Bee Healthy - Sleep Well. Supporting your immune system using honey.
BEE HEALTHY
Supporting your immune system using honey.
Sleep
A good night's sleep is incredibly important for your health. Along with nutrition and exercise, good sleep is one of the pillars of health.
In addition to improving concentration, productivity, athletic performance, lowering your risk of heart disease and stroke, and preventing excess weight gain, sleep helps improve your immune function. Even a small loss of sleep has been shown to impair immune function.1 Studies have found that those who slept less than 7 hours were almost 3 times more like to develop a cold then those who slept 8 hours or more.2
A spoonful of honey before bed can help you have a more restful night's sleep.
Even when you are resting, your body is still consuming energy. There is increased energy use during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. During this time your brain is highly active and you burn the most glucose. Heart rate and blood pressure also rise during this time. As you sleep, your body works to repair the cellular damage done throughout the day, muscles recover and repair themselves. All this activity requires a lot of energy.
One of the most efficient forms of brain energy comes from sugar stored in your liver, called liver glycogen. When the liver runs out of glycogen, the hungry brain experiences metabolic stress and triggers stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol in order to convert muscle protein into glucose. Without sufficient liver glycogen our body works overtime searching for the glucose to feed the brain, interfering with a quality night's sleep.
By eating 1-2 tablespoons of raw honey before you go to bed, you can improve your brain’s ability to function throughout the night by providing it with the energy it needs. Your body is now able to create and store an adequate supply of liver glycogen for the night fast. With its ideal combination of fructose (fruit sugars) and glucose, raw honey is immediately absorbed into the body and provides the fuel needed. Fructose in raw honey facilitates the conversion of glucose to help ensure a good liver glycogen supply overnight.
Naturally occurring sugars in raw honey help to stabilize blood sugar levels and slightly raise insulin which stimulates the release of tryptophan in the brain.
Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that serves several purposes including helping create serotonin and melatonin.3 Melatonin is a neurotransmitter-like substance that plays an important role in regulating our circadian rhythm, temperature and sleeping pattern.
All of this amazing information suggests that eating 1 or 2 spoonfuls of raw honey each night before bed can increase the quality and quantity of your sleep. Add raw honey to tea or warm milk with a dash of cinnamon as you settle in for the night, or keep it simple, all you really need is a clean spoon and a jar of raw honey!
Support your immune system today by visiting truegoldhoney.com and ordering your favorite variety of pure raw honey and receive free shipping on all orders over $30 by using the code: BEEHEALTHY
sources
1https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8621064