men and stress

Sleep – the magic cure for low drive in men AND women.

While I work with a lot of guys who seek me out for help with things like low sex drive, and fatigue, and weight gain, you’d be surprised that a lot of women are looking for help too.

While the fundamental approach is the same- reducing the impact of the various types of stress that screw up the balance between stress hormone and sex hormones, the specific changes can be a little different.

For instance, guys one of the central ideas is incorporating some intensity in the weight room to boost testosterone (along with cutting the crap out of their diets, fixing up digestive problems, and getting them to deal with stress). With women, we focus more on really cleaning up the diet and repairing their adrenal systems.

But one thing that both men and women almost always need to work on is consistency and quality of their sleep. As my mentor Dr. Daniel Kalish says, “Sleep is treatment.”

As I like to say to my patients when we start a program, let’s pick the low hanging fruit. That means we start with the things that are easiest to fix, and improving sleep can often be one of the easiest.

Sleep is the time when your body repairs the damage from the day, and sleep can be a significant antidote to stress. For instance if you’re get 5-6 hours of sleep because you’re up late working too hard, or worrying about money, or worrying about your kids it can further drive up your stress hormone levels and drive your sex hormone levels down. But how realistic is it to quit your job, abandon your debts and run away from your kids? It’s not. So instead of trying to quick-fix major issues, we flip the problem over and just work on sleep. Here are the most common suggestions that I use with patients

  1. Cut back on caffeine, and stop any caffeine after 2PM. Caffeine can metabolize slowly in some people, and can still affect you 8-10 hours after you consume it.
  2. Don’t drink alcohol on weeknights. Alcohol can really screw up your blood sugar, and can often cause people to wake up around 2AM and have a very hard time falling back to sleep.
  3. Avoid doing business or looking at your finances at night. These things almost always get people a little amped up and can make it really hard to get to sleep.
  4. Make sure your sleep environment is cool, dark, and quiet. Many people sleep better with some white noise, like from a fan. Also make sure you can make the room dark and cool. If the temp is too high, it can be hard to sleep.
  5. Avoid sleep drugs, including over the counter ones. These things create dependency an ultimately disrupt productive sleep.
  6. Figure out the cause. When we test our patients’ hormone levels, we can often uncover the reasons behind disrupted sleep. We can then use natural solutions to help you sleep better.

Just remember, fixing up your sleep habits can truly be a magical shortcut to restoring hormone balance and getting rid of symptoms like low sex drive.

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Tags: women and stress

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