Why Do I Wake Up Tired Even if I Slept Well?

How can Optimizing Autophagy Improve and Eliminate a Host of Chronic Conditions

So many of my clients complain about brain fog, feeling tired, and just feeling “OFF” when they wake up in the morning regardless of if they had a great night sleep.  This could be due to a multitude of reasons, but let’s take a moment to talk about a “lack of autophagy” as a plausible reason.  At night is when the magic happens: where your immune system goes to work cleaning up dead cells, killing pathogens, and repairing and rebalancing your biology.  This can only happen if your biology is efficient at making Th1 immune cells.

Ok, let’s pause and take a moment to describe what is autophagy and Th1 immune cells.

Autophagy:  It’s your body’s cellular recycling system.  Cells that are damaged and not functioning well anymore need to be repaired to be used, and autophagy is at the center of this process.  Simply put, autophagy is arguably at the center of fighting all chronic symptoms/diseases and keeping you healthy.

Th1 Immune Cells:  These immune cells are responsible for cleaning up debris, killing bacterial and viral pathogens, as well as promoting cancer surveillance.

What reduces autophagy and Th1 Immune cells?  

·       Eating frequently – we’re not meant to eat all day long.

·       Eating large portions/overeating – eating more than the capacity to metabolize your food.

·       Eating within 3hrs of going to sleep – when the body needs to digest foods, it will favor digestion and forgo autophagy.

·       Eating a high sugar diet – high insulin/glucose damages a part inside the cell (mitochondria), and over time high glucose damages neurons and may lead to peripheral neuropathy.  .  

·       Any inflammatory conditions – Type 2 Diabetes, gout, fibromyalgia, painful and non-painful neuropathies, vitiligo, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis to name a few.

·       Anyone with a chronicity of their symptoms: allergies, migraines/headaches, hives, IBS, infections, and many more.

All of the above lifestyle and/or chronic conditions reduce the capacity for autophagy as well as the production of Th1 Immune cells. The way forward is to address the root cause of your chronic symptoms, to evaluate the biology behind the imbalance, and make guided changes to your lifestyle.  Starting with a specialized diet to address your individual symptoms/diagnosis, paired with targeted supplements that help influence your biology out of your dominant state of affairs.  Each of the above conditions will have a specific diet. Believe me when I say it’s not always related to a high processed food, high sugar, salt, and deprived of nutrients diet.  In many cases, foods that are deemed healthy cause a host of issues.  This requires detective work…. AND TIME!! 

Normally you go to sleep, you make a ton of Th1 immune cells, kill a bunch of pathogens, clean up a bunch of cells through autophagy, and toward morning you get a surge of cortisol.  It quiets down your Th1 response, leaving you waking up refreshed and restored.  All is right with the world and you go on with your day.  How wonderful would it be if we all felt this way?

How about we increase your risk of “improving your health”?

MJ Brown