Final Sleep Insights, and Food Waste Fights Food Insecurity

Closing The Book on Sleep

I finally finished Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. The moral of the story, once you understand the power of sleep it is both terrifying and empowering. Terrifying because poor sleep quality or quantity is linked to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke, to loss of memory, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, to low testosterone, and low libido, to a decreased ability to learn and an increased chance of accidents such as car crashes. But it’s empowering because what sleep taketh sleep also giveth.

Every one of the conditions mentioned above also improves with better sleep. Making sleep the most powerful, accessible, and affordable supplement available. And the most underutilized. Surveys show that 25 percent of adults get less than 6 hours of sleep, the CDC’s recommended dose is 7 hours, each night, leading to chronic sleep deprivation. In 1942 that number was less than 8 percent.

One of the biggest side effects of sleep deprivation or “short sleep,” as he calls it, is the impact on the hormones leptin, which regulates satiety, and ghrelin, which controls hunger. Inadequate sleep decreases leptin and increases ghrelin, lowering your levels of satiety and keeping you hungry for more food. Studies have shown that sleep deprived individuals consume 300 calories more per day compared to their well-rested counterparts. Extrapolate that over the roughly 250-day work year and that’s an extra 78,000 calories (20 pounds).

In addition, poor sleep inhibits your body’s ability to regulate blood glucose by as much as 40 percent. Worse still, being sleep deprived increases cravings for carbohydrate and sugar rich foods by 30 to 40 percent. A decreased ability to regulate glucose is something that I experienced during my glucose monitor experiment. I was getting less than 6 hours of sleep per night at the time and foods like lentils and blueberries that should’ve had little to no affect were causing major spikes.

The combination of an increased appetite and an inability to regulate glucose is one of the reasons for the increased prevalence of obesity and diabetes in society. These two diseases, which could in part be prevented or managed through better sleep, have instead resulted in a new multi-billion-dollar industry for drugs that manage appetite in much of the same way as leptin and ghrelin do. The problem is that like nutrition, most physicians receive very little sleep training in medical school, making it easier for doctors to fill a prescription than advise on sleep.

A few weeks ago, I went to the doctor for my annual physical. I told my physician about symptoms of chest pain I was having, and how my family history of heart disease had me concerned. He asked several questions aimed at soothing my fears and ruling out cardiac disease. He also did an electrocardiography (EKG) and blood work to check my cholesterol levels. But he never asked about stress or sleep. In the end he told me with 99 percent certainty that the pain was not heart related and I didn’t have to worry.

The pain has since gone away, so perhaps he wasn’t wrong, but in retrospect I have no doubt that stress and even more so a lack of sleep was linked to the discomfort I was feeling. At the time I was spending 5 - 6 hours in bed, which equates to ~4 - 5 hours of actual sleep. In addition, my total cholesterol levels, although not in the danger zone, had increased substantially since my last blood test. A decreased ability to regulate cholesterol is another side effect of insufficient sleep.

My doctor is a young guy in the first few years of practicing who I really like. But it’s clear to me that the science of sleep has yet to make it into medical school curriculums.

But getting adequate amounts of sleep is about more than just warding off disease and weight gain. Sleep also plays a major role in our ability to perform mentally and physically. When participants in a study were tested on specific motor skills, those who got the proper dose of sleep performed 20 percent better in speed and 25 percent better in accuracy. A separate study showed that obtaining less than 6 hours of sleep per night decreased the time to physical exhaustion by 10 - 30 percent.

The good news is that for most people poor sleep is a result of poor sleep hygiene and can be improved. The National Institutes of Health suggests following these 12 steps to better sleep (page 22). And if you think you have a sleep disorder then Matthew Walker recommends seeking out help from the National Sleep Foundation.

For me, Why We Sleep has forced me to take a hard look at my sleep practices and to make a few big changes.

1. Keeping a steady bedtime. When I’m tired, I call it a night. I no longer fight my fatigue in favor of one more episode of The Great British Baking Show. I don’t care how good the pastries look!

2. Staying in bed longer. I’ve always been a proud early riser. But by jumping out of bed too early I’ve been missing the memory boosting benefits offered by those last two hours of sleep.

3. Reducing caffeine. From 3 cups of coffee (300 mg of caffeine) to 1 cup of green tea (50 mg of caffeine). Since making this change, I’ve been dreaming nonstop, fall asleep easier, and sleep deeper and longer.

4. Napping more. Day time naps as short as 20 minutes have shown improvement in memory consolidation and just as important, I always feel better after.

5. Drowning out noise. I’ve been wearing ear plugs most nights and putting on a sound machine to silence any unwanted noise.

I’m also continuing other practices I instituted years ago.

1. Turing down the lights after dinner to begin the wind down process. Artificial light (including screens) delays the release of melatonin.

2. Keeping the room cool. Your body temperature needs to drop by 1 - 2 degrees Fahrenheit to fall asleep and stay asleep.

3. Eating an early dinner. The system that helps you fall asleep is the same one that regulates digestion. You don’t want them competing.

4. Drinking 1 tsp of CALM 30 - 60 minutes before bed in 3 - 4 oz of water. Too much water will have me up peeing.

5. Stretching my legs for 5 minutes before bed. Quad stretch. Calf stretch. Hamstring stretch. Elevated pigeon on the bed.

6. Avoiding alcohol. Alcohol and caffeine are two of the most common sleep disruptors in society. Thankfully I gave up drinking in 2021.

The information provided here and in previous newsletters is just a snippet of the information offered throughout the book. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in learning more to pick up the book or an audio version. It’ll be one of the best investments that you’ll ever make.

Fill Stomachs Not Landfills

On Friday Jen and I volunteered with We Don’t Waste. They’re a Denver based non-profit that works with local restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores to recover food that would’ve otherwise gone to waste. Their motto is fill stomachs not landfills.

Every year an estimated 40 percent of food equal to 80 million tons or 149 billion meals in our country goes to waste. Food waste takes many forms and includes uneaten food at home, stores and restaurants, crops left in the field by farmers, surplus food ordered for schools, and food that’s rejected by retailers for not meeting certain standards of appearance, shape, or color.

The wasted food very often ends up in landfills where it decomposes and emits methane gas, a greenhouse gas that traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period, and 28 times more over a 100 year period.

Instead of feeding climate change, that food could be going to feed the nearly 44 million people who suffered from food insecurity in 2023, and the far greater number of people who are suffering from nutrition insecurity. And that’s exactly what We Don’t Waste is doing.

By rescuing perfectly good food destined for landfills and distributing them to people in need at their 8 monthly food markets, they’re reducing methane gas emissions and the number of people going hungry.

In under 2 hours on Friday, we served over 350 families. Unlike other food programs, there are no eligibility qualifications to shop the market. All you must do is show up. We Don’t Waste designs their events similar to a farmer’s market, where people can walk through, shop (for free), and not feel stigmatized.

Shoppers pick out the items that they want, and leave what they don’t. On Friday the list of food included: chicken, bacon, ribs, yogurt, chocolate milk, onions, broccoli, micro greens, leeks, peanut butter, and more.

Of the 350 families who shopped the market I estimate that 90 percent of them were migrants of Latin American descent. Most of them spoke little or no English. It had me thinking about how different the environment they fled from was compared to the one they arrived in. Where in America we have enough wasted food to serve thousands of families each week.

The privilege we experience in this country to walk into a fully stocked supermarket every single day couldn’t be more foreign to them.

We’ve also been doing volunteer work with Food Bank of the Rockies. A slightly different program. While some of the food we distribute is rescued, a lot of it is donated or funded by the government. The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a federal program that helps supplement the diets of people with low income by providing them with food at no cost, is of particular importance as it typically makes up about half of the food we hand out.

In contrast to the people served at We Don’t Waste, the people who show up for the food bank are more typically struggling American citizens. There is no one demographic that dominates.

On average we distribute close to 100 boxes of food in just over an hour. But like We Don’t Waste, the food available varies by week. This past week included fresh pears, oranges, and broccoli, as well as frozen ground beef, wild caught sockeye salmon, and chicken sausage. Shelf stable items included walnuts, raisins, cereal, and ramen. There were even items such as coffee creamer, and cream top whole milk.

Regardless of the differences between where the food comes from and who’s showing up to receive it, one thing is clear. That more and more people in this country are struggling to put healthy, nutritious food on their tables. And that’s what makes organizations and programs such as these so valuable.

Food should be a basic human right. Especially in a country filled with such abundance. Being out on the streets viewing it firsthand always provides a fresh perspective of the issue. It’s one thing to hear the statistics or to observe people’s troubles as you walk or drive by, but it is quite another to stand in front of them and make a connection through food.

So many people are living just on the fringe. And without programs like TEFAP and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and organizations like local Food Banks and We Don’t Waste, these same people would be missing important meals. They need our help and government funding.

There’s a way to join in without leaving your screen. Click this link and Tell Congress to help end hunger in rural communities by strengthening TEFAP in the next farm bill! Our tax money should be spent on the all the people right here at home.

Cheers.

James.