JJ Virgin explains how poor sleep tanks your metabolism by lowering energy expenditure and raising insulin resistance and cortisol. Dr. Andy Galpin estimates inadequate sleep can reduce your resting metabolic rate by 5 to 20 percent. Virgin shares her sleep routine and supplement formula to help you fall and stay asleep.
Sleep. Seriously, this is a game changer for your metabolism and your overall metabolic health. Poor sleep is going to impact both your total daily energy expenditure and your resting metabolic rate because it messes up your metabolic processes and your hormone regulation. Now, there is a little positive when you don't sleep well. Like if you, if you had less sleep, you actually have a little bit more movement throughout the day because you were up a little longer. But honestly, the, this is offset by the fact that you are probably moving less because you're more tired. You're you're not really working out. You're hungrier, so you're eating more. And we know that chronic sleep deprivation lowers your resting metabolic rate over time because it makes you better at storing fat. It makes you more insulin resistant. It makes it harder for you to burn fat for fuel. And you've got elevated cortisol, which can make you store even more belly fat, makes it harder for you to build muscle. And of course, who wants to work out hard or move more when you didn't sleep well? My favorite exercise physiologist, Dr. Andy Galpin, theorizes that poor sleep could trash your resting metabolic rate by anywhere from 5 to 20%. I mean, that's huge. If you're in perimenopause or under stress or both, hey, what's going on? Your sleep is probably suffering and you want to check in with your menopause doc about this because the first hormone that tends to go down during menopause is progesterone and that can massively impact your sleep. So adding a little progesterone during perimenopause at night can be amazing. Amazing for, for you and getting back to that restful sleep. Think about this, because progesterone truly is the first hormone most people start to notice declining, most women during menopause. So you have that going down. You also during menopause have cortisol going up. So those are those, the double whammy for sleep. Now I'm one of those people who tends to have my brain light up at 2 AM with, oh, I need to get up and write that down, right? Or I just have trouble shutting my brain off at night. And so I am relentless about my sleep routine. I have my power down hour about the hour before bed. I get my red lights going on. I have light bulbs in my bedroom for my red lights that I flip over on, on my phone. It's called a Philips Hue. Amazing. Cool the room down to 67 degrees and I just get it really nice and dark and quiet. And if I'm traveling, I always travel with an eye mask and earphones so that I can plug out any sounds. And every night I take Sleep Candy, which is my theanine, melatonin, 5-HTP, and inositol B6 wonder formula to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. And the big thing here I want you to understand is sleep's gotta be a non-negotiable here.
