Yes, I shouldn’t say that, but I keep saying the same stuff. That’s what happens when you’re Asperger’s, you keep saying the same stuff. Sorry about that.
Now, let’s talk about sleep and talk about the gut function. I just read an interesting study in a psychiatric journal from December 2018. It was an amazing article, I’ll give you the link to it. And it was interesting, they found chronic fatigue syndrome patients, for example, had a very big lack of bifidobacteria in the gut. They found big population change of large groups of good bacteria went down and other groups of not so desirable were starting to come up. Candida albicans was quite a big elevation with the chronic fatigue syndrome patients as opposed to people who didn’t have the condition.
So the point I’m making here is the gut can really be altered by the type of condition the person’s got. But is it the chicken or the egg? I believe it’s… Well, I don’t know whether it’s the chicken or the egg, but another study here for example I’ll highlight. They did some research with people flying and they looked at jet lag. They looked at basically gut bacteria with jet lag and they found the Firmicutes, a large group of different types of species of bugs that live in our gut was elevated in people who were jet lagged and within 24 hours as the jet lag of course improved, that particular population of bug started to go down.
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So there is no doubt the gut changes under stress. It really does change under stress. And when the gut changes, it affects many aspects of particularly of hormonal control, our circadian rhythm gets very affected. So when our gut becomes skewed, okay, when things change in the gut, our hormone profile changes systemically, and that affects both our mood, our behavior, the way we think, our cognition, and of course our sleep gets affected.
People with really nice functioning digestive systems have got outstanding sleep patterns. Many people I know, many people I know I’ve seen in their clinic who’ve got poor sleep, have generally got poor health. So it keeps coming back to that gut function. I always come back to that. I’ve always come back to that for over 30 years. If you get that gut in great shape, the sleep will be good, the thinking will be good, the mood will be good. But is your bank account going to be good? I can’t really say that can I? That’s not going to improve with the gut function, but at least you’ll be better. You’ll think better, you’ll feel better, you’ll act better, your life will be better. And when all those things are better, well everything should improve, shouldn’t it when you think about it.
So if you’ve got poor sleep, ask yourself this question. Am I having excess stimulants like caffeine? Am I having alcohol, a depressant? Am I eating too much foods containing sugar or starches? Carby foods. Have I got gut problems, have I got bloating, gas, am I farting? Is there something wrong with something in here? And if that’s the case and you can affirmatively say yes there is, and you can also tell me that you’ve got sleep issues, well there’s no point pumping sleeping pills into you if you’ve got a gut problem, because they’re only going to exacerbate the gut problem, which is going to exacerbate the sleep, right? So people who stay on sleeping pills never really get off it and they’ve usually always got stuffed up sleeping patterns. They end up waking tired and zonked out and then they’ve got a gut problem to boot.
So sleeping pills are linked also with leaky gut. So you don’t really want to go in the direction of taking things. I’m not even a big fan of recommending melatonin or those supplements for sleep. If you’ve got a serious sleeping problem, get someone to test your gut to see what’s going on inside. Also, get checked for food allergies. That’s another one that could pop up. But if you get the gut in great shape, there’s a much bigger chance that your sleep’s going to be in great shape too. Thanks for tuning in.