The Hidden Health Costs of Poor Sleep: Hormones, Weight and Brain Health

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones.

Welcome to the Balanced Body Health and Wellness Podcast. I'm Sherri Griggs with Balanced Body Health and Wellness, and we have Rupina Mir with me again today with Zen Nutrition. As promised, we will be talking about sleep. So this week we'll talk about all the horrible things, and there are a lot of them, that can happen if you don't get enough sleep. And next week we'll talk about what you can do about that, how you can fix that, how you can circumvent, right, all those horrible things. Yeah, for sure. And how to sleep well. So I want to start out with this. So Rapina and I were talking before we got started, and I had read a sleep book, and I didn't think it was that many years ago. Of course, I couldn't find it, and I don't remember who wrote it, but I remember it was a really good book. And all of the things I had learned about dementia and all these things that can happen if you don't get enough sleep. And this book, the recommendation at the time was to go to bed— if we were to do things right for our sleep, was to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up when our body was ready to wake up because then we would have what our body needed for sleep. And Rupina said, no, that is not how you do it. What did you tell me?

Yeah. So, I mean, from what I have read, obviously, the sleep hygiene, we will get into that more next week when we talk about the solutions. But we just kind of, is to maintain that consistent sleep and rise time. But they are like, if you cannot do both, then actually, Actually, the waking up time is more important because if you continue going to bed late and then if you're flexible and you can wake up a little bit later, that totally down the road messes up that HPA axis, your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal, even more. So if you have to choose, then I'd say maintain a consistent wake time.

I do both.

Do both.

Things have changed.

Yes.

As always.

As always. I mean, it's just such an evolving— it's such an evolving field. But I think if for those of you who think that you're sleeping 6 hours and you feel fine, and I put that in quotes, let me tell you that your nervous system is keeping score. And like the IRS, is going to send you a ginormous bill that you can't afford to pay.

Right.

So to unpack that a little bit more, as somebody who's a specialist in nervous system regulation and metabolic and women's health, what happens— let me tell you what that bill looks like, right? So when you sleep poorly, your nervous system goes into threat mode, sympathetic overdrive. And especially for peri- and menopausal women, Your cortisol is like a sponge. It soaks up your already waning progesterone, the calming hormone, and you get— go into fat storage mode. You, you could be estrogen dominant because, I mean, most people do get a little estrogen dominant. So you feel anxious, you're locked down in fat storage, and your body is just blaring.

Right. I've got— in fact, I told a patient of mine, you will not lose weight if you don't wear your CPAP. Exactly how important sleep is.

Exactly.

Her own husband, a pulmonologist sleep specialist, couldn't get her to wear it. And, um, she wanted to feel better and feel good and be able to go and walk on her trip and not be short of breath. And I said, you will never get to that goal if you don't wear your CPAP.

CPAP.

And she stopped in, she was in yesterday, and she said, I want you to know I've been doing a pretty good job of wearing it. I have to put it on right at a certain time.

Yes.

I know, it was wonderful. And, and that's, you know, I just told her the truth. But sometimes it's, as you're sitting here talking about the things and the stress and the balance, you know, because one of those things is if you don't get a good night's sleep, the next day your cortisol is elevated.

Exactly.

Then you don't sleep as good the next night. And now you have all those things you're talking about, right? You've messed up the circadian rhythm. We're pulling down the progesterone, the estrogen dominance, the weight, the fat. It's just a vicious cycle.

Absolutely. And also, it affects your executive decision-making, right? So if you've had a poor night of sleep, how many of you How many of our listeners can relate to that? Like, the next day you go not just for the wrong foods, but the wrong people, or you start turning on the people you love and are super crabby, right?

Oh, definitely.

Yeah. UC Berkeley did a study by Dr. Matthew Walker published in Nature, and it found that sleep deprivation shuts down your prefrontal cortex. cortex, which is your brain's logical and mature decision maker. And it amps up that primitive amygdala, which is known as the emotional panic button, by 60%. 60%. So you can see, as a result, the next day you crave processed foods. You may go for that donut or muffin, which you normally don't. And you're like, why the heck am I doing this? Is it willpower? No, it's not willpower. It's biology.

Right. And I've always said, uh-oh, I'm tired. I'm craving sugar because I'm tired and I want energy. And so innately, my body knows, my cells know sugar is energy.

Yep.

And I don't know if there's any science behind that. I just, I've just always known that. Right. But that's—

yeah, I mean, glucose, glucose is the fuel that Right. Yeah, absolutely. But it depends on which form, right? Because you're going to crash and burn with that donut or muffin or what have you, as opposed to something else. So, I mean, people know that. So it's not a willpower thing, right? It's not wilted willpower. It's biology. And so you've got to figure out what is actually causing you to make those poor choices versus beating yourself up like, oh my God.

Right.

Yeah, like, I was so, I was so mean to my kids or my hubs.

Well, because what if you wonder how you're sleeping? There is— so insomnia does have an index, and it's called the Insomnia Severity Index.

Oh, is that on the, the, the tracking, like the Oura or the—

Nope, nope. This is something anybody can find online.

Nice.

And you can, you can score, answer the questions, and it will tell you by scoring. For instance, some of the questions are, how difficult is it to fall asleep? Very severe is 4, none is 0. There's mild, moderate, severe. Staying asleep, waking up too early, how satisfied, you know, to what extent do you consider your sleep problem to interfere with your daily functioning? Right. You know, is it daytime fatigue, inability to function at work because you can't think, you can't make decisions, concentration, memory, mood? So you would score that, and then 0 to 7 would say you didn't— you don't have any clinically significant insomnia. It's a normal variation. 8 to 14, subthreshold, early dysfunction.

Okay.

15 to 21, moderate insomnia, clear clinical issue. And 22 to 28, severe, significant impairment. So rather than— I mean, so there is a scientific way that you yourself—

Right.

Can look at how bad am I really? And you have to be honest. How do I feel? Not everybody has the ability to be that self-aware.

Yeah. Yeah.

But if they're looking at that, that could help them get to that direction.

Because I think that's such a great point because awareness is the door opener, right? Most people aren't even aware, which is why I led with if most people are sleeping 6 hours and saying, I feel fine, because they've normalized fine. What is fine? Maybe they just feel that, you know, feeling crabby and feeling tired And fatigue and crashing, all of that is normal. So, they're like, oh, I feel fine.

Yeah.

So, till you are aware that you have an issue, then that's when you can be seeking solutions. But if you're not even aware— so, I think that's a great thing. The other thing I wanted to point out, because I've always struggled with sleep my entire life because I'm a night owl, I just do well and my juices flow and I write at night and all of that. And so, it's been very challenging for me to follow that cookie cutter, go to bed at 10:00 PM and rise at 6:00 AM because that's just never worked for me. And I've also been very resistant to get the sleep tracking because I know my personality and then I'll become very obsessive about the score, like how did I do and all of that, which is only going to detract, take me further away from my sleep goal. I don't know how many of our listeners can resonate with that, right? But so, I think that, you know, you have to even like something like heart rate variability. I'm in a big meditation group. Many of us wear that and we measure our heart coherence. And others say, hey, while this is great, it's actually putting me more in incoherence because I'm constantly running the thing and seeing, am I coherent? Am I not? I'm stressing out about whether I'm being coherent or not. So there is a lot to be said about these apps. They can be—

Yeah.

a fantastic adjunct tool to assess where you are in that continuum of getting good sleep or poor sleep and having the awareness, but then not having that obsessive tendency to want to— I mean, obviously, you want to maximize your sleep score, but not getting so obsessed about it that it actually detracts from your goal. Does that make sense?

It makes absolute sense. And that, that goes with anything and everything, right? Yeah. Because you can really become obsessed. And I, I have a patient like that too that is obsessed down to the gnat's rear end about the amount of percentage of fat and—

Exactly.

Just everything is just so— and I think, how do you have time to live? Or do you just go off of all of this information that you can collect?

Mm-hmm.

And, and run your life off of it. Now, um, you know, we talk about in the hormone specialty world, you treat the patient, not the paper. So—

Absolutely.

You treat the numbers, you treat the patient. And so when you're living your life, think about what you just said. Are you looking at these numbers? Are you obsessing about this? And how did I sleep? And When you could really be sabotaging yourself.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more on that.

Right. And talking about some of the things with what can happen when you don't get enough sleep, you can almost go back to remember last week when we talked about construction and construction of bone. That's one of the things that happens when you're sleeping. Your brain is washed, is cleansed, your telomeres are protected, your hormones are reset, and your immune system is trained, and cells are repaired. That's what happens when you sleep. The one thing, obviously, now maybe my book is old, but they talked about— the talk I was at from Standard Process last month, Mentioned anything under 7 hours or over 9 hours.

Mm-hmm.

Puts you at risk for dementia, puts you at risk for diabetes. Think about washing the brain, aging telomeres. The telomeres, the longer they are, the longer you live. Um, think about Hormones. And we have 200 hormones plus in our body. So that's a lot to heal.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And dementia is the brain. Um, there's— what was some of that? There's dementia, diabetes. What are some of the other ones if you don't get enough sleep that you're prone to? Obviously the weight.

Yeah, the insulin resistance. I think that that's such a huge thing. Like, if you think that you're cutting sleep by just an hour or 2, it's no big deal. Many of us think that, right?

Right.

But again, in midlife, that gets exacerbated. So Columbia University published this in Diabetes Care with women aged from 20 all the way up to 74. Restrained their sleep by just 90 minutes every night for 6 weeks.

Okay.

And this minor sleep loss caused insulin resistance to spike by a massive 20%. 20% jump in insulin resistance means that your cells are slammed shut and your body Is in fat storing, not fat burning mode. Fat storing.

And insulin is an inflammatory hormone.

Exactly. Exactly. And all the other cytokines.

So it's causing inflammation in your body.

Right. So think of it this way. Just 90 minutes of sleep deprivation means you're fast-tracking your path to prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Just 90 minutes. So it doesn't take a lot. This is what— We want to stress, like, sometimes people feel like, oh, it's just an hour here, 90 minutes there. No, it adds up. And the cumulative effect creates a lot of metabolic chaos.

And you can't just— if you sleep 6 hours tonight, you can't just decide to sleep 9 hours tomorrow to make up for what you lost.

Exactly. It doesn't work that way. Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't.

It takes days for your body To make up for what it lost.

Exactly. Yeah. And, I also like the point that you— because most people know that there's a sweet spot that— what was it, 7 hours they said, 7 to 8?

Between 7 to 9 hours.

7 to 9. That's the spot. 7 to 9. And, that's exactly— I think the sleep doctor talks about that. Now, anything over 9 can also be very damaging. So, who knew that? You think that, oh, well, I'll just I'll make it up. I'll be sleep deprived all week, and then I'll make it up on the weekend and wake up at noon. No, it doesn't quite work that way.

But I can sleep 10 hours easy. But I don't want to wake up at noon.

I can too. Right? I can too. I can totally do it. But it's not moving the metabolic lever as we think it is, right?

Yeah.

So I think that the reason that all of this helps is that the more we know and we can assign meaning to it, then And that impacts our behavior. So, when you feel like hitting that snooze button, now this will, you know, maybe this conversation will be floating around in your head and you might think twice about hitting that snooze button, right? Because now you've assigned more meaning to it.

Right. And to understand, so, so that risk, right, we have that, okay, I have some of those statistics that I told you I knew he had. That, that were just so amazing. Now, I want you to also remember, when we're talking sleep, we're talking solid sleep. So if your sleep is fragmented and you're waking up in the middle of the night, that's a problem because you're not getting the sleep you need. So, study 2018, verified by PubMed, one night of poor sleep measurably increases Beta amyloid accumulation in the human brain. Think amyloid plaques and Alzheimer's.

Dementia. Exactly. So that's— so how do they define fragmented sleep, Sherri? Because that's— I'm interested because I know that we normally— the non-REM is 90 minutes. We sleep in 90 minutes. We go into that slow wave and non-REM, REM. And then you come out of it and then you go back in. And some of us can go right into the next sleep cycle, and some of us don't. Like me, I stay a little bit longer. So, is that considered fragmented? Like, how do they define it?

Fragmented would be literally awake.

Okay.

So, if you're awake, if you're getting up to use the restroom, if you're—

Oh, gotcha.

A menopausal woman that doesn't have progesterone anymore, or even not even menopausal, perimenopausal, you are waking Many times women, and actually even men I'm finding, think that their bladder wakes them up, but that's not true.

Exactly.

Progesterone wakes them up, and then they realize they need to go to the bathroom. And I have started asking people that specific question. I didn't used to ask, I just knew, right? I just knew, you know, I'm certified in hormones, that this is, this is Probably what was happening. So now I ask them, are you sure your bladder's waking you up or do you wake up and realize you need to go to the bathroom? And 9 times out of 10, they'll tell me, you know, I've wondered that. I think I wake up and then I just realize I can go.

I might as well go. I think that's what the sleep doctor, he was asking a lot of his, and he said the worst thing, I think we're just sort of, if you feel like you're awake, then you're like, since I'm awake, I might as well go to the bathroom even though you don't have the urge to do so. But when you're erect, right, that completely changes your autonomic nervous system. Now you're in full sympathetic overdrive, right?

Right.

Not only are you erect, then you're walking to the bathroom, you're turning on the light, you're doing your thing, and you're walking back. Now you've ensured that you're in that sympathetic, so you're not going to flip into parasympathetic and sleep. So, most people, I think it's just a habit, like, oh, you know, I'm up, might as well use the restroom. But that's going to drive you further into that sleep debt.

Right. So, I'm going to talk about here some of the things that can go wrong, right? So, we talked about washing the brain. So, it was in 2012 that they found the glial-dependent waste clearance network. Through studies, and it operates primarily during sleep. So not only does it clean out the beta amyloid, but it also cleans out tau tangles.

Those tau proteins, yeah.

Markers for Alzheimer's. So our brain is 60% more active during sleep than during awake— our clearance, I'm sorry, our glymphatic clearance, 60% more active So there was a 2026 human study that they did, and sleep deprivation measurably impairs amyloid clearance. Okay, so we know this. This is all very, very current information. So this is where we talked about the accumulation. And then when you talk about the cognitive, chronic sleep disruption can actually accelerate the progression. From normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment. So let's say that you already have some impairment for whatever reason. Now you are pushing yourself quicker into what can be a permanent impairment, because as this amyloid burden builds up over time, we can't clear that stuff out once it's built up.

Right, right.

When you talked about dysregulation and what you eat and waking up in the morning, one of the— and hunger, sleep deprivation. So leptin is our hormone that helps us feel full, which is one of the hormones that the GLP-1 decimates. It is, it is, it is lowered, it is pushed down.

Mm-hmm.

And ghrelin, the hunger signal, is increased. So after 2 nights, only 2, of less than 6 hours of sleep, our hunger is pushed up 24%. And that's a lot.

That's a lot. Yeah.

I told this gal, you need to wear your CPAP or you will never lose weight.

Absolutely.

Cardiovascular disease. I've actually said this to my husband because he was somebody with 4 or 5 nights of sleep, so he felt fine. I guess cardiovascular disease. Now, it's hereditary, but at the same time, if you don't get enough sleep, you increase your risk of cardiovascular disease by 48%.

That's huge. And I think— huge. And I think that the whole thing, genetic and hereditary, can— we now know Dr. Bruce Lipton has written about it, that we know that Genes load the gun. It's the environment that pulls the trigger, right? That's correct.

We talk about this in autoimmunity. Just because you have the gene doesn't mean you have to have a disease.

Doesn't mean it will ever express. And what's the biggest part of the environment? Your food, your sleep, right? All of that. Those are the epigenetic switches, like Christmas tree lights, that turn the genes on and off.

Wow.

Yeah. So it really does. I mean, I think that sometimes Again, the more we can assign meaning to it, the more it changes our behavior.

Right. And that's why I wanted to talk about this because I was so shocked about when I found some of these things. And it made me think when I went to that talk, all this was updated. But they know that short sleep duration can be independently associated, meaning that's the only reason. Genetics, it's not anything else, to increased high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and stroke. So, no other reason except that you didn't get enough sleep.

Yeah, it's truly the secret sauce. And I'll end on this one last thing. I know we're almost out of time.

Yeah.

But if you guys think that you can just work out harder or eat less, to make up for that sleep deficit. That's not how it works.

No.

So, again, there was a study. Mayo Clinic put this study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, found that sleep loss led to a 9% increase in total abdominal fat with an 11% increase in visceral fat. That's the dangerous fat that wraps around your organs. That's the toxic fat. And research has found that this visceral fat increased even if the scale did not budge. So the mirror, the mirror shows you look the same, your clothes might even fit the same, but your organs are suffocating in fat.

My CPAP person has a 20, level 23 of visceral fat. It should be 10 or less.

Mm-hmm.

I can measure that. So it's so important because your organs are just being— you're right, they're being crushed. They can't work the way they should work. So if we've got you guys going, uh-oh, okay, I've done everything, or believe you've done everything to try to get better sleep, join us next week where we'll have all kinds of tips and tricks And things that anybody can do. There are so many things you can do. And one of them is not a sleeping pill. We will not be talking sleeping pills.

No, exactly. Because all the stuff that you mentioned, the glymphatics and all of that, none of those processes happen under medicated sleep. So, so it bypasses that. So, it is like if you think like, okay, I cannot sleep, I am just going to take an Ambien. You may be able to sleep, but you're not going through those biological processes that are giving you that insurance against dementia and cardiovascular disease and all of that.

So, you're right.

So, that's a huge point.

So, we'll give you things that you can use. Many of them will be free. They're just some lifestyle changes, right? Get that circadian rhythm back in order. So, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to reach me to learn more or any one-on-one to talk about sleep, either one of us can help you with that. I'm www.balancedbodymedical.com or 402-807— I just forgot my phone number. How much sleep did I get last night? Oh my gosh.

So, um— We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes.

There you go. Oh my God, that's so funny.

And for those of you struggling with weight, I have a belly fat cheat sheet, especially for menopausal women, that you can grab on my website at zen-trition.com. And of course, if you want to unlock your sleep code, you can also come in for a free consultation so we can figure out how to really amplify those biological processes. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll see you next week.

Bye.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherri, go ahead and look for the website balancedbodymedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherri at her office, you can find her at 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. Thank you.