Sleep to lose weight

It’s funny how everything that happens in our body is related to everything else that happens in the body. Many people who experience the problem of having a “slow metabolism”, which makes it hard for them to lose weight, also suffer from insomnia (difficulty sleeping). The reality is that sleep is vital for metabolism and health.

The human body is in a constant process of construction (new cells) and repairing the cells that have undergone some damage. Some of the cells that make up the body are dying every day while they are being replaced by new cells that are created every day.

When we sleep, the body repairs the cells that have undergone some damage. The reality is that the body never “sleeps” since it is always working on either repairing or creating something internally. We ourselves do “sleep” because we rest our minds and we rest from the vigilance and constant attention that our senses are subjected to by the environment. But the body never really stops working and it continuously maintains its entire defense system on alert (the immune system) in case it detects a danger (bacteria, parasite, virus, etc) that it needs to attack.

For people who suffer from insomnia, or those who wake up repeatedly throughout the night because of light sleep, losing weight becomes nearly impossible. This is because lack of adequate sleep produces a state of stress on the body. When the body is under stress, it produces an excess of the stress hormone called cortisol and this is a hormone which accumulates fat (it’s fattening) while it slowing destroys muscle tissue, thus resulting in wrinkles and flaccid skin. This is why, when we don’t sleep well, we wake up in the morning in a state of crisis and with very little energy.

The cortisol hormone that the body produces when stress exists in the body is the same substance as the cortisol medication that many people have taken and they notice that they have gained weight after taking it. The body produces cortisol every time it is under physical or emotional stress.

Many times this insomnia is caused by a condition relating to the thyroid gland called hypothyroidism. Unfortunately, hypothyroidism is not always detected via a laboratory analysis of the blood because it could exist as a “subclinical hypothyroidism”. Many people suffer from thyroid problems which cause insomnia and obesity and yet their lab work does not detect that such problem exist.

One way of knowing if the insomnia is being caused by problems with the thyroid gland is to take your body temperature. Doctor Broda Barnes, an endocrinologist (hormone specialist) discovered that the body’s temperature directly reflects a problem with the thyroid gland even if the blood analysis does not show the problem. This is called the “Barnes temperature test” and it is even listed in the reference books used by doctors in their offices (a book they call PDR).

If you do not sleep well and have difficulty losing weight, you can learn to take your body temperature to detect whether your thyroid is affected. This test can be done by any person at home and it’s free. Perhaps this is why (free and not lucrative for some) it isn’t more accepted by physicians. Generally, nobody promotes those things that don’t make them money.

I have concluded, while I observe the healthcare industry, that healthy people are not good business for these industries. There are plenty of good doctors out there and a very good number of health professionals that have the intention of truly helping their patients. But, for the pharmaceutical industry and other related health industries, their business depends on our ignorance and illnesses. This is the only way we’ll continue to consume their products and services.

Anyway, our only true defense against this is KNOWLEDGE. If we understand the basic principles that better our health and better the metabolism, we avoid being the victims of ignorance. This is why I wrote The Power of Your Metabolism where I explain, in simple words, which are the factors that determine whether we sleep well, lose weight, and better our health.

Frank Suárez, Obesity and Metabolism Specialist