Sleep: Nature's Most Powerful Medicine
The importance of sleep, is very often overlooked. “Could supporting our health really be that easy?” we think. The quality and quantity of our sleep has an enormous impact on our health and vitality and, by extension, on our fertility.
Sleep is nature’s most powerful medicine, and if you want to get pregnant, you must make it a priority: quality sleep, enough of it, and during the right hours.
All day long, from rising to retiring, we ask our bodies to “perform” in different ways. Our body spends the day doing our bidding, and quality sleep at the end of that day should be its well-earned reward. Sleep is when we give our body the opportunity to turn inward and take care of itself, so it can turn outward again tomorrow, and again do all the things we ask of it. Sleep is an act of gratitude we can show for having been given a body through which to live a life.
Sleep is when the body regenerates. Sleep is when the body heals. Sleep is when the body re-sets. Sleep it when the body builds up its reserves. Sleep is when we hand our body back over to itself and its innate intelligence and wisdom — the very intelligence and wisdom that knows how to make and grow a baby.
Sleep, specifically deep, restorative, REM sleep, is the only time your body secretes growth hormone, which has been shown to improve egg quality during IVF cycles in “poor responders.” Growth hormone boosts egg quality and accelerates the repair and regeneration of micro-capillaries — the same micro-capillaries that supply your follicles with oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and all the supplies they need to grow and mature a healthy egg.
Sleep is critical for neuroendocrine balance, meaning it supports a healthy mood and hormonal pulses — including the rhythms of FSH and LH which form the basis of healthy ovulation. And even if you’re undergoing IVF — which circumnavigates your own FSH and LH — adequate sleep still ensures optimal circulation, follicle growth, and general vitality. It’s always important.
Sleep plays a strong role in stabilizing metabolic function, making it a critical aspect of any fertility plan in the context of PCOS or overweight (see the importance of health weight and fertility, below).
Sleep has anti-inflammatory, neuroendocrine balancing, growth-promoting, and metabolic stabilizing functions, all of which directly impact our fertility — for better or worse, depending on whether we’re getting sufficient sleep or not enough of it.
To simplify, too little sleep depletes our reserves, while adequate sleep sustains and replenishes them. Getting enough sleep sends the message to our biology that we have — and will continue to have — the reserves required to create and sustain a life beyond our own.
Your schedule:
8-9 hours of sleep, taken at night.
In bed by 9:30 at the latest, ideally asleep no later than 10.
Your approach:
No electronics, TV, or other light sources in bed or in the room after lights out. This includes bright night lights, clocks, street lights, and the like — remove or cover wherever possible). If you can’t fall asleep right away, rest in the dark.
Nightly belly breathing to calm the nervous system and prepare for sleep, either just before or just after lights out (see below).
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