by Kathleen Barnes

It seems like a no-brainer (pardon the pun), but sleeping with lights on or –- horror of horrors—the television screen flickering – is bad for your brain and bad for your health.

Recent research shows that exposure to even the dimmest light at night – such as a night light or a crack under the door– can cause changes in your brain that can cause mood disorders, depression and a host of serious health problems.

Sleeping with lights on disrupts the natural production of the hormone melatonin by the pineal gland. Melatonin, produced only during the complete absence of light, has many functions, including the manufacture of serotonin, the brain chemical that give us a sense of calm and well-being.

Dr. Joe Mercola, the natural health mogul, says melatonin deficiency can cause a host of frightening health problems, including:

• Decreased immune function
• Accelerated cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth (including leukemia)
• Blood pressure instability
• Decreased free radical scavenging
• Increased plaques in the brain, like those seen with Alzheimer’s disease
• Increased risk of osteoporosis
• Diabetic microangiopathy (capillary damage)

Wow! I don’t want to encourage any of those disease conditions and I’m sure you don’t, either.

What’s more, many studies link melatonin deficiency and depression, especially seasonal affective disorder. This is a particular problem among post-menopausal women.

Your body cannot produce melatonin unless you are sleeping the dark. Even a street light can be a problem. Many prescription anti-depressants trigger the production of serotonin, but you can do it quite easily on your own with some simple good sleep habits.

I have two family members who sleep with the television on. They are both women who live alone and they say it provides companionship. Not surprisingly, both of them suffer from depression and some of the other health problems on Dr. Mercola’s list.

There are some very simple solutions:

• Turn off all light sources at night (even covering clock radios with light displays)
• Close your bedroom door. If there is light outside the door, place a towel at the bottom of the door to seal the crack.
• Get some blackout curtains.
• Use a sleep mask.
• Silence is also bet for restful sleep, but if you really must have some sound in order to sleep or if you live in a noisy neighborhood, get one of those inexpensive white noise machines or tune your radio to a station with very soft music.
• If you need to get up at night (most of us post-menopausal women do!), keep a flashlight by the bed and use it for as brief a period as possible to avoid a fall.

I’m just talking about melatonin here, but there are many serious health consequences of poor sleep habits and the melatonins shortfall is just one of many.

I’ll go into some other recommendations for sleep hygiene in future posts, but for now, torn off those night lights and, for pity’s sake, turn off the TV!

Today’s entry is the first of several excerpts from my new book, Rx from the Garden: 101 Food Cures You Can Easily Grow.

As garden season approaches and we’re all longing to get our hands in the dirt, consider planting these foods that can help you fight hypertension or high blood pressure or buying them from your local farmers market:

Hypertension

Your Rx from the Garden: garlic, spinach, potatoes, onions, sunflower seeds, dried beans

Also known as high blood pressure, hypertension is a silent killer. Millions of us have it and don’t know we have it, so we don’t treat it, placing oourselves at risk for heart attacks and strokes.

If you have a blood pressure monitor or make use of one at your local pharmacy, keep a few things in mind:

• Blood pressure can change throughout the day. It’s usually lowest early in the morning.

• Blood pressure goes up when you’re moving around. If you’re taking a reading, sit still for at least five minutes before measuring.

• Blood pressure responds to stress and illness. When you visit your doctor’s office you may experience “white coat hypertension,” which is one of the most common forms of elevated blood pressure, but it usually temporary. Many of us get nervous in the doctor’s office, and often our blood pressure will be elevated due to an illness or pain.

• If your doc tells you that your pressure is high, ask for a second reading later in the visit r ask if you can monitor your blood pressure at home over the coming month to determine whether there is really a problem. Long-term stress is another story, and it should be addressed to eliminate one of the most common underlying causes of hypertension.

Your Garden to the Rescue

Garlic is a primo vegetable to help relax blood vessels. Allicin, a sulfur compound that give garlic is odor and its power, has been shown to relax blood vessels and lower blood pressure as well as some other impressive heart healthy benefits we’ll talk about in the cholesterol-lowering section.

Spinach, sunflower seeds and dried beans (think kidney beans, pintos and navy beans) are all good sources of magnesium. Your blood vessels are like rubber tubes that are stretched to the max, making them thin and taut. But if the tension on the tube is released, the tube becomes wider and more flexible. Magnesium works just like that in your arteries, helping blood flow more easily and lowering pressure. Studies show that people who eat magnesium-rich diets have lower blood pressure.

Potatoes (baked or roasted, without butter or sour cream, please!) are an excellent source of potassium (as are the above mentioned foods) that helps regulate fluid balance in the body. Excess water, fluid buildup and bloating (usually caused by a sodium-potassium imbalance) put extra pressure on the blood vessels and increases blood pressure. Getting extra potassium from potatoes and other veggies can help reduce the fluid buildup and normalize blood pressure.

by Kathleen Barnes

I’m frequently asked what supplements I take and which ones I think everyone should every day.

Of course, there are physiological differences and many of us have health problems. but these are my recommendations for a person who is generally in good health and wants to stay that way:

1. Multivitamin
2. Fish oil
3. Vitamin D
4. Trace mineral supplement
5. Coenzyme Q10

I’ll flesh these out just a little bit:

1. Multivitamins: Way back in 1936, the U.S. Senate warned is that our soil was seriously nutrient depleted, based on research from several prestigious academic institutions. The situation certainly hasn’t improved in the intervening 75 years.

Everyone should be taking a good quality multivitamin every day. No matter how good your diet is, you are simply not getting the nutrients you need for optimum health.

Price isn’t always a good benchmark for supplements, but if you’re only paying $10 for a month’s supply at your local drug store, you’re wasting your money.

See this newsletter entry from October 2007 about what you should look for in a high quality multivitamin.

2. Fish oil: This is probably the most important supplements you can take for your brain, heart and joint health, not to speak of blood sugar metabolism. I’ve often said if I could only take one supplement, it would be fish oil, hands down. You get the nutritional powerhouse Omega-3 fatty acids for fatty fish: salmon, tuna, mackerel and halibut.

With so many environmental toxins in the flesh of these fish combined with the prevalence on the markets of farmed fish that are raised in toxic soups, I prefer a high quality fish oil from a reputable manufacturer that I know has been filtered to remove toxins.

3. Vitamin D: Almost all of us are deficeint in vitamin D, expecially in the winter months. A growing body of research shows that optimal vitamin D levels can:
• Prevent at least 16 kinds of cancer
• Protect your heart and lower blood pressure
• Keep blood sugars steady and prevent diabetes
• Alleviate depression
• Prevent obesity
• Keep bones and joints strong
• Prevent kidney disease
• Improve digestive health
• Relieve menopausal symptoms
• Prevent autoimmune diseases
• Lengthen your life span

We all need vitamin D and lots of it, much more than most of us get. Experts recommend 2,000 IU or more of a good quality vitamin D supplement a day in the winter and the same in the summer if you don’t get 20 minutes of unprotected sun exposure to your face, arms, back and legs three times a week in summer. You won’t burn, I promise! Even my Celtic skin doesn’t burn in 20 minutes.

This is the subject of a new serialized book I’m writing with Dr. Tranquility Lydia Belton. You can get the complimentary introductory chapter here and on Dr. Tranquility’s website.

4. Trace mineral supplements: Your doctor has probably insistent that you need to take calcium for strong bones. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. Your bones are made of a dozen or more minerals and calcium is only one of them, Unbalancing those minerals can cause of cascade of health problems including hardening of the arteries, hypothyroidism, hypertension, diabetes, birth defects and more.

I won’t go into excruciating detail, but this is the subject of an entire book I wrote with Dr. Robert Thompson called The Calcium Lie: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know Could Kill You.

Trace mineral supplements are definitely the way to go for strong bones and dozens more health benefits. I take a liquid one that tastes yucky, but I get it over with quickly.

5. CoEnzyme Q10: Better known as CoQ10, improves energy production in the cells, especially those that optimize heart function. CoQ10 is essential to the survival of people who take statin drugs to lower cholesterol since they deplete the body’s natural stores. Sadly, most doctors don’t know this.

Many studies have shown CoQ10′s abilities to slow the ravages of aging, reduce cholesterol, prevent obesity, optimize blood sugar levels, prevent macular degeneration and much more.

Most experts recommend 1 mg. of CoQ10 per pound of body weight per day, so if you weigh 150 pounds, you would need 150 mg.