I read an interesting article on Mercola.com recently called Do Cold Temperatures Improve Sleep? I occasionally struggle with the temperature in my bedroom, which, due to five—yes, five—windows and poor insulation, happens to be the coldest room in my apartment. One might assume that colder bedroom temperatures are, in fact, better for sleep, but that is not exactly true.
The optimal temperature range, says Mercola, is actually around 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep the room warmer than 75 or cooler than 54 degrees, and you will likely end up with a restless night’s sleep.
While you do want your core body temperature to cool down, what you don’t want are cold hands and feet. As Mercola points out, cold extremities may be a sign of poor blood flow—another contributing factor to sleeplessness. His recommendation? Socks or a hot water bottle.
Personally, once I started wearing socks to bed, I did find that I had better temperature regulation through my whole body and slept a bit better.
In his article, Mercola also discusses the effect of light on the quality of sleep. Having any light at all in the bedroom, whether from a clock radio, a nightlight, or coming in through a window, can greatly interfere with your sleep—to the extent of inhibiting the production of the hormone melatonin, which plays a vital role in the body’s functioning, including helping you sleep.
Some time ago I read a similar article on fertility awareness on the Weston Price website that discussed how having light in the bedroom at night could interfere with a woman’s cycle. The article suggested that controlling the amount of light in the room could help to regulate a woman’s cycle and so help her optimize her fertility.
Both articles recommend blocking out as much light as possible from the bedroom for improved sleep and health.
So, if you’re having trouble sleeping (or getting pregnant), try regulating your body temperature and the amount of light in your bedroom. And if you have a success story, let me know. I’d love to hear it!
I just read another great post from the HealthNOW Doctors on gluten sensitivity called Can You Be a “Little” Gluten Sensitive?.
In Dr. Vikki Petersen’s opinion, gluten sensitivity appears to be “an all or nothing proposition.” Moreover, she points out that just because you don’t have an immediate reaction to gluten does not mean you’re not sensitive to it. While symptoms of gluten intolerance may occur right after consuming gluten, they can also take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to develop. And because gluten intolerance can cause such a wide variety of symptoms, from the more obvious digestive disturbances to more subtle aftereffects such as brain fog, achiness, irritability or depression, people often don’t connect the two.
Petersen recommends that if you know you are gluten intolerant, either from lab tests or personal observation, you should stop eating gluten altogether. Just because you’re not experiencing immediate, obvious symptoms from gluten consumption does not mean you’re not harming yourself.
You can read the post in its entirety on The Gluten Doctors blog. Dr. Petersen is also co-author of the book The Gluten Effect.
I read an interesting article on Mercola.com today called The Critical Role of Wheat in Human Disease about another potential problem with wheat consumption. The danger in this case comes, not from gluten, but from lectin, which is found in all seeds of the grass family (rice, wheat, spelt, rye, etc.):
Lectin is a type of ‘wheat germ agglutinin’ (WGA) and glycoprotein. Through thousands of years of selectively breeding wheat for increasingly larger quantities of protein, the concentration of WGA lectin has increased proportionately.
WGA is largely responsible for many of wheat’s pervasive ill effects.
What’s more, WGA is found in highest concentrations in “whole wheat,” including its supposedly superior sprouted form.
What is unique about the WGA glycoprotein is that it can do direct damage to the majority of tissues in your body without requiring a specific set of genetic susceptibilities or immune-mediated articulations.
As Mercola says:
Lectin is a defense mechanism for the wheat plant, designed to ward of its natural enemies such as fungi and insects. Unfortunately, this protein is also very resistant to breakdown by living systems, and it easily accumulates in tissues where it interferes with normal biological processes and acts as an anti-nutrient.
Typically, sprouting, fermenting or digestion can help to negate some of the harmful effects of such anti-nutrients (as in the case of fermenting soy, which removes many of its anti-nutrient properties). However, lectins are resistant to these types of processes.
For this reason, lectins exist even in “healthy” sprouted breads and may be in their highest concentrations in whole-wheat varieties.
Mercola notes some of lectin’s dangerous qualities in his commentary, saying that lectin is, among other things:
- Pro-Inflammatory: WGA lectin stimulates the synthesis of pro-inflammatory chemical messangers, even at very small concentrations.
- Immunotoxic: WGA lectin may bind to and activate white blood cells.
- Neurotoxic: WGA lectin can pass through your blood-brain barrier and may attach to the protective coating on your nerves known as the myelin sheath. It is also capable of inhibiting nerve growth factor, which is important for the growth, maintenance, and survival of certain target neurons.
- Cytotoxic (Toxic to cells): WGA lectin may induce programmed cell death.
Mercola goes on to say that WGA lectin may even:
- Interfere with gene expression
- Disrupt endocrine function
- Adversely affect gastrointestinal function
- Share similarities with certain viruses
The article on Mercola’s site was sourced from an article on GreenMedInfo.com called Opening Pandora’s Bread Box: The Critical Role of Wheat Lectin in Human Disease.
You can read Mercola’s article in its entirety here.
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I just read a great article on gluten on the Huffington Post called Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You. The author, Mark Hyman, MD, (who wrote The UltraMind Solution and publishes The UltraWellness Blog) discusses gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, some surprising (and not-so-surprising) diseases that can be caused by eating gluten, testing for gluten sensitivity, elimination diets, and more. I highly recommend this article.
There are several good, short articles on gluten at The Gluten Doctors blog, including Is All Gluten Bad?, Fibromyalgia and its Connection to Gluten Sensitivity, and Gluten Sensitive and the Flu Season. Doctors Vikki Petersen and Richard Petersen of HealthNOW Medical Center in Sunnyvale, California are also authors of the book The Gluten Effect.
And for those of you that missed it (including me), check out this landmark study: The Mayo Clinic Study Finds Celiac Disease Four Times More Common than in 1950s.
To your good health!
