Summary: Laura and Kelsey will be addressing the following topics in this podcast: Are there things I can do nutrition-wise that will help promote better sleep habits? I have started doing the Paleo diet but I need to gain about five pounds so what can I do to gain weight? I’ve only been on Paleo about 3 weeks and haven’t lost anymore weight, but I am underweight so really need to gain about 4-5 pounds. Links discussed: Mark’s Daily Apple: 7 Ways You Might Be Inadvertently Sabotaging a Good Night’s Sleep Balanced Bites: Dense Carb Sources on a Paleo Diet (includes PDF chart) Effects of food on cortisol and mood in vulnerable subjects under controllable and uncontrollable stress. High-glycemic-index carbohydrate meals shorten sleep onset. New therapeutic strategy for amino acid medicine: glycine improves the quality of sleep. Regular Gelatin and Hydrolyzed Gelatin Whole Health Source: Stephan Guyenet’s articles on the “Food Reward Hypothesis” TRANSCRIPT Thanks to Amy Berger of www.tuitnutrition.com for volunteering to transcribe this episode! LAURA: Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of Ask the RD. I’m Laura; I’m a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill, studying public health and nutrition and I’ll have my RD at the end of 2013. KELSEY: And I’m Kelsey, a registered dietitian specializing in whole food ancestral diets, and I’m working on my master’s in nutrition and functional medicine. LAURA: Thanks for joining us for this week’s Ask the RD podcast. We’re excited to be here and hope you enjoy learning about nutrition-related topics. Remember to submit your nutrition-related questions through the online submission form, which we’ve linked to on Chris’s site. And we’ll be answering as many of your questions as we can on the show, so feel free to submit as many as you’d like. And as a reminder to everyone, this is just general advice and should not be used in place of medical advice from a licensed professional. So, you ready to get started with our podcast, Kelsey? KELSEY: Absolutely. So the first question is for you, Laura. LAURA: Cool. KELSEY: Are there things I can do nutrition-wise that will help promote better sleep habits? LAURA: All right. Well, I really like this question because I think sleep habits not only are something that a lot of us need to work on, but they’re also a topic that, if you can get your sleep under control, then it can make a huge difference in your health. So I think doing nutritional strategies to improve your sleep is a really good idea for everyone. And in my opinion, the most important thing in promoting sleep for most people is trying to keep their stress hormones down, which I think is a huge factor that prevents many people from getting to sleep and staying asleep throughout the night. We already have a bunch of environmental or lifestyle factors working against us when it comes to our circadian and cortisol rhythms, such as bright and artificial light at night, not getting enough natural light during the day, exercising too close to bedtime, and simply getting in bed too late. And this is really common for most people. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve struggled with all of these issues at some point in my life. KELSEY: Oh, me too. LAURA: And as you know, Kelsey, recently I was in an internship at a hospital, and I’m pretty sure that clinical dietitians have it written into their contracts that they’re not allowed to have an office with a window, because I was spending about 40 hours a week in complete artificial light from 9 to 5, which really wore me down after a while when I was at the hospital. KELSEY: Same for me. It’s terrible. I would never…well, I shouldn’t say never, but I would not like to work in a hospital ever again, just honestly because of that. I felt so crappy all the time. LAURA: Yeah, I agree. I mean, if I don’t get enough sunlight, I really don’t feel well. And it tends to be a serious issue for me.
