RadioMD Presents: Wellness for Life Radio | Original Air Date: March 6, 2015
Host: Susanne Bennett, DC

It’s time to feel better with help from Dr. Susanne Bennett. Allergies, nutrition, ultimate wellness—all discussed right here, right now. It’s Wellness for Life Radio on RadioMD.

Here’s your host, Dr. Susanne.

DR. SUSANNE: A third of us—US—US Americans routinely sleep fewer than 7 hours a night and that’s a lot. That really isn’t by choice. Overly committed lifestyles and stress, unhealthy habits, plague our ability to get a good night’s sleep. Now, what is going on inside our body and what can we do to improve our sleep?

Alright. Two bodily processes impact your sleep. Number one, your body has to have its own sleep/wake homeostasis and what that is, is a state of balance. Now, it naturally creates restorative time for itself as long as you let it. The other critical process is our circadian, biological click. Another name for it is internal clock or biorhythms. It regulates a 24-hour cycle within our bodies, consisting of patterns of brain activity, cell regeneration, hormone production and many other biological activities.

Now, this circadian rhythm is controlled by the hypothalamus in our brain, a small little area and it’s literally our body clock’s timing set by the light and dark cycle around us through our day. Light and dark.

So, light exposure is key to sleep. It’s really a fascinating process and any time light, whether it’s natural or artificial, is hitting your opting nerve—the nerve that’s in the back of your eyeballs, it transmits a message of “awake” to the SCN. SCN stands for “suprachiasmatic nucleus”. That’s the reason why I’m calling it “SCN” because it’s such a long word. Anyway, it’s a group of cells in the hypothalamus in our brain. The light trigger produces an elevation of body temperature and our hormone cortisol and reduction in sleep hormones and many other physiological changes that gets us up and going in the morning.

Now, alternatively, when our eyes are not being stimulated by light, it tells the SCN and the hypothalamus that it’s nighttime and that nighttime is for restorative rest. Now, the SCN is really important because it instructs our pineal gland. Our pineal gland produces melatonin and serotonin to help us relax and sleep and our body temperature drops and our bodies get really ready for sleep.

Now, why is this important? Because when you think about it, all of this electricity--before electricity or we had the artificial lighting, people when to bed when the sun went down and got up when the sun came up, and they likely got a good night’s sleep, probably at least 10-12 hours and a lot of restorative sleep. Now, with modern electronics, all these distractions, all this light hitting our eyes, it really messes up with our natural light and dark rhythms. So, what we want to do is, we want to maintain a healthy sleep cycle, sleep hygiene. You will improve your immune system. You’ll get stronger and your immune system—you’ll get less illnesses. You can fight those infections. You’ll also improve your mental clarity and memory skills, improve your energy level and even improve your ability to lose weight.

Now, why do I say lose weight? Oh, my gosh, what the researchers are showing is that sleep can affect many hormones in our body, especially these two that relate to appetite: ghrelin and leptin. Now, ghrelin is what’s produced in our gut—inside our gut—and it stimulates our appetite. While leptin is produced in our fat cells and it sends signals to our brain saying, “Hey, I’m already full.” I always say, my mantra is, “Go away ghrelin. Love, love, love you leptin,” because I want more leptin to curb my appetite and don’t want more ghrelin since it increases my appetite.

So, it really important that you understand that sleep really helps and there’s studies that were done at Stanford University, University of Chicago, that when you get more sleep, or let’s say this, if you restrict sleep, then leptin goes down. Ghrelin goes up and that means you have more appetite. You eat more and you actually eat more calories and carbohydrates—more calories and carbohydrates--which then will increase your weight gain and increase your fat deposition, increase your sugar insensitivities or insulin sensitivities. So, it’s really important that we deal with this.

Now, I want to tell you a few things about how to maintain a healthy circadian rhythm.

What you want to do is, you want to wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day, even on the weekends, and get 8 hours of sleep. If you can get 9, that’s even better and don’t take naps if you can help it, because if you take naps, it’ll confuse your body clock.

Number two, turn off all your lights at nighttime, ideally dim it as soon as the sun goes down and definitely at least one hour prior to bedtime and what you want to do is that you want to ensure the bedroom to be very dark. What I do is, I wear an eye mask to definitely close up, take all the light out of my eyes. That little eye mask is a God send for me so that there’s nothing triggering that pineal gland or turning off that pineal gland and producing melatonin. Another thing you could do is make sure that in the morning, you wake up with sunshine hitting your eyes. You want that sunshine hitting your eyes so that your body’s ready to wake up and it’ll turn off the message to your brain saying, “Hey, I don’t need any more melatonin.”

Alright. You know when people have seasonal affective disorders and especially in the winter time and you’re living in areas where it’s upper and the higher levels in the Northern countries and hemisphere, then there’s not enough light to wake you up in the morning to turn off that melatonin. So, some people get what’s called seasonal affective disorder where you feel tired, you’re sad, you’re depressed, you eat more. Well, it’s because you need more light. So, those individuals, I highly recommend for you to get a light box. I love those natural light boxes that you can use and every day, in the morning, you turn it on for about 30 minutes with your arms—it’s like an arm length. So, this full-spectrum light box is in front of you about 3 feet away and you just use it when you’re having your tea in the morning and getting ready for your work.

Now, so it’s really important that you do make sure that you go to bed early. Even if you get 8 hours, let’s say, and, it’s from 1:00 AM to 9:00AM, that’s not healthy sleep to me because you’re really moving the shifting of your sleep pattern where you’re not getting the benefits of the healthy hormones that are good for rejuvenating. We sleep because we need to rejuvenate ourselves and replenish ourselves and that happens at night when the growth hormone goes up and melatonin goes up. But, if you shift it, then that means that you don’t get enough of those very, very important hormones. So, it’s important to try to sleep anywhere from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM is a good time that is 8 hours or, at the latest, 11:00. But, melatonin really does start to be produced at about 8:00-9:00. That’s the reason why little babies, kids, go to sleep so quickly.

Now, one of the things you’ll want to do is create a bedtime, relaxing ritual. Really important. You want to create rituals every night, cool down your body. You have a nice little lavender bath, turn off the lights, of course, listen to really quiet, natural music, turn off all your computers and ensure that all of the electronics are turned off because you don’t want that stimulating. That electro-pollution can definitely stimulate you. Don’t have any nicotine, caffeine and alcohol in the nighttime especially and it’s because it will increase your cortisol level and that stimulates the nervous system and definitely reduces restful sleep.

Alright. I wouldn’t drink any water or an excess amount tea, even decaf tea past 8:00 because what it’ll do is, it’ll make you urinate and you don’t want to do that when you wake up.

What I want to do is tell you about things you can take to help you with sleeping. Pumpkin seeds have the highest dose of tryptophan per serving. Tryptophan is amino acid that turns into 5HTP and it increases serotonin and melatonin and relaxes your body and promotes sleep. You know, I talk a lot about it also in my book, The 7-Day Allergy Makeover, that you've got to change your environment so that all of the allergens don’t bother you. Remember that. Number two, phosphatidylserine, when it comes to supplements, I love that because it actually turns off the cortisol level in your body, helps your body rest and it’s excellent to help you with your cell membranes. Melatonin. You can take melatonin. It’s the only supplement out there that does not turn off your ability to make melatonin. So, this is a naturally occurring hormone and that helps you with the sleep/wake cycle and it will help you with anyone who’s suffering from insomnia or can’t get deep sleep and it’s interrupted. Gaba gamma-aminobutyric acid, a neurotransmitter that helps the brain and body to relax. I love magnesium which is a mineral very important for controlling blood sugar, but it also really helps for sleeping and relaxing.

So, there’s so much you can do. So much you can do. There are a lot of studies out there now that show that sleep deprivation can impact the hormones of insulin and regulate our blood sugar. So, really, it’s clearly important and vital for your health and you really need sleep.

So, follow these steps. Improve your nighttime sleep habits and keep your circadian rhythm clock humming.

Until then, this is Dr. Susanne. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to serve you. I’m dedicated to helping you feel great and be your best.

This is Wellness for Life Radio on RadioMD. See you next time.

Stay well.

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RadioMD Presents: Wellness for Life Radio | Original Air Date: February 27, 2015
Host: Susanne Bennett, DC

It’s time to feel better with help from Dr. Susanne Bennett. Allergies, nutrition, ultimate wellness—all discussed right here, right now. It’s Wellness for Life Radio on RadioMD.

Here’s your host, Dr. Susanne.

DR. SUSANNE: As we age, we all eventually experience a decline in our cognitive abilities. Our memory starts to fail, we may not be as alert or focused and our brain may just feel super foggy. We have a difficult time retrieving words and even trouble creating sentences. In fact, my own sweet mama, 83 years young, Sarah Chung confided in me a couple of months ago that her number one fear—her number one fear that she has-- is that she may be losing her mind. In fact, she used the word “Alzheimer’s” to me. Wait. Wait. Wait. She actually pronounced it “Old Timers”. She’s Korean with a Korean accent, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. She called it “Old Timers. I’m so afraid of it.” Now, my mom is in great health. She eats well, walks daily, watches her Korean drama shows and gets her exercise by dancing around to Korean pop. But, she does have her forgetful moments. A lot of us have experienced that as well, not remembering little things here and there, which really, really frustrates her terribly. Now, one of the things that is a constant thing is that she actually loses the place where she parked her car. She’s in a big mall and she doesn’t remember what floor she was at, so I taught her how to take a picture of it--where she’s at--so that she can always look back at it.

But, anyone who has a parent who is over 75 years old understands these little mishaps. So I reassured her. Told her to calm down. “Mom, that’s okay.” You know, that she does have these memory issues, but definitely “You don’t have Alzheimer’s”. Now, it’s called type 3 diabetes or the diabetic brain. I’ve written an article on this called, The Nine Key Strategies to Prevent Dementia and Early Alzheimer’s Disease. You can get that on my website, DrSusanne.com/OldTimers. You can find that on my radio page. Now, I expressed to her that, “You know what? We’re going to do whatever it takes and change some of your lifestyle as well as what you’re eating,” so that we can strengthen and create her brain to spark again without having any ill effects in the future. I reminded her that her mother lived to 104, so I told her, no worries. We were going to do the same for her. Then, a few days after I gave my mother her Old Timers protocol, CNN.com came out with this very interesting article about reversing dementia and ADD and how to improve the brain. That was perfect timing.

Now, the article is based on a study by Dr. Dale Bredesen from UCLA, my alma mater, at the UCLA’s Mary S. Easton Center for Disease Research and it was basically all the things that I shared with my mother about that lifestyle and you can make these changes and make these choices properly so that you can enhance your brain’s function.

Dr. Dale goes over 7 strategies and I end up going into 9 key strategies. I added a couple more. Again, you can get that at DrSusanne.com/OldTimers. Now, so let’s go into the four strategies. I talk about 9, but I’m going to give you 4 lifestyle strategies here because we don’t have that much time.

Number one, we’ve got to look at your gut health and how diet has everything to do with it. Now, Dr. Eli Metchinikoff, who was an old scientist way back when, believed that death begins in the gut. Same thing with Hippocrates, our father of medicine. He stated that all diseases begin in the gut. So, that means we’ve got look at why. Why do we have to look at the gut? You know, it is often referred to as our second brain. There’s the brain with our gut nervous system and our brain with just our head brain that has a communication physiologically. They mirror each other in our health, so if we’ve got inflammation in our gut because we’re eating the wrong foods; you’re not having enough probiotics; if you’re eating, also, toxins; and then you might even have a real bad overgrowth of bacteria or yeast overgrowth, then it’s going to affect your gut, too. Remember, it communicates with one another. So, the most important thing is they’re finding that sugar--when you eat too much sugar and you have a condition that’s caused insulin insensitivity and that’s literally pre-diabetes--it causes inflammation in our body and that is what is causing the possible dementia and rapid deterioration which then goes into Alzheimer’s. So, if you want to have a healthier body, healthier brain, we’ve got to change the food that we’re eating and reducing our sugar level. By reducing our sugar level, we end up digesting better, the insulin effect is less and we’re not going to have as much damage to our brain.

A four-week study that focused on diets and consisted of healthy foods as well as unhealthy foods, found that definitely it had a positive impact on reducing the beta amyloid levels and that beta amyloid levels are actually the plaque in the brain. It’s one of the biggest signs of Alzheimer’s. Also they found that strategic fasting or intermittent fasting, another word for that, has suggested also it will reduce the beta amyloid levels. What you want to do is, you want to fast from 7 PM to 7 AM. So that means, after dinner—have an early dinner--and don’t eat anything else until after that time. So, if you eat at 7 PM, don’t eat anything until after 7 AM when you wake up and that’s thought to help give us time to break down those beta amyloid proteins.

The number two factor that I want you to think about is sleep. You want deep, uninterrupted sleep because studies showed that during our sleep, we detox out chemicals like heavy metals and arsenic and lead, chemicals that we breathe in the air and foods that we might be eating loaded with pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. So, we need 7-8 hours as adults. When you have children, they need a lot more—anywhere from 9-11 hours depending on their age.

Number three, we need to change the lifestyle of exercise and circulation. Circulation improving the blood flow into the brain through exercise and massage will help decline the dementia and Alzheimer’s because we’re getting more blood flow to the brain, detoxing out those toxins, reducing those cortisol levels. Cortisol, which I’m going to talk about next, is about the stress and actually, cortisol will start to degrade the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center.

So, the next one, the fourth factor that I want you to know is about mindfulness and stress reduction. There’s no way we can have a healthy brain without reducing our stress. It may sound like a “no-brainer” but living with less stress and a more positive attitude is really key to a healthy brain function. So, you can do things where you can relax, go and meditate, go ahead and have a positive outlook, do meditation tapes and things like that. For me, I love to relax in the sun or go and play with my dog. That reduces my cortisol and it helps me relax more.

Now, I’m going to go over the brain healthy nutrients. These are brain boosters. So, I’m just going to go one by one so that you can get an idea of what it takes to have a healthy brain and healthy outlook.

So, acetylcarnitine is one of those neuroprotector formulas. Acetylcarnitine, it’s called, and it really helps improve mental energy, mental clarity and reduces any of these memory issues that you have because it helps the connection from nerve to nerve. Vitamin B12 is really important. It lowers our homocysteine level, but it also is excellent in increasing blood flow as well as developing healthy nerve cells. It reduces the depression and stress. Glycerophosphocholine, phosphatidyl serine, phosphatidyl choline are all fatty acid supplements for brain health. They increase the flexibility of the nerve cell and makes it more fluid to exchange nutrients and excrete toxins. Vitamin D is so important to improve your immunity as well as help you with modulation of your immune system and increase mental fitness. Omega-3s are so important to get those DHA polyphenol like EG, CG and resveratrol.

Wow. We all have those powers to change our brain by changing our lifestyle and what we take nutritionally.

Until then, thanks so much for giving me this opportunity to serve you. I’m dedicated to helping you feel better and the best that you can today.

This is Wellness for Life radio on RadioMD.

See you next time. Stay well, everyone.

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