Sleep is an essential aspect of healing and repair and that healing takes seven to eight hours.
The vital key to the link between good sleep and weight is understanding hormones, especially the hormone cortisol. You have major sleep disturbance when your cortisol is high. Cortisol is your stress hormone. It gives you an overactive brain and you feel pumped up all over.
As women age, estrogen and progesterone decrease and as these hormones decrease, cortisol rises. When cortisol rises, insulin rises and insulin is a fat storing hormone.
A vicious cycle is set up because as cortisol rises and you have trouble sleeping, it raises cortisol even more because inability to sleep raises cortisol.
Inability to sleep also diminishes your thyroid, which is a fat burning hormone.
So, is it any wonder so many people have trouble losing weight?
