Getting good sleep is one of the most important things we can do, not just for muscle building and fat loss but for our mood, energy levels, and overall health.

Sleep is when our body is able to recover and repair cells, a lack of it even affects our aging process, speeding it up internally, as well as visibly causing wrinkles and sagging skin. 

During the first few hours of deep sleep is when many hormones, including growth hormone and IGF (major fat-burning hormone) are released.

Getting enough sleep also helps to keep cortisol levels lower and balance estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and thyroid.

So if we want a lean, toned or muscled body, then we need deep sleep every night for full recovery, muscle building, natural fat loss and hormonal balance.

Yet a third of Americans get poor sleep, and those with the worst sleep generally have poor health.

So what causes this and what can we do to not only get better, deeper, more refreshing sleep, but also to reverse the effects of poor sleep?

Let’s dive in and see.

Anyone who works out, runs, bikes or does any type of intense exercise, knows about DOMS — Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.

This is the soreness you feel not right after a workout or exercise, but 24-48 hours later.

At one point it was thought this was caused by lactic acid build up, but this isn’t the case.

(Lactic acid is an acid that starts to build up just before we reach our VO2 Max and can’t go any further in our exercise or workout.) But lactic acid actually helps you. Your body can metabolize it (burn it and use it as fuel).

So what really causes DOMS? And how can we prevent it or lessen it?

Let’s see.

Our body's ability to relax, de-stress, recover, and sleep deeply is heavily determined by one area of our body overlooked more often than almost any other — our Microbiome.

This colony of trillions of bacteria living in our large intestine helps produce the calming, relaxing, cortisol-lowering, and sleep-giving neurotransmitters GABA and serotonin.

These bacteria have more to do with our overall health, calmness of mind, nerve function, ability to sleep, ability to burn fat and build muscle, and even our hormones than you might think.

This colony, made up of about 500 different species of bacteria, is called the Microbiome.

But these bacteria, while being fully separate from us, act as if they were an organ unto themselves within our bodies. And what they do, amongst each other and in coordination with the cells in the lining of our colon, is truly extraordinary.

Cortisol is one of the most important hormones in our body. It’s been called the “stress” hormone because it’s released during moments of stress.

But it’s also the hormone that wakes us up in the morning, that starts the healing process in our body after any injury or workout, and that provides us with energy and mental focus when we’re “running low.”

But unfortunately, when cortisol levels go too high, it becomes something else.

It can cause muscle loss and prevent muscle gain, cause fat storage and prevent fat loss even when we’re exercising, cause low energy levels, cause us to feel stressed, cause poor sleep, and even slow or prevent healing and recovery.

If you have trouble with any of the above, it’s likely that higher than normal cortisol levels play a part.

But that’s when it’s too high. And, unfortunately, for many people in society today, it already is too high.

So let’s dive in and see what cortisol is, how it works and how we can balance our levels.

We know about amino acids, hormones, and how different foods affect our ability to build lean muscle, burn fat and stay healthy.

But if we want to achieve maximum levels of energy, recovery, health and performance, and build the most lean muscle, then we need to go down to the cellular level.

After all, our bodies are just one big mass of some 100 trillion cells all bonded together.

How well we're doing is an exact reflection of how well our cells are doing.

And they require a multitude of nutrients and biochemicals, all held in equilibrium, to ensure they can work properly, produce energy, build muscle, and keep our body going.

When these aren't properly balanced we can get headaches, brain fog, low levels of energy, muscle cramps, slower recoveries from workouts, and imbalances in hormones.

But when everything is in place, we have the most powerful you that you can be.

So let’s see how this works.

The effect that energy drinks and high levels of caffeine have on our bodies, our health, our sleep, our stress levels, our mood, our anxiety levels and our hormones is much more than most people think.

When continued over time, these can have a very significant impact on our long-term health and our body’s ability to function at optimal levels, not to mention our ability to lose fat and gain muscle.

And considering many people who drink these are in their teens or twenties, when their bodies are still developing, the damage they do there can be far worse, leading to acute or even chronic health conditions in the future.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also depression and even brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life, much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.