Alzheimer's, sleep, and diabetes--three very interesting amigos

I didn't realize until reading this abstract that Alzheimer's disease affects sleep patterns as well as memory. It makes sense, since adequate sleep is necessary in order to retain memory of information gained during the day.

The medication reviewed in this article is galantamine (Reminyl), and the authors suggest that it is important to time medication administration in order to gain maximum effectiveness and sleep. And, that certain medications help (and interfere with) sleep more than others.

Disrupted sleep can worsen diabetes. Since many people with Alzheimer's also have diabetes--in fact, the two diseases are starting to be recognized as being very strongly linked to each other--this connection between sleep and medication can be very important to understand.

My guess is that if you are on this blog looking for information about Alzheimer's, it is a loved one, not you, that the information is for. Here is the bottom line:
1. If your loved one had problems with sleep before being recommended or placed on medication, it might be a good idea to check with the prescribing physician to be sure this was taken into account when choosing which Alzheimer's medication to prescribe.
2. If your loved one has developed changes in sleep habits since starting an Alzheimer's medication, be sure to let the prescribing physician know.
3. If your loved one's diabetes has become worse despite diligent attention to medications and food intake, consider the influence of sleep or lack thereof.
4. Be sure to ask your physician and/or pharmacist if there is a time of day your particular medication needs to be taken for maximum effectiveness.

Nieoullon A, Bentué-Ferrer D, Bordet R, Tsolaki M, Förstl H. Importance of circadian rhythmicity in the cholinergic treatment of Alzheimer's disease: focus on galantamine*. Curr Med Res Opin. 2008 Dec;24(12):3357-67.

Sweet dreams for fewer migraines

If you've ever had a migraine, you know they're debilitating. I get them. When they come, my vision gets squirrely, my thinking gets fuzzy, and all I want to do is sleep. I'm completely useless for as long as one chooses to stick around.

I've tried the pharmaceutical options, and while they worked, I always wished that there was a natural solution. For me, that solution came with changing my work situation, moderating caffeine intake, stress management, and incorporating yoga into my activity routine. When I found this article, I realized that I've also been better to myself when it comes to sleep, and not cutting myself short in that department. Maybe that's part of the reason I rarely have migraines anymore.

The scientists in this study gave a 3 mg dose of melatonin to 22 children who complained of regular migraine or tension-type headaches. By the time the study was over, 3 months later, 2/3 of the subjects reported a decrease in headache frequency of 50%, and 4 subjects reported having no headaches at all.

Of course, you can go out and buy some melatonin. But what I'd recommend, first of all, is taking a good hard look at your sleep habits. Are you giving yourself at least 7 hours of sleep a night? Or are you hooked on late night TV? Are you sitting in bed with your laptop surfing the net when you should be dreaming?

It's an easy solution for a serious and unpleasant problem. Take care of your head--and your head won't have to hit you where it hurts to get your attention.

Miano S, Parisi P, Pelliccia A, Luchetti A, Paolino MC, Villa MP. Melatonin to prevent migraine or tension-type headache in children. Neurol Sci. 2008 Sep;29(4):285-7. Epub 2008 Sep 20.

Eat your veggies and sleep!

I've become fascinated with sleep. How much we need it. How little we value it. And what happens to our health when we don't get it. Sometimes I wonder if we should be obsessed with sleep and not worried about what we eat.

Now the two worlds have collided!

It has been found that melatonin is a component of some vegetables. Some Japanese researchers gave a group of women high amounts of six specific vegetables. Another group of women was asked to avoid these same vegetables during the same time period. The women who consumed the vegetables had higher amounts of melatonin by-products in their urine.

Melatonin, as you know from reading this blog, is a sleep enhancing hormone and a very powerful antioxidant.

Of course, the very first thing most people will ask on reading this, is "what vegetables?"

I don't think the power in this study comes from the melatonin content of the vegetables. Melatonin is a highly unstable compound and it would be challenging to have it stay intact in a compound that is harvested, stored, chopped, and cooked before eating.

What may be happening here, is that vegetables are great sources of antioxidants. And since melatonin appears to be the ultimate antioxidant, it is called to duty when other antioxidants are in short supply and cannot do their job. If your melatonin is on cleanup duty, it can't be used to help you sleep!

The melatonin in the urine, I'm guessing, came from the fact that melatonin was allowed to function as melatonin, and not changed as it was used as an antioxidant.

So...the strategy appears to be, to eat as many different vegetables as you can in order to have maximum antioxidant power. And that will give you a better chance at getting a good night's sleep.

I know that it's difficult not to yawn if you see someone else yawning, so on behalf of helping you feel sleepy, here's a wonderful blog a friend told me about yesterday!
It's called Cute Things Falling Asleep.

Oba S, Nakamura K, Sahashi Y, Hattori A, Nagata C. Consumption of vegetables alters morning urinary 6-sulfatoxymelatonin concentration. J Pineal Res. 2008 Aug;45(1):17-23. Epub 2008 Jan 15.

Fifty Ways to Boost Your Energy Without Caffeine

Here's a great piece by Christina Laun at the Nursing Online Education Database:

http://noedb.org/library/features/50_ways_to_boost_your_energy_without_caffeine

I am continually concerned about the number of people I'm seeing on sleep medications who have never been given information about natural options. This article is a great place to get you started thinking.

I'll take a smoothie and a siesta over Ambien anytime

If you've ever dieted, and you have trouble sleeping...there may be a reason. Keep in mind, this study was done on rainbow trout, but there is still a message in it for humans. Three groups of trout were studied with regard to their melatonin (sleep hormone/antioxidant) levels and cortisol (stress hormone) levels. The three groups were defined as fed fish, fish that were fasted for 7 days, and fish that were fasted for 7 days then refed for 5 days.

Melatonin levels were disrupted in fasted fish. If you were human, this would likely mean if you were on a strict fasting/dieting protocol, you were probably having trouble sleeping as well.

Interestingly, nighttime serotonin levels were higher in these fasted fish. Melatonin is made from serotonin, so I would presume that what the body tries to do when you're not eating well is to keep you alert and thinking about getting some food. It does that by hanging on to serotonin and preventing its conversion into melatonin. That's a survival mechanism.

So if you're dieting and you're awake at night with cravings? That's a normal response. Don't obsess about what's wrong with you, don't surf the Internet looking for what to do about your cravings. In this kind of situation, you're thinking about food because you need it. Get some.

As far as cortisol, dieting reduced levels and they stayed low after refeeding. You could argue that this is a benefit of dieting...except for the fact that if you're cutting yourself short on melatonin, you're aging yourself more quickly than you should. There are plenyy of ways to reduce melatonin levels without dieting that don't cut your life short on the back end.

By the way, since I write so much about sleep I thought I should mention...I love naps. The long afternoon kind where my cats curl up with me, and I wake up with a little bit of drool on my pillow. I don't feel guilty at all. I completely buy into the idea of "beauty sleep"--sooooo much cheaper than all those anti-aging potions on the infomercials!

Ceinos RM, Polakof S, Illamola AR, Soengas JL, Míguez JM. Food deprivation and refeeding effects on pineal indoles metabolism and melatonin synthesis in the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. Gen Comp Endocrinol. 2008 Apr;156(2):410-7. Epub 2008 Jan 8.

Let me sleep on it

Sleep problems, insulin function, weight gain, and mental health diagnoses...these four issues seem to be BFF's in the world of neuroscience. Is it that people with mental health issues just don't sleep well...or does insomnia promote the development of these issues? Does weight gain cause insulin dysfunction...or vice versa? It's hard to sort through all of the possibilities and definitively conclude, but it's important to remember that taking care of yourself in a number of areas, not just watching what you eat, can be important in managing all of these issues.

Sleep is the one most people have a hard time with. They don't get enough of it, they deprive themselves of it when life throws them curve balls, they even brag about how little they get. But the evidence is overwhelming, every single organ in the body struggles to work the way that it should when we view sleep as a lifestyle inconvenience rather than a necessity.

It's about the hormone, melatonin. It's not just the thing that makes you sleepy, and it's not just the supplement you can take when you can't sleep, it's one of the body's most powerful anti-oxidants and anti-aging chemicals. When we don't sleep, we set ourselves up to self-destruct and physically age, much, much faster than we need to.

Take the pancreas. It's the organ that releases insulin whenever we eat and need to transport all that energy into cells.

In the presence of melatonin, researchers observed that it helps the body to better manage the way it uses insulin. There seemed to be a better response to the cascade of hormones and signals that manage blood glucose levels...and then...to the hormones that transport that glucose to where it needs to be used.

If you think about how you feel after a night of tossing and turning...you're a little groggy and maybe slow to react to events and just "not completely with it"...consider that it's not just your head that's feeling that way. Your entire body has to work harder to be on target when it doesn't get the right amount of sleep.

And keep in mind, when your insulin is not working the way it should, your body also doesn't manage weight the way it should. Practically every client I work with has sleep issues. And they all know, because I drill it into them every time we meet, if they don't get their sleep under control, there's not a whole lot that diet and exercise are going to be able to do about weight. First things first.

Ramracheya RD, Muller DS, Squires PE, Brereton H, Sugden D, Huang GC, Amiel SA, Jones PM, Persaud SJ. Function and expression of melatonin receptors on human pancreatic islets. J Pineal Res. 2008 Apr;44(3):273-9.