The Hidden Reasons You Wake Up Tired Every Day

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast.

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Not a morning person. If you're still waking up tired even after a full eight hours in bed, listen up to hear the things that could be interfering with your ability to have good quality sleep. You want to stay up to date with evidence based tips for your health simplified into actionable steps. Make sure to subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so you never miss an episode. Now, number one, you're not compatible with your coffee. Huh? So coffee has some amazing health benefits. However, it can also impact your sleep if you're drinking it later than you should. And this varies on whether you're a fast or slow caffeine metabolizer. So how do you know which one you are? So you can find this out by taking a genetic test like 23andMe. But you'll likely know if you're a slow metabolizer if you're feeling jittery or wired long after you've finished your last cup. Now, before we get into that, let me explain how caffeine impacts exercise energy and prevents drowsiness, which can be awesome at the right times, but really bad at the wrong times. So we have a compound in our body called adenosine. It can act as a neurotransmitter, helping to regulate nerve signal transmission, dilate blood vessels, and promote restful sleep. Caffeine blocks adenosine by attaching to the same receptors that adenosine would attach to. Now, this is great in the morning because elevated adenosine levels make you feel tired and drowsy. But it isn't great at night when you want those adenosine levels high to help you fall asleep. Now, you may be thinking, but I only drink coffee in the morning, so I'm good. And while it's true that caffeine has hits peak levels within 30 to 60 minutes after consuming it, it's also true that it has a half life of three to seven hours. I mean, it can take 10 to 12 hours for it to leave your body. How quickly this happens depends. You are again a fast or slow metabolizer. Fast caffeine metabolizers take between four to six hours to lower caffeine levels by half. And that's the half life of caffeine, right? Slow caffeine metabolizers take between 8 to 10 hours to drop caffeine levels by half. Those that don't have either of that, they're about four to eight hours to drop caffeine levels by half. If you're not a faster, you're not slow. So you can See that if you're a slow caffeine metabolizer, you gotta be super mindful about when you drink your coffee. And also make sure that other things with caffeine aren't getting into your diet later in the day, like chocolate. I want to make sure that you don't do a double whammy and have your coffee with a big side of sugar. That can just amplify the fatigue issues by wreaking havoc on your blood sugar stability. All right, next one. You're eating too late at night, so digestion disrupts sleep. Quality sleep is for rest and repair processes. Digestive system. The digestive system at night is going to slow down during sleep so that you can rest and repair. Right? This is part of when melatonin comes out but starts to shut the pancreas down. You're going to use your stored glucose from your day's meals to fuel that process. Now, if you eat too late at night, you haven't given your body enough time to fully digest your meal before bed. And the glucose is still in your blood rather than being stored in your cells. So the rest and repair is not going to happen as effectively as you want it to be. When you eat and digest carbohydrates and, to a lesser degree, protein, it turns into blood glucose, right? It turns into sugar in the bloodstream. Then your pancreas secretes insulin to move that glucose into your cells. The problem is insulin poses melatonin. Melatonin is the sleep hormone that comes up at night that helps you get good quality sleep. Right? Melatonin lowers insulin secretion at night. So that means that if you're eating carbs, a lot of carbs at night, you're left with higher levels of glucose in the blood. Now, if you've eaten too late, which is no good for sleep, you're really going to have trouble there. And you'll see it in the morning. You'll have this elevated blood sugar in the morning as well as a poor night's sleep. There was a 2014 study in current obesity reports, and what it showed was that nighttime eating impaired the circadian rhythm, increased body weight, and stalled weight loss. And what they found is that nighttime eaters skipped breakfasts tend to eat higher caloric intake from snacks. Also, what you're eating matters. And people tend to snack on higher carb stuff at night. Like other hormones, insulin has its own circadian rhythm. It should be highest during the day and lowest at night. Ideally, insulin's decreasing at night, melatonin's increasing, and melatonin's basically helping put the pancreas to sleep. But again, if you're eating foods late at night that are increasing insulin levels, now we got a problem, right? Insulin becomes disregulated, melatonin becomes dysregulated, and you're putting yourself at risk for type 2 diabetes. I like to eat about. I like to be done eating by seven at the latest, but six, even better. But I try every night to be done eating by 7, go to bed and fall asleep around 10. Well, sometimes things just get out of control. And I remember, I don't remember how it happened. We were eating dinner at 8:30, 9:00 clock at night. And I remember getting up the next morning. I knew I'd had a crappy night's sleep, you know, but I get up at the next morning and my aura ring on my phone app says, looks.

Like you ate late last night.

I'm like, what are you spying on me? How did you know? Literally because of what it does, like my fasting blood sugar. I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor. It was elevated, my sleep was impacted. So this makes a big difference. Next one as you just don't sleep long enough. Now here's the thing. We need seven to nine hours of quality uninterrupted sleep. So that means that you have to make enough time to be able to get that sleep. Because here's the thing. Let's say you say I want eight hours of quality sleep. So I'm going to go to bed at 10 and get up at 6. But the thing is you don't like, slide into bed and go crash, right? And then, boop, wake up at six. So you're going to take a little time to fall asleep. So you have to account for that part there, right? So the first thing that we want to do is we want to kind of reverse engineer that and an hour or more before bed, turn off the electronics. And this is super duper important because that blue light, super stimulating and will keep you up. Take the blue lights down. In fact, on your laptop, on your phone, put that nighttime setting on so the lights will shift on those. But ideally you're not using them. You're wearing the blue blocker glasses. You can even put red lights in your bedroom light looks very romantic too. You're dimming all the lights. We are now turning the air down. Oh my gosh, I hate this. But where you really want to sleep, somewhere in the 65 to 68 degrees. So make the air cooler, do a hot bath, do a sauna. Chamomile tea can be a great thing here too. Or doing a little evening meditation. We've got a great Dr. Joe evening meditation that will use something that's going to help start to give you that regular routine that your body goes, oh, I know what we're doing now. We are preparing for sleep. Make sure you're avoiding those things that really mess up sleep, right? Eating too late, stimulating things like, you know, bright lights, lots of noise, something stressful like reading emails at night that never. You're never reading that email at night that when you won the lottery. No, you're reading the problem ones that you can't do anything about till the next day except lose sleepover. Alcohol, of course, as we know, helps you fall asleep and then bam, wakes you up between 2 and 3 because of the hypo. Hypoglycemic impact. Getting a really good meal with some carbs in it three to four hours before bed, but not eating right before bed. You want to make sure that you are setting up yourself for success. You've got things dimming down because your body's then going to produce that melatonin in response to it. And really, when we look at really working your circadian rhythm, melatonin is key for regulating the timing of your Circadian rhythm, your 24 hour internal clock and getting you ready for sleep. The other thing you want to make sure of too here is that you've got a consistent sleep schedule so that you're going to sleep around the same time each day, but more importantly, you're waking up around the same time each day. So again, think about things that you can do to help your body wind down, to tell your body, hey, it's time to go to sleep. And for me, my night routine again is making sure we try to do a sauna. So I do a sauna or a hot bath, because your body then after that's going to cool you down. And we have a weighted blanket on our bed, we've taken the lights down, we take our sleep candy and magnesium body calm every single night too. So I'm doing all of these things to start to take my body down so that I don't get my circadian rhythm out of whack. Because one of the big things that can mess you up is getting your circadian rhythm out of whack. Now there's also nutrients that can help. And I mentioned in my routine, I take magnesium. Magnesium's really important for supporting energy production. Like there's 300, 400 different processes that magnesium does. But the big thing is deficiencies can cause fatigue, but not in a good way. It's that tired and wired thing. So magnesium can be really great at night. It's really calming. And I find most people are deficient in magnesium. So I would try like two of my magnesium body calm. Another thing that's great is theanine, which mimics gaba. It helps promote GABA release. And GABA is the calming neurotransmitter that helps you fall asleep faster. And of course melatonin. Melatonin is going to help you get into a good circadian rhythm. It's a great hormone that that goes down as we age. That's good for anti aging as well. And then inositol, which is a B vitamin derivative that can promote calm, help with sleep, help with reducing anxiety. These are all in my sleep candy. That's one that I take every night as well. Now these are all the things that can happen that can disrupt your sleep. And I talked a little bit about some of my favorite things that you can do for sleep hygiene. But I have more than that because there's more things that poor sleep disrupts. So we really, really want to make sure that we fix this. So you want to watch my video on how to sleep better next and you're going to learn how sleep could be the missing link to losing weight and feeling better. And the ideal amount of weight you really need to be able to burn fat. Why sleep consistency is super important, why exercise can help here, but the timing matters and a simple hack to occur before bed hunger pangs. And much more than that. Because when you fix your sleep, you're going to be able to lose the fat, stop the weight, regain and be a great fat burner. And who doesn't want that? So be sure to check out the next video. For more info on this and other other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being with me this week.

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