Poor sleep affects how well your body controls your appetite - and your bedroom surroundings contribute to how well you sleep. It only takes a little bit of interference to the hormone that controls sleep before your appetite's affected. All our hormones are carefully balanced, much like charms on a mobile - move one and all the charms adjust to compensate. Stabilizing this 'hormone mobile' takes a few adjustments to the surroundings. But once it's stable everything settles down.
What can I do?
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Spend an hour in the morning doing something energetic outside
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Spend the hour before bed on low light, low noise, low demand activities
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Unplug wireless and electrical equipment before bed
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Keep the bedroom dark - using red light where necessary
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Recommended Reading - Books
The Sleep-Powered Wellness Workbook: Better Bedrooms for Better Sleep, by Angela Hobbs
Hobbs guides the reader through the 24 hour hormone rhythm revealing the many ways that a person's surroundings can be used to support it. A workbook packed with simple, inexpensive suggestions for exploiting our surroundings to support our most environmentally sensitive hormones.
Sleep-Powered Wellness: Better Bedrooms for Turbocharged Zzzz's, by Angela Hobbs
Hobbs discusses the impact that noise, wireless, light, electricity, chemicals and air pollutants can have on the hormones responsible for sleep and alertness, and ultimately on many common symptoms of ill health.
Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival by T. S. Wiley
Wiley 'wake-up call' discusses the implications that late evenings and light at night can have on health
Recommended Listening - Podcasts
Now It's time to Sleep a Podcast by the British Medical Journal
An interview with Fracesco Cappuccio discussing sleep deprivation's role in causing obesity and ill-health
Recommended Viewing - You Tube
Sleep & Obesity - Warwick Medical School
A discussion of the growing link between reduced sleep and obesity