads to tiredness.

Why am I so tired after sleeping?

Waking up tired can happen for many reasons. The phenomenon is referred to as sleep inertia and is often characterized by grogginess or drowsiness. If you’re waking up tired, it’s likely because you didn’t get good quality sleep; you didn’t cycle through the stages of sleep properly throughout the night and possibly woke up in the middle of a cycle that had not yet finished.

There are many reasons that sleep cycles may be disrupted, including:

• A disorganized sleep schedule
• Drinking too much alcohol or caffeine
• Using cell phones in bed

There are also specific disorders that are defined by disruption to the sleep cycle, such as irregular sleep–wake syndrome. Other conditions that can disrupt your body’s natural sleep stages include:

• Depression
• Cancer
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Schizophrenia
• Stroke
• Head injuries

When you don’t get good quality sleep, regardless of how many hours you spent in a sleep state, you will wake up tired, groggy, and drained of energy. Because of this, focusing on sleep quality over sleep quantity is the best way to reap all the rewards of a good night’s rest.

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A good night’s sleep involves a lot more than just sleeping for a set number of hours. Typically, it’s advised that adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. While the time you spend asleep is a great jumping off-point when you’re looking to get quality sleep, it is nowhere near the entire picture of what is means to have high sleep quality. But what is sleep quality, exactly? And how is it connected to your bodyweight? Read on to learn all you need to know about how quality of sleep can influence weight.

What is sleep quality?

To understand sleep quality, it’s important to first understand what sleep is and everything that goes on within your body when you shut your eyes at night. The process of sleep may seem simple – close your eyes, sleep, wake up! – but it’s much more than that.

Sleep revolves around the body’s circadian rhythm, which is our internal clock. The clock itself follows a 24-hour period and affects the physical and mental changes that go on during that period. Importantly, the circadian rhythm controls your sleep–wake cycle, which determines how you sleep at night and how you awake each morning. It’s tied in with consistent, restorative patterns of sleep, so if your circadian rhythm is off, so is your sleep.

While you’re in the sleep state of the sleep–wake cycle, you go through various stages, each with its own important physiological purpose. The stages are:

• Stage 1: Light Sleep. This stage lasts only five to 10 minutes and primes you to get a good night’s rest by slowing down the body and mind.
• Stage 2: Secondary Light Sleep. This stage causes more changes in the body to prepare you for the next stage. Your eye movements, muscle and brain activity begin to slow. However, brain waves can spike sporadically during this stage, which experts believe helps retain long-term memory.
• Stages 3 and 4: Deep Sleep. These occur when the body is completely relaxed. Your breath rate, blood pressure, and body temperature are all decreased during this stage so that the body can release hormones designed to repair and produce tissue as well as moderate immune function.
• Stage 5: REM Sleep. This is probably one of the most well-known stages because of how often it is talked about. It’s the time in which the body processes and stores information through the act of dreaming.

These stages all have a specific role to play in our quality of sleep, but they are also symbiotic in the sense that a person must go through all the stages three or four times per night to get a good quality sleep.

How are sleep and weight related?

It may seem as though sleep and weight couldn’t possibly be related. After all, you’re not overeating in your sleep or slacking out on that exercise session! However, the two often go hand-in-hand because of the physiological processes that occur within the body during sleep.

The connection between sleep and weight has a lot to do with whether a person gets good quality sleep every night, or whether they continue to burn the midnight oil and avoid the shut-eye their body needs to be rested for the following day.

Recent research has found that sleep can play a role in obesity as well as during weight loss journeys. When looking at this from a sleep quality standpoint, the length of sleep as well as how “good” it is are both factors in weight. 

How does bad sleep affect your metabolism?

Your metabolism is the process that turns the food you eat into energy. It also provides cells with energy they need to complete their basic functions. During sleep, the body’s metabolic rate, or the rate at which it burns calories for energy, is reduced by roughly 15%.

Some may draw the conclusion that because you’re burning fewer calories during sleep, you may be able to mitigate this by sleeping less during the night. However, the opposite can be true.

Even though you burn fewer calories during the night, if you don’t spend enough time in good quality sleep, your metabolism can actually malfunction when you are awake, leading to issues that can either drive weight gain or slow weight loss. This is because of how sleep can affect glucose as well as insulin sensitivity. When people do not get proper sleep on a regular basis, their body’s ability to use glucose stores effectively is hindered, as is their insulin response.

Does quality of sleep affect weight?

When looking at sleep in relation to weight loss programs, research has found that people who get better sleep on a regular basis are more likely to have weight loss success over those who don’t. This is likely because of the aforementioned effects that sleep has on the function of the metabolism.

What’s more is that when people are losing weight, they are often subject to muscle mass loss as well. However, if you incorporate good-quality sleep into your weight loss plan, studies have shown that you are more likely to lose more fat while preserving your muscle mass. 

To sum up: while not getting enough good-quality sleep can be harmful to various areas of your health, it can also be harmful to your waistline.

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Everybody experiences some form of stress – it’s just a normal part of everyday life. Whether it’s acute stress, such as having a really tough day at the office, or something more chronic because of a continually stressful situation or lifestyle, there isn’t a person on the planet who hasn’t felt this emotion at some point in their life.

The stress response is an evolutionary part of human existence and initially acted as a way to protect you from harm. However, it was designed solely for this purpose, and typically, when our ancestors were out of the stressful situation, their bodies returned to normal because the stress response was no longer needed.

Today, however, that initial stress response (also known as fight-or-flight) still works for you and your health, but it can be skewed in the sense that it may be activated for too long. When that happens, different bodily processes can be negatively affected. One such system that can be affected by stress is the immune system – but what is the role of stress in immunity, and can it make your immune function worse? Read on to learn more about how stress can influence immune function.

What is the relationship between stress and the immune system?

The immune system acts as your body’s first line of defense, and technically speaking, stress can actually be helpful when it comes to your immune response. As mentioned above, stress was initially a psychological response that protected people against harm. In terms of the immune system, that initial response primes the body to be better prepared to fight off infection and avoid or heal any injuries a person may have from fleeing a dangerous situation.

Since the same rules don’t apply today (the stimuli our ancestors experienced were very different to the ones we experience today!), that stress response now invokes an immune response that isn’t necessarily needed. For example, if you get stressed while waiting in line for coffee while you’re late to work, your body isn’t in any real danger – but you’re still stressed. The physiological response is still the same, and the activation of your immune system to help heal injury or prevent infection will still occur, even though it isn’t really needed.

How does stress affect the immune system?

Stress can affect the immune system in many ways because of the way it influences various bodily systems that tie into immunity. For example, the bowel is a large part of immunity since it houses immune cells needed to fight off infection. Stress can cause issue with the bowel that can lead to various unpleasant symptoms.

When it comes to immunity, stressful situations can reduce the amount of nutrients that are absorbed into the body and the gut bacteria can become imbalanced. The immune system can become weakened when the nutrients it needs are not getting absorbed, and when gut bacteria are off balance, immune function also falters. 

The nervous system also gets activated during times of stress. During this activation, stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline are released. These are designed to help the body prepare for battle, so to speak – but when there is no battle, the body doesn’t really benefit from their release.

An overproduction of cortisol that is not used appropriately, or remains high due to constant and chronic stress, hinders the action of the immune system. This is because too-high levels of cortisol end up causing the immune system to become less responsive to the hormone, thus increasing the production of inflammatory cells that hinder the immune system’s function.  

Cortisol also has the ability to disrupt how well the immune system works because of its effect on the endocrine system. The endocrine system acts as a series of messengers throughout the body to regulate the action or organs and glands. Because acute levels of stress cause inflammation to occur due to the production of cortisol, chronic stress drives chronic inflammation.

When the body’s inflammatory process isn’t acting as it should, the immune system does not activate when it needs to, because the connection between it and the glands that produce stress hormones is compromised.Altogether, when chronic inflammation and the connection pathways in the body are hindered, you are more at risk of chronic diseases.

Can stress cause a weak immune system?

As mentioned above, stress can weaken the immune system. While acute stress isn’t as much of an issue, chronic stress can cause real problems. Brief periods of acute stress are a normal and typical response that leads to the re-regulation of the immune system once the stressful situation has passed. Chronic stress, on the other hand, drives crossed wires and poor functioning because the body is in a constant state of stress when there is no actual situation that it needs protection from.

While avoiding stress completely is essentially impossible, one of the best things you can do for your immune system is practice stress reduction techniques. This could include meditation, practicing a hobby you enjoy, or exercising regularly. Keeping overall stress levels down as much as possible will ensure any acute stress you experience doesn’t stick around to harm your health in the long run.

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Unfortunately, there is no way to completely avoid situations that may cause you to feel stressed – stress is just a part of life. However, when a person is stressed, their health is often hindered because stress can impact the body in negative ways (right down to a cellular level).

When we experience short-term stress, the body activates its “fight or flight” mode to prepare us to get out of harm’s way. This is an evolutionary response that kept our distant ancestors alive. Today, there are much fewer immediate dangers for most people – however, the stress response has stuck around and can be activated when there is no imminent threat to your life. During short bouts of stress, hormones are released that increase how hard the body works in order to get you out of a difficult or dangerous situation. Your breathing and heart rate speed up, your skin may grow pale or flushed, and your pupils dilate.

When stress is long-term or chronic, the body believes you are in danger a lot of the time. Because of this, you may experience headaches and stomachaches, your blood pressure may increase, and you may have difficulty falling asleep. Many people also experience a depletion of energy when they’re stressed. Read on to learn exactly how stress can influence energy levels.

Does stress deplete energy levels?

In short, the answer is yes: stress can significantly affect your energy levels. When people experience acute or chronic stress, their body essentially goes into overdrive, and when that happens, a lot of energy is used. Without adequate rest time or a break from stress, the energy that is being used up will not be restored properly.

How does stress impact energy levels?

The reason energy levels are zapped when you’re under chronic stress is because of the body’s physiological responses. The main system affected by these changes is the hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal system. When this system activates, it does so in various steps.

First, the stressor activates the hypothalamic pituitary axis. This action stimulates the pituitary gland to release a substance known as adrenocorticotropic hormone, which in turn stimulates the release of corticosteroid, or cortisol, from the adrenal glands. When cortisol is produced, glucose is released from the liver.

This hormone release is designed to help the body maintain adequate levels of sugar in the blood so that it’s prepared to take action in response to the stressor, and to return to normal once the stress has passed.

The automatic nervous system is also activated during this time – specifically, the adrenal medulla. The adrenal medulla releases adrenaline, which causes the body to prepare itself to either fight the threat or run away from it. While the automatic nervous system is activated, which prepares the body for better control, the parasympathetic nervous system is reduced so that certain processes within the body are quieted.

This entire reaction occurs quickly after a person experiences stress. When the stress is chronic, these physiological responses affect overall health in various ways.

Does short-term stress drain your energy?

During bouts of short-term stress, the process described above actually increases your body’s energy for a short period of time so you can be prepared to fight or run away from the potential threat. This short-term boost comes from stored glucose in the liver.

When the stressor has been eliminated, the body rebalances itself back to a normal state. During this time, you will not typically experience any sort of energy loss. It is only when stress is chronic that you will begin to feel your overall energy levels drop.

How does chronic and long-term stress affect energy levels?

There are various ways that long-term stress impacts energy levels. One has to do with your metabolic process and digestive system: acute stress hinders the appetite because the body determines that it doesn’t need to feed itself when it is preparing for danger.

However, when stress is persistent, the response that affects your appetite and digestion messes up your entire metabolic process. Not only are you not eating enough to properly fuel your body, your energy metabolism is also under-functioning and not providing you with the fuel you need to get through the day.

Bouts of chronic stress can also make it difficult for you to get proper sleep, and may lead to the development of mental health disorders that can further disrupt the way energy is stored and dispersed throughout the body. When we don’t get enough rest, our energy levels do not have enough time to replenish themselves. During sleep, the molecule ATP is made; this molecule plays a large role in energy levels, and if there isn’t enough of it, you will lack energy.

Because of the various effects that stress has on the body, especially chronic stress, low energy levels could indicate that you have been too stressed for too long. It’s important to manage stress levels to ensure your body stays healthy and your energy levels stay consistent.

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The liver is one of the most important organs because of the variety of life-maintaining functions it performs. Essentially, the liver acts as a sort of detox program built right into the body, processing the blood that leaves the stomach and intestines so it can create nutrients the body needs to survive. This process also ensures that any medications can be effectively metabolized so that the body can use them without harm.

Since the liver plays such a vital role in filtration, digestion, metabolism, and detoxification, its proper function is essential to our overall health. A healthy liver ensures your body gets everything it needs (and that everything it doesn’t is removed), but when it isn’t working as it should, some serious health issues can occur.

Diseases such as hepatitis B and C and excessive use of alcohol can both lead to liver damage or failure. But does stress have the same effect? Read on to learn how stress can influence liver function and what you can do about it.

Can emotional stress affect the liver?

Emotional stress can take a toll on your mental wellbeing and cause a host of mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression, but it can also cause issues with your physical health. When the body feels high levels of emotional stress, it releases a hormone known as cortisol. While cortisol can be beneficial in terms of preparing to respond to danger or increasing metabolism to help process glucose, there is such a thing as having too much cortisol.

According to the American Psychological Association, when levels of cortisol are too high (especially on a regular basis), many of the body’s systems can be negatively affected. For example, the muscles naturally tense up in an effort to be on guard when cortisol levels are high. However, when there is no actual threat of danger, that prolonged tension can lead to the development of disorders tied to muscle tension, such as migraines and chronic pain.

Every other system in the body can be negatively affected by too much emotional stress, including the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, and the digestive system (which includes the liver). Research has found that when someone is constantly experiencing high levels of emotional stress, it can lead to issues with the blood flow in the liver. When that happens, the liver cannot get enough oxygen stores and its blood vessels can narrow, ultimately leading to liver damage.

If your stress levels begin to affect your liver, you may start to experience symptoms such as:

• Changes to the color of your skin
• Chronic digestive issues
• Aches and pains
• Dark-colored urine
• Mood swings
• Low energy
• Pain in the chest or abdomen

Does stress contribute to fatty liver?

For people who already have an issue with how their liver functions, high levels of stress can make the issue worse. This is especially true in the case of fatty liver disease – a condition that develops when a person has an excess level of fat within the liver.

Over time, high levels of fat in the liver cause damage, which comes with a host of health problems such as:

• Fatigue
• Unintentional weight loss
• Jaundice (a yellowing of the skin or eyes)
• Spiderlike blood vessels on the skin
• Itching that doesn’t go away 

If the condition worsens, it can lead to cirrhosis, a disease that can develop into liver failure and even lead to the need for a liver transplant. Various studies have examined how the liver is affected by stress in relation to fatty liver disease. One particular study looked at the livers of healthy adults to see how high levels of stress may influence the development of the disease. The results showed that fatty liver disease was correlated most often with people who had higher levels of stress – indicating that stress itself can bring on fatty liver disease for people who may already be at risk of developing the condition.

Another research paper looked at people who had already been diagnosed with fatty liver disease and how stress affected the health of their liver following onset. The study found that stress, especially prolonged and chronic stress, was a main factor in the worsening of the disease because of the way it can lead to an increase in both cholesterol and triglycerides in the liver. 

Can stress and anxiety cause elevated liver enzymes?

Various substances assist the liver in performing its job. One substance that is vital for liver function is liver enzymes – proteins that help the processing of blood from the stomach and intestines. Liver enzymes are designed to speed up those chemical reactions for the best possible result.

Research has shown that people who experience high levels of emotional stress and anxiety often have elevated levels of liver enzymes. High levels are associated with inflammation and liver damage.

The effect stress has on the liver is an entirely negative one, especially in instances where the stress is chronic. Since your liver is vital to your overall health, the best thing you can do to keep it healthy is eat right, take care of yourself, and do your best to reduce stress wherever possible.

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The world today is full of stressors that cause mental anguish. Many of these stressors are unique to our modern society – novel “first world problems” that nonetheless provoke a stress response that is very real, and often chronic.

Our ancestors may have been susceptible to dying from an illness that modern medicine has neutered and made benign… But they also lived much more in accordance with their circadian rhythms, suffered less Instagram-induced status anxiety, never had to grind their way through rush hour traffic, and didn’t use email!

The modern world is a fantastic place to live, but it can also be stressful. Stress can have an impact on many elements of your life and health – let’s take a look at a few below.

How Stress Can Influence Fitness Levels

Most of us would agree that at the end of the day, our health, and the health of those we love, is the most important thing in the world. So why do so many of us live in ways that are damaging to our health?

Stress can have a very negative impact on our health and physical fitness levels. Being physically fit is a crucial component of overall health, but unfortunately many of us have compromised fitness because we are chronically stressed.

How Does Stress Affect Fitness?

Does stress reduce fitness? Yes, stress can reduce fitness levels. Some of the negative effects that stress has on fitness are:

• Increasing muscle tension
• Increasing appetite and promoting storage of body fat
• Increasing risk of injury
• Reducing sleep quality and energy levels

How Do Stress And Anxiety Affect Exercise?

Stress and anxiety can…

• Make exercise less enjoyable

• Negatively affect concentration, ability to focus, and exercise quality
• Hinder recovery after exercise
• Reduce sleep quality, which makes exercise more difficult
• Make people avoid gyms and exercise classes

What Are The Physical And Emotional Symptoms of Stress?

The most common physical symptoms of stress are:

• Headaches
• Clenched jaw and grinding teeth
• Muscle tension, aches, and pains
• Nervousness and shaking
• Upset stomach
• Chest pain and heart palpitations
• Trouble sleeping
• Low energy levels
• Frequent colds and infections
• Loss of sexual interest
• Ringing in the ears
• Cold or sweaty extremities
• Dry mouth and difficulty swallowing

The most common emotional symptoms of stress are:

• Low or erratic mood
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Being easily agitated
• Frustration
• A feeling of overwhelm or panic
• An inability to relax your mind
• Negative internal dialog
• Low self-esteem

What Are The Cognitive And Behavioral Symptoms Of Stress?

The most common cognitive symptoms of stress are:

• A pessimistic outlook
• Chronic worrying and rumination
• Racing thoughts
• Forgetfulness
• Trouble focusing
• Disorganized thinking

The most common behavioral symptoms of stress are:

• Overeating
• Undereating
• Using alcohol and/or drugs
• Procrastination
• Avoidance behaviors
• Engaging in compulsive coping behaviors such as masturbation, pacing, nail biting, or fidgeting

What Are The Effects Of Stress On Physical Health?

Short-term stress has physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioral symptoms. If/when stress goes away, these symptoms will usually abate. However, long-term chronic stress can lead to a variety of physical health problems, including:

• Obesity
• Cardiovascular disease
• Gastrointestinal diseases
• Menstrual problems
• Sexual dysfunction, such as impotence and premature ejaculation, or loss of desire
• Skin problems, such as acne, eczema, and psoriasis
• Balding and permanent hair loss
• Long-term mental health problems

Causes Of Stress In The Modern World

Some of the main causes of stress in the modern world are:

• Financial concerns
• Overwork
• Internet overuse and addiction
• Alienation and a lack of face-face connection
• Status anxiety
• Sleep deprivation
• 24-hour news coverage
• Omnipresent advertisements and marketing
• A lack of connection to nature
• Exposure to artificial light that interrupts our circadian rhythm

How Can We Manage Our Stress Levels And Improve Our Fitness Levels?

Here are some ways we can manage stress levels and improve our fitness:

• Eat a healthy diet
• Get plenty of sleep
• Spend lots of time with people whose company you enjoy
• Get off social media
• Limit how much news you consume
• Spend time with animals
• Read a good book
• Go for walks in nature
• Explore supplements that reduce stress levels and improve health

What Are The Best Supplements For Reducing Stress?

CBD oil: Research has shown that CBD oil has the effect of lowering cortisol. CBD also appears to increase sleep duration.

Melatonin: Good-quality sleep goes a long way to reducing stress levels. Research suggests that melatonin can improve sleep in several ways, including encouraging the onset of sleep and improving people’s subjective assessment of the quality of their sleep.

Delta Sleep Inducing peptide: Another promising supplement that can reduce stress by improving sleep is Delta Sleep Inducing peptide. Research indicates that Delta Sleep Inducing peptide promotes higher sleep efficiency and shorter sleep latency.

Bioactive Milk Peptides (lactium): Lactium peptide contains amino acids that can reduce cortisol levels, induce relaxation, improve sleep quality, and reduce stress.

Magnesium: Research suggests that magnesium relaxes muscles, improves sleep time and sleep efficiency, and reduces serum cortisol concentration.

Valerian: Research indicates that valerian may help reduce stress by promoting sleep and relaxation and reducing anxiety.

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Sleep is a vital component of overall health. During the sleep cycle, the body goes through different stages, all of which are designed to keep internal systems functioning as they should.

There are five stages of the sleep cycle and each typically occurs within a 90-minute timeframe.

The first two stages are considered light sleep, the third and fourth are deep sleep, and the fifth is rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the part of the sleep cycle when dreams occur. If the body doesn’t cycle through the sleep stages appropriately, a person can suffer from a variety of different health issues caused by a lack of proper rest.  

Why is quality of sleep important?

When people think about sleep, they often focus on how many hours they get in a night – but how long sleep occurs is arguably less important than the quality of sleep one gets. Sleep quality is the main factor in how tired a person is upon waking. For example, getting nine hours of sleep may sound optimal, but a person will only benefit if they wake during the appropriate time during the sleep cycle.

Waking up at the end of a sleep cycle or during one of the light sleep stages is thought to have the greatest impact on wakefulness throughout the day. If a person wakes during REM sleep, they are more likely to feel groggy and tired throughout the day.

How is quality of sleep calculated?

There are four specific ways to determine the quality of sleep a person gets:

• Amount of time in bed
• Amount of time in deep sleep while in bed
• How often one moves and how intense the movements are throughout the night
• How much time a person spent awake throughout the night

For many people, sleep trackers can be used to determine these four factors. Other ways to measure quality of sleep include determining how alert you are upon waking and examining your overall health. Since sleep plays a key role in the health of the mind and body, it can be helpful to consider certain symptoms and determine if they could be attributed to a sleep disturbance. For example, a continuous lack of quality sleep can lead to medical conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Ways to improve quality of sleep

If you’re wondering how to sleep better at night naturally, the good news is that there are plenty of small steps you can take that are easy and effective. The best home remedies for good sleep include: 

Increase your exposure to light during the day

The body functions using its own clock called the circadian rhythm. It plays a vital role in many things such as brain health and hormone balances. Getting natural daylight throughout the day helps the circadian rhythm function as it should. Studies have shown that people with insomnia saw a reduction in their symptoms after being exposed to bright light during the day.

Avoid blue light exposure at night

At night, and especially before bed, exposure to blue light (such as using your phone or watching TV) can have a negative effect on how much sleep you get as well as the quality of that sleep. This is because blue light can fool the brain into thinking that it’s still daytime, thus upsetting the body’s natural circadian rhythm. This also affects the body’s release of melatonin, a sleep hormone, and thus lessens your chance of having a good night’s sleep.

Avoid caffeine and alcohol

Many people use caffeine to “wake up” in the morning. Some studies have also shown that it can have positive effects on the body, such as enhancing focus. However, if caffeine is ingested too late in the day, the nervous system becomes stimulated and the body has a harder time relaxing.

Alcohol, on the other hand, can contribute to new or worsened sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and disrupted sleep patterns.

Skip the long nap

Some studies suggest that napping can be great for overall health, but the length of the nap is the determining factor on whether it has a positive or negative effect. Daytime sleeping for longer than a quick 20-minute nap can lead to a confused internal clock, which in turn could cause you to struggle to sleep at night time.

Set a sleep schedule

Since the circadian rhythm is on its own sort of loop when it comes to sleep timing, having a consistent sleep schedule will significantly increase your chances of improving your overall quality of sleep. A sleep schedule should be designed to work for you and your lifestyle, and should adhere to the same schedule every night and every morning, even on weekends. 

Try a supplement

At-home remedies for good sleep are all well and good, but they can also benefit from supplementation. Since melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that signals your brain to sleep every night, taking a melatonin supplement can have the same effects.

Other supplements that can be taken to help improve overall sleep quality include:

• Ginkgo biloba. This herbal remedy has been found to encourage relaxation and stress reduction.
• Valerian root. Valerian root has been shown to improve sleep quality and help you fall asleep faster.
• Magnesium. Magnesium is vital chemical element that can induce feelings of relaxation, leading to an improvement in sleep quality.
• Lavender. Lavender acts as a sedative and induces feelings of calmness. It has been shown to help reduce the symptoms of insomnia.

Improving your quality of sleep can make a huge difference in your day-to-day life. Good sleep can also lower the risk of developing a weakened immune function, as well as many chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, mental illness, and obesity.

Sleep quality is one of the most important things that determines your overall health. The good news is that getting a good night’s sleep is just a few simple steps away!

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Hair loss is a widespread cosmetic issue for over 35 million men and 21 million women. The condition can range from mild to severe, with the milder end of the spectrum involving only a small and possibly unnoticeable amount of hair loss, all the way through to the other extreme: total baldness.

No one wants to lose their hair, but as the body ages, it begins to experience hair loss at increasing rates throughout mid- and late adulthood. There have been a wide variety of treatments and therapies available for hair loss such as hair plugs, creams, sprays, and the like. But what about peptides? Does peptide therapy work for hair loss? Let’s find out.

Types of hair loss

Not all hair loss is the same. In fact, there are seven different categories to describe different types of medical hair loss. They are:

Telogen effluvium

This type of hair loss occurs following large bouts of bodily stress, such as a major surgery or illness. It can also occur in women after they give birth due to a change in hormone levels.

Drug side effects

Certain medications can lead to hair loss, such as those used during chemotherapy treatments.

Medical illness symptom

Hair loss can be just one symptom of a specific medical condition. Illnesses such as systemic lupus, thyroid disorders, and nutrient deficiency can all lead to hair loss.

Tinea capitis

Tinea capitis is a fungal infection that occurs on the scalp. It leads to patchy hair loss and flaking or scaling skin where the hair has fallen out.

Alopecia

Alopecia is an autoimmune disease that causes patchy hair loss and is most commonly found in people with other autoimmune diseases.

Traumatic alopecia

This type of hair loss is caused by pulling the hair too tight, as well as exposure to extreme heat and styling chemicals.

Trichotillomania

People with this psychiatric disorder may end up with hair loss due to their own actions. They may pull and twist their hair compulsively, leading to bald spots.  

The type of treatment for hair loss will depend greatly on the specific condition causing it, if there is one at all. Since hair loss occurs naturally with age, it may just be inevitable if there is no medical condition present.

How does peptide therapy work?

Peptides are short-chain amino acids that are naturally occurring within the body. The amino acids used to make up peptides are the building blocks of protein, and all contribute to the overall proper function of specific bodily functions. Peptide therapy can be used to help regulate or rejuvenate otherwise failing functions. They do this by binding to cells and telling specific cells what they should be doing.

Peptides can promote homeostasis throughout the body by acting as messengers and deliverers of materials. Since there are many types of peptides, each one has a different function when it comes to peptide therapy.

What is the best therapy for hair loss?

Depending on the type of hair loss, therapy will vary. In the case of trichotillomania, for example, psychiatric therapy will need to be carried out to help stop the compulsive behavior. In the event that the hair loss is occurring due to side effects from certain medications, depending on the medication and the disease it is treating, a doctor may recommended stopping or slowing dosage, or alternating to a different medication.

Other forms of hair loss treatment include:

Prescription and OTC drugs

Medications such as Rogaine can be purchased over the counter and can help people restore hair growth. Finasteride is another prescription hair loss treatment that comes in the form of a pill.

Hair transplants

There are two types of hair transplants: follicular transplantation, which involves the removal and replacement of hair follicles to bald spots, and follicular extraction, which involves the same process but with hair follicles from a different area of the scalp.

Laser treatments

Laser treatments aim to reduce inflammation of hair follicles that could lead to hair loss.

Lifestyle changes

Quitting smoking, getting regular scalp massages, eating a balanced diet, avoiding disease, and reducing stress can all help with hair loss.

Alternative remedies

Many people opt for oils, biotin supplements, and other naturopathic treatment options when battling hair loss.

The above treatments tend to be the most popular, but the cause of hair loss will have to be taken into account in order for a person is to choose the right therapy for them.

Peptides for hair loss

Since peptides can work for a myriad of different health conditions, it’s no wonder that there is a specific one just for hair loss. Copper peptides for hair growth have been used by many people suffering from this condition. They work by blocking DHT, a substance that leads to the damaging of hair follicles.

Copper peptides have also been shown to increase the size of hair follicles, leading to thicker hair growth following therapy. Because copper peptides can also stimulate blood flow to the scalp, they have been shown to correct the aging-related lack of blood flow that occurs as people get older (when the blood flow to the scalp diminishes, it leads to hair loss).

Copper peptides have also been proven to help with the growth cycle of hair. The growth cycle includes three phases, one of which involves new hair growth. The peptide therapy for hair loss manages to extend the growth phase of the hair cycle, leading to more hair growth over time.

Hair loss is an unpleasant condition to deal with, but with peptide therapy, it can be a thing of the past.

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Health is the most important thing a person can have, but in today’s convenience-based world, it can also be one of the easiest things to take for granted. Modern society has the majority of the American population moving less due to sedentary work, eating more processed foods that lead to inflammation and chronic disease, and dealing with unprecedented levels of stress and mental health issues.

Traditional forms of medicine tackle these issues with treatments after the fact. Traditional medicine treats rather than prevents, and often hopes for the best in cases of serious illness. But lifestyle medicine is a different form of health care altogether, and its big goal is to prevent health problems entirely before they come to fruition.

What is lifestyle medicine?

Lifestyle medicine is a form of health care that operates under the umbrella of a few different processes. The first part of lifestyle medicine revolves around diet. The diet of the typical American citizen is full of processed foods that offer little to no nutritional value, and often contains high levels of sugar, carbs, and salt. Lifestyle medicine aims to change this into a wholefood, plant-predominant diet so that the body is being fueled with nothing but what it needs.

Lifestyle medicine also has a heavy focus on regular exercise routines that ensure people are moving as much as they should be. Another big focus area is sleep and stress. Since busy schedules and high-stress lives are commonplace for Americans, lifestyle medicine encourages stress management and restorative sleep as a key component in the way people take care of themselves.

Finally, lifestyle medicine also aims to have people establish positive social connections within their community while avoiding harmful substances.

How does lifestyle medicine differ from traditional medicine?

As mentioned, traditional medicine does not usually take a proactive approach to one’s health. Certain measures that could be considered traditional do act as preventative measures, such as cancer screenings and the encouragement of healthy lifestyle, but they tend to fall on the second tier of health care.

Lifestyle medicine is the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Its entire goal is to create a healthy population not through advancement of medications or other technologies that can help treat disease, but through the elimination, reversal, or prevention of disease altogether. Since many chronic diseases can be prevented, lifestyle medicine aims to arm the population with the knowledge they need to avoid getting sick in the first place.

What are the pillars of lifestyle medicine?

There are 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine, all of which play a specific role in the prevention of disease and in the attempt to sustain healthy living well into old age. They are:

1. Healthy eating

By choosing a diet that is full of nutrients the body needs to function at its best, a person can avoid certain health conditions that can be brought on by nutritional imbalances.

2. Increased physical activity

Many jobs and lifestyles involve people sitting at their desk or on the couch for long hours. This level of sedentary living is not healthy for any individual. If a person is not exercising adequately, it can lead to many health issues.

3. Strategies to manage stress

Stress can put a huge burden on bodily processes and lead to a wide variety of different health conditions, such as cognitive disfunction and psychiatric disorders. Stress management is a key part of lifestyle medicine because dealing with stress properly can help lower the risk for these conditions.

4. Improvement of sleep

The brain needs to sleep to help the brain process the events of the day and the body repair itself. When a person doesn’t get adequate sleep, it can lead to a decline in overall levels of wellness, including cardiovascular health and immune function. Lifestyle medicine aims to improve sleep to avoid these complications.

5. Avoidance of risky substances

As much as lifestyle medicine is about giving your body what it needs, it is also about avoiding what it doesn’t need. Things such as alcohol and drug use should be avoided to help prevent disease in the future.  

6. Formation of good relationships

People need others to help them get through life, and research has shown that healthy relationships have a direct impact on overall levels of wellness.

When used in conjunction with one another, these six pillars of lifestyle medicine can lead to optimal health and a lowered risk for developing chronic health issues in the future.

What is a lifestyle medicine doctor?

Any medically licensed doctor can practice lifestyle medicine, but that doesn’t mean all of them are properly equipped to do so. A true lifestyle medicine doctor is well versed in the areas of health coaching and nutrition, and takes the time to understand a patient’s personal situation in order to address all the things that may be contributing to the onset of chronic disease.

Studies suggest that five out of the seven major causes of death in the United States can be attributed to lifestyle-related diseases. Lifestyle medicine doctors are there to help lower those statistics through the use of different techniques and coaching practices, as well as collaboration with other health care professionals and their patients.

What are the benefits of lifestyle medicine?

Lifestyle medicine holds many benefits, the most obvious being a better level of overall and optimal health. Taking care of oneself using the six pillars of lifestyle medicine can lead to an increased lifespan and a better quality of life.

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As soon as life begins, the body begins the aging process. It’s a natural human process that everyone experiences. As people age, biological, psychological, and physiological changes occur. Some of these changes aren’t health risks, but others contribute to age-related health disorders.

It isn’t until adulthood that the aging process begins to lead to the deterioration of many organs, such as the brain. Research on exactly when the decline of cognitive function begins as in relation to aging is mixed, with some studies suggesting it begins as early as 27 while others say somewhere around 45 is more accurate. This is just one measurement of aging, as the process occurs within all cells, organs, and bodily systems.

Longevity isn’t part of the aging process, but rather the result of how quickly it occurs on a person-by-person basis. Some people age more slowly than others in many regards, while others aren’t as lucky. Longevity isn’t only dependent on the natural aging process, but also on other factors including genetics, environment, and lifestyle.

Longevity genes and aging

Researchers across the globe have been working tirelessly to find the secret to aging so that they might slow or even stop the process altogether. As it turns out, there is one specific gene that could lead to new discoveries in the anti-aging department. The gene in question is called SIRT6. Its role within the body is to assist in DNA repair through the organization and recruitment of both enzymes and proteins.

The gene itself has a range of potencies. Those with a stronger SIRT6 will live longer, while the opposite is true for those with a weaker version of the same gene. For example, mice have far less potency in their longevity gene than humans, whereas a bowhead whale is thought to have an even stronger SIRT6 than humans because of its impressive lifespan.

Age-related chronic diseases can also be a huge issue during the natural aging cycle, as they severely affect quality of life. The simple act of aging leads to heightened risk for developing chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. Since SIRT6 plays a role in DNA repair, some studies have found that the levels and potency of SIRT6 could be a contributing factor to neurodegenerative age-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Longevity: genetics vs. lifestyle

Genetics play a major role in the aging process, as well as the development of chronic diseases that could lead to increased risk of developing age-related conditions. But lifestyle is also a vital component when understanding how aging works and why not everyone ages at the same succession. 

Things such as the food a person eats, how well and often they exercise, and their avoidance of unhealthy behaviors such as drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes will all influence the aging process. All these factors are vital when it comes to biological age (how old your body is in the aging process) over chronological age (how many years you have been alive).

Both genetics and lifestyle have an effect on how a person ages, but research has shown that the role of lifestyle is much bigger than genetics. Studies using twins have found that genetics is likely only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to aging, and that although the SIRT6 gene plays a vital role in the aging process, lifestyle factors are the big thing to watch for when keeping the gene functioning at its best and curbing the aging process for as long as possible.

Can NAD+ reverse aging?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is found in all cells within the body and is a cofactor in metabolism function. It also contributes to the way the body regulates cellular function by acting as an assistant for proteins. Studies have shown that when levels of NAD+ are depleted, the risk of developing an age-related disease is greatly heightened.

Other studies have begun to research whether the effects of NAD+ could be even greater, in the sense that elevated levels of NAD+ could actually slow the aging process down. More research is needed in this department; studies have only found NAD+ to be effective in rodent trials, and only small-scale human trials have been done, which do not provide sufficient evidence to support that it can slow the aging process.

Synapsins and aging

Neurotransmitters are the messengers that allow the body to communicate on a cellular level. They are chemicals that are released and sent to synapses, the areas where nerve cells connect to receive messages from one another. Synapsins are proteins that help to regulate this process of communication. Aging can have a negative effect on this process, thus leading to synaptic dysfunction.

When neurotransmissions aren’t functioning as they should, problems can arise that lead to lowered cognitive function. This directly affects the aging process, because cognitive decline is a symptom of many age-related diseases.

Is it possible to prolong life?

Considering lifestyle factors and the longevity gene, it is plausible to prolong life with healthy living practices and supplementation. Beyond the natural lifespan of humans, though, it’s still up for debate whether or not NAD+ or the addition of synapsin can lead to more years of life. They can, however, improve quality of life and help to decrease the risk of developing age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

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A new era of health care may be upon us, and that means that the old traditional ways of chemical medications and treatments could become secondary acts on the road to optimal health. Healthy eating and lifestyles are on the rise, especially in younger generations, because many Americans have realized that fast food and sedentary living aren’t working in their favor.

Studies have shown that just the simple act of making better choices when it comes to your health can extend life expectancy by as much as 14 years. This fact alone has led to the more widespread adoption of the practices involved in what are called “lifestyle medicines”.

What are lifestyle medicines?

Lifestyle medicines are categorized as ways of living that can dramatically improve one’s overall level of health, adding years to their life and improving their quality of life.

To actively engage in lifestyle medicines, a person has to practice specific habits. They include:

• Exercising regularly to promote physical and mental fitness.
• Making good food choices and eating a diet rich in wholefoods, vitamins, and minerals.
• Reaching and sustaining a healthy body weight.
• The complete avoidance of smoking.
• Limiting alcohol consumption to no more than one drink per day.
• Avoiding or limiting overall stress.
• Getting adequate and regular sleep.
• Participating in relationships that are good for one’s mental and physical health.

Lifestyle medicines operate under the level of preventive medical care. The above factors should be adhered to at all times to help keep balance within the body, ultimately avoiding unnecessary disease and health issues later in life.

This type of daily routine is also a form of biohacking, which is a hot-button topic when it comes to lifestyle medicines. The concept is designed to give the power back to you when handling and controlling your health. It does so by allowing you to gain the health knowledge you need to essentially “hack” your system via trial and error with nutrition, exercise, and other health regimes.

How do lifestyle medicines work?

“Lifestyle medicine” may sound like a new-age term, but there is plenty of evidence to support its popularity in recent years. For example, in terms of the diet portion of this type of care, research has found a direct link between what we eat and how likely we are to develop chronic disease later in life. Some studies have even suggested that certain foods can eliminate or cure certain health ailments altogether, especially when it comes to mental health.

Mental health isn’t the only thing affected by lifestyle medicine, though. Weight loss, autoimmune disorders, fitness levels, sexual performance, cardiovascular health, and the onset of new chronic diseases can all be greatly impacted by different levels of healthy living. The process behind lifestyle medicine is simple: if you take care of your body before you become ill, it will take care of you.

Types of lifestyle medicines used today

Different lifestyle therapies can help enhance one’s overall health. For example, nutrition involves the consumption of foods that fuel the body with vitamins and minerals. However, sometimes nutrition is inadequate. This is where supplementation comes in. Many supplements offer to help balance out deficiencies that could lead to chronic disease if left unchecked.

Intravenous therapy is also used to help balance out deficiencies or increase the body’s overall level of hydration. It is used to efficiently get what the body needs directly to the source, as opposed to oral applications that could take longer and have to go through the digestion process, essentially limiting their absorption.

What is peptide therapy?

Peptide therapy is a broad term used to describe the number of therapies involved in different peptide usage. The body creates peptides naturally, and the small chain amino acids have different jobs. Some slow aging, while others can help increase muscle mass.

Research suggests that people undergoing peptide therapy receive supplementation of a lack of natural peptides, thus balancing out hormone levels within the body. The most notable form of peptide used in therapy is insulin.

Does peptide therapy work?

Peptides have been used since the early 1900s as a health remedy, and research has shown that they have the ability to work similarly to natural pathways.

Certain peptides that have been included in the treatment of various diseases include:

• Insulin to treat diabetes.
• Adrenocorticotropic hormone for seizure control.
• Calcitonin to treat osteoporosis.
• Oxytocin (synthetic) to manage pain.
• Vasopressin (synthetic) to treat dehydration caused by loss of water through urination.
• Octreotide (synthetic version of somatostatin) to help treat cancer.
• Leuprorelin (synthetic version of gonadorelin) to help treat prostate cancer.

These peptide therapies have been known to work in correlation with other forms of treatment in the past, or on their own depending on the condition.

What does the future of lifestyle medicines hold?

Lifestyle medicine continues to evolve as more and more people look to develop healthy habits as opposed to, or in addition to, receiving better treatment. Research has been hyper-focused on identifying different disease markers and risks that could be associated with the onset of new and chronic conditions.

Specific areas of study and interest in the future of lifestyle medicines include:

• Diet.
• Physical activity levels.
• Behaviors.
• Body weight.
• Adhering to treatment plans.
• Stress management.
• Coping mechanisms.
• Mind-body correlation and exercises.
• Substance abuse (including tobacco).

Along with medical advancement and new knowledge in the area, lifestyle medicine could eventually become a cornerstone in health care. With over 63% of world deaths being attributed to avoidable diseases, the time for lifestyle medicines is now.

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