Snooze or Lose: A Nurse Practitioner's Guide to Better Sleep

Could your sleep habits be sabotaging your weight loss efforts? Nurse practitioners Nicole Baldwin and Kelli White tackle the critical yet often overlooked connection between sleep quality and overall health in this eye-opening discussion.

Kelli shares a compelling case study that challenges conventional wisdom about weight loss. Her patient maintains a strict calorie deficit while working two full-time jobs and parenting, yet cannot lose weight. The culprit? Severe sleep deprivation has thrown her body into survival mode, making weight loss physiologically impossible despite doing "everything right" with her diet.

This episode dives deep into the science of cortisol—your body's primary stress hormone—which follows a natural 12-hour rhythm peaking at approximately 4 AM and 4 PM. When sleep suffers, this delicate hormonal balance collapses, triggering a domino effect that impacts metabolism, mood regulation, and even perimenopause symptoms. The hosts differentiate between merely lying in bed versus achieving truly restorative sleep, highlighting how interruptions from bathroom trips, pets, or a snoring partner can significantly diminish sleep benefits.

From a functional medicine perspective, achieving 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep isn't just a luxury—it's a non-negotiable foundation for hormone balance, effective weight management, and overall wellness. Whether you're struggling with unexplained weight gain, perimenopausal symptoms, or general fatigue, this episode offers valuable insights into why addressing your sleep hygiene might be the missing piece in your health puzzle. Ready to transform your health through better sleep? This conversation is your wake-up call to make sleep a priority.

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Chapters

• 0:02 Welcome to Tattoos and Telehealth
• 0:16 Introduction to Sleep Hygiene
• 0:33 Why Sleep is Critically Important
• 0:59 Case Study: Sleep Deprivation Effects
• 1:50 Cortisol Rhythm and Hormonal Balance

Transcript

Nicole: 0:02

Hi everyone, welcome to Tattoos and Telehealth another episode. And I'm Nicole Baldwin and this is my great friend and colleague, Kelli White, and we are nurse practitioners, as you know, if you've seen our previous episodes. Today I want to talk to you really quick about sleep hygiene and what that means and how to enhance your quality of sleep overall. So I'll let Kelli start off with just some tips and we'll take it from there.

Kelli: 0:33

So a couple of things that I want to start out with is why is sleep so important? It's important for a lot of reasons, nicole. One of the big things that I think I kind of soapbox and harp on right now is you know, I'm perimenopausal. I haven't made that a secret. It's a big deal for women that are perimenopausal. It's a big deal for anyone that's trying to lose weight. I'll use this as a case study, just as a quick example.

Kelli: 0:59

I have a patient that is working two count them two full-time jobs. So she works eight hours, gets a three-hour break so she can go pick up her kiddos because she's also a full-time mom and then works another eight hours. I don't know where this woman gets any sleep, like I think she grabs 30 minutes here and there, does meals, does kids, grabs a few like. I truly don't know where she sleeps. She's morbidly obese. She is struggling to lose weight. She tries to eat right, like she's literally in a starvation mode. She cuts calories, she's in a calorie deficit. She cannot lose weight. So us in also, you know, taking care of patients that are struggling to lose weight. You know you and I, nicole, tell patients that a calorie deficit is how you lose weight. This lady is not going to lose weight in a calorie deficit. Her body is in starvation mode because she's not sleeping.

Kelli: 1:50

So sleep is crucial for so many things weight loss, hormone balance. One of the big, huge hormones that your body produces that is critical for natural balance is cortisol. Your body has a natural cortisol rhythm that occurs twice a day. For most of it it's 4 am 4 pm. I don't care whether you live central time, eastern time, I don't care, it's somewhere around there. It's a 4 am 4 pm rhythm. Okay, it's about an every 12-hour rhythm.

Kelli: 2:19

If your body is not able to get good enough sleep where you have that natural cortisol rhythm to produce good, effective stress balance Because, remember, cortisol is your stress hormone You're not going to lose weight, you're not going to feel good, the rest of your hormones are going to be out of balance and everything else in life is just going to suck Like nothing else is going to feel good. So that's why sleep is such a soapbox for me. If and when you come see me, we're going to talk about your sleep Like that's one of the big things of functional medicine. That's my question to you how much do you sleep? Do you have a regular bed schedule. Do you get seven to nine hours of uninterrupted sleep. You may go to bed at nine o'clock. Do you go to sleep at nine o'clock? Do you stay in bed or do you get up and go pee a few times in the night? Does your dog wake you up? Does your cat wake you up? Does your spouse snoring wake you up? Like are you getting that good uninterrupted? No-transcript.