It wasn’t my habit years ago to walk into your average office and cringe at the sight of workers sitting at their desks. I have to confess that that sort of reaction is exactly what takes hold of me nowadays.

After seeing many patients that need treatment for everything from numbness and tingling in their fingers to debilitating lower back pain, it quickly became obvious that the desk posture of the average American office worker really isn’t working out. Home computer users needed plenty of help, too.

This article is dedicated to those of us who’ve made the jump to the information age. If you use a computer, read up. You need this information.

We’re going to walk step by step through setting up your computer workspace. You’ll be rewarded with a much less stressful setup that will treat you better long term.

A Good Foundation

We start with your chair. The more adjustable, the better. The base, or seat, of the chair should not only raise and lower, but ideally it should be able to tilt forward and back.

That is, the edge of the base that is closest to your knees should be able to lower relative to the edge that is closest to the back support.

You need the base of the chair higher than you think. You want to be able to raise the base so that your hips are significantly higher than your knees. Say, at least 4-5 inches.

Stand up. Place one hand at the small of your back and the other on your tail bone. Keeping your hands where they are, slowly sit down onto a low chair that has your hips even with your knees. Feel how your lower back rounds out substantially?

Now start over in the standing position. This time, sit down onto a taller chair, stool, or even a tabletop so that your hips are well above your knees.

You should notice that your lower back doesn’t round out as much, keeping your spine in a more neutral position and the weight of your torso centered through your pelvis. When you’re in the right position, even your feet will feel more grounded on the floor.

Here’s where the base tilt comes into play. With your hips higher than your knees, on some chairs the front edge of the base will dig into the backs of your thighs.

Tilting the front edge of the base downward eliminates this pressure, and also has the beneficial side-effect of slightly rocking your pelvis forward into an even better position.

If your chair doesn’t have this feature, you can accomplish the same thing with a small pillow or wedge, with the thick part toward the back.

Now that the base is at the optimal height and tilt, you should be able to sit comfortably, balanced, without the need for any particular back support. This is the reason most people sit with better posture on an inflatable exercise ball.

Sitting on an exercise ball, your hips are typically higher than your knees, and the natural curvature of the ball tends to rock the pelvis slightly forward so that you are balanced over what yoga practitioners call your “sit bones”.

Anatomically these are known as the ischiums, and they make up the part of your pelvis that is closest to the ground. You can feel them simply by putting your hands under your buttocks when you’re sitting.

Balance is key. If our spine is centered over our pelvis, it takes very little energy to maintain good, low stress posture. It’s only when we slouch, lean too far forward, or too far back that we have to engage extra, non-postural muscles to hold our position.

As far as exercise balls go, there’s nothing wrong with using one as your regular “chair” of choice. Most people will prefer the aesthetics and extra adjustability of a well-made office chair, however, so read on.

Gentle Reminders

Now that the base of your seat is at the right height and tilt, you can adjust the back support of the chair. Once you’re sitting in a balanced, tall position, with hips higher than knees, simply adjust the back of the chair until it gently contacts your lumbar area.

The seat back should essentially function as a reminder when you begin to slouch. When you do, your spine will press more firmly into the back of the chair. This additional pressure will serve as your cue to get yourself back into a good position.

The next reminder comes from the armrests. Sitting tall, your shoulders should be relaxed, hanging loosely from your torso. Your elbows should be bent at 90 degrees or more, so that your forearms are angled slightly down from elbow to wrist.

Assuming this position, bring the armrests up so that they gently touch the undersides of your forearms. Once there, if you start to slouch your forearms will rest more firmly on the armrests, and your shoulders will start to sneak up closer to your ears. That’s your wake-up call to get back where you need to be.

The Desk is Next

The base is at the right height. You’re sitting balanced over your pelvis. Your forearms are angled slightly downward. Your wrists are not bent, but are flat and relaxed so that you don’t engage any more of your forearm musculature than is absolutely necessary.

Now, look at your hands. Right where they’re placed is the level that your desk should be. More accurately, this is where your keyboard should be, so your desk should actually be placed an inch or two below that.

Notice that we did not determine what level your desk should be until we got your chair setup exactly as we wanted it. We’re obviously assuming that you have a desk that is capable of having its height adjusted. If not, you have options.

First, you have some room to play with the height of the chair. As long as you keep your hips higher than your knees, and you can tilt the base so that your legs are comfortable, you can raise the chair until your hands rest comfortably at the level of your keyboard.

If your desk is set too high, you may run into a couple of problems. You might not be able to tilt the base of your seat enough to get comfortable. Or, in order to get your hands at the right height you might have to raise the chair so high your feet come off the floor.

In these cases a footstool can be a lifesaver. You can find them at most office supply stores and they’re made for this very reason. Using a footstool your legs will be able to rest comfortably using a chair that is set high enough to get the rest of your body into a good position.

If your chair won’t raise you high enough to get you into the correct position relative to your desk, sometimes a keyboard and mouse tray that slide out from underneath the desk will solve the problem. Consult your local office supply store for options here. If that’s not possible, it’s time to invest in a new chair, desk, or both.

Look Up to Work

The last thing we adjust is the position of your monitor. Don’t skimp on this one. Neck problems that end up causing shoulder, arm, or hand pain are frequently caused by chronically poor head position.

Where do you put it? Right where your eyes go. Place the center of the screen at eye level. You can pick up a monitor riser or even a cantilevered stand to set it at just the right spot. Again, consult your local office supply store. In a pinch, a couple of phone books will also do the trick.

Many “ergonomic guides” that come with computers and monitors recommend placing the top of the screen at eye level. This is too low. Your head will follow your eyes. If your monitor is set on your desk before long you’ll find your neck craning forward so that you can look into the screen.

Finally, make sure the screen is at least a couple of feet from your eyes. Any closer and the constant glare of the screen so close to your face will cause eye strain. Any further and you’ll find yourself bending over your desk to get close enough to the screen to be able to read what is on it.

If you have to use reading glasses or bifocals to see the screen clearly, do yourself a favor and invest in a pair of computer glasses. These are glasses that are designed for computer use.

The entire lens, as opposed to just the bottom half, is devoted to the distance at which you would read from the monitor. This way you’re not constantly tilting your head back and looking down your nose to take care of your daily work.

The Bottom Line

With any setup for a repetitive activity, use your body as a guide. The error often made is in attempting to mold your body to a new task or piece of equipment. This is approaching it backwards.

Always try and position yourself in the most neutral, stress free position and then attempt to adapt your task around it. For this reason it pays to invest in desks and chairs that are as adjustable as possible. This gives you the most freedom to play with different positions and find the one that keeps you at ease.

Investment is an appropriate term here. Anything you’re going to spend hours a day on — for weeks or years at a time — is worth a little extra financially. The return you get in reduced stress, tension, and injury will be well worth it.

Last time we talked about sleep, and how a lot of people out there have a strange idea of what it is to be “normal”.

From waking frequently in the middle of the night, to only sleeping 4-5 hours at a time, to not being able to get to sleep at all, they think somehow that dealing with these issues on a regular basis just makes it part of the ordinary human physiological landscape.

In this issue we’re going to talk about shoulder, arm, and hand pain, which is another group of common complaints I see with patients. Any sort of nagging pain in the upper extremity is also frequently accepted as something that is just “part of getting old” or from some previous injury that can’t be helped. Neither is true.

Often, part of the problem is misdiagnosis. Take Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, for example. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, or “carpal tunnel” as it’s known for short, is a condition that affects the hand and is caused by compression of the median nerve, which runs through a passageway in the wrist — a tunnel, that is — formed by bones, ligaments, and fascia.

The median nerve sends signals from the thumb, index, and one-half of the middle finger so that you can feel sensations in those digits. It also supplies stimulation to small muscles that control some motions in these same fingers. Sensation and movement on the pinky side of your hand is controlled by the ulnar nerve, which does not pass through the carpal tunnel.

That last point is key. The median nerve runs through the carpal tunnel. The ulnar nerve does not. This means if you experience pain, tingling, or numbness in your entire hand, the problem can’t be originating solely in the carpal tunnel!

It is much more likely that the problem is coming from an area that is affecting both of these nerves simultaneously. Yet, we frequently see patients in the office with pain or numbness in their entire hand who have been diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Even worse, surgery is often recommended and performed on these patients with the inevitable and unfortunate outcome that they receive no relief in symptoms. Simply understanding how the nerves are anatomically positioned — the “wiring diagram” of the body, if you will — avoids a lot of problems with misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment.

Knowing these relationships is important for complaints other than hand pain. Nerves that supply our extremities originate from the spinal cord in large bundles. As they travel farther away from the cord they branch into smaller and smaller segments, splitting up to cover areas of skin, muscle, and other tissue. The closer to the cord a nerve gets caught, compressed, or otherwise irritated, the larger the area of tissue that is potentially affected.

Other places outside the normal area of sensation supplied by the nerve can also be affected as muscles that are supplied by the nerve are limited, or inhibited, in their function. When that happens the biomechanical relationships that are supported by those muscles are altered. Joints and supporting tissues can become inflamed and sore.

Many people are familiar with the radiating pain down the leg commonly called “sciatica”. This radiating pattern doesn’t just affect the legs and the lower back. I frequently see patients with problems originating from their neck that show up as shoulder, arm, or hand pain. The pattern is the same as what happens in the lower extremity: something affects the nerve root that supplies skin and muscle in the upper extremity.

Pain, tingling, or numbness is thus experienced at a place distant from the source of the problem. Biomechanical relationships in the arm are also altered which can add further irritation to any joint or muscle in the area.

Again, understanding the anatomy is crucial. Just like in the lower back, in between each vertebrae in the neck are discs with a fibrous outer ring and gel-like material in the center. Nerves come out of the spinal cord between the vertebrae, right where the discs are. This means anything that might cause the disc to bulge or herniate has the potential to affect the nerve root.

The nerves in the neck supply the muscles of the arms, among other things, and provide sensation on the skin in predictable patterns called dermatomes. See http://www.collinsdc.com/images/dermatomes.jpg for an illustration. Doctors can use this knowledge to aid in determination of what nerve root might be affected with someone experiencing, say, hand pain in their thumb and index finger.

Look at the dermatome picture again. Pain in this area, in addition to simply being a problem locally in the thumb, could also originate around the 6th cervical vertebra. Your doctor should be able to distinguish between the two.

Aside from the more obvious causes of shoulder or arm pain — falls, sprains, etc. — the most common cause of upper extremity pain I see in the office is habitual. That is, something we do every day as part of our normal routine or posture can bring about aches, pains, tingling, or numbness that would seem to have no particular cause. This is prime material for the “I’m just getting old” or “I must be out of shape” explanations that float around the water cooler.

In particular, poor neck posture seems to be a big culprit. Anything that routinely brings the chin closer to the chest seems to lead to the type of pain described. Back to the anatomy, bringing the chin closer to the chest flexes the vertebrae in the neck forward. This position creates wedging of the vertebrae, with the front edges closer together and back edges farther apart.

Remember the discs between each of the vertebrae? When this wedging happens, the discs have to go somewhere. Being more fluid in nature, with the vertebrae wedged together in the front, the discs tend to push out toward the back. If this happens over a long period of time, eventually the discs can bulge or even herniate.

When any of this disc material — or any other anatomical tissue, for that matter — starts to abnormally push on a nerve, you’ve got problems. The nerves at this level supply everything you can think of in the upper extremity. Shoulder pain, elbow pain, tingling down the arm, or pain in the wrist and hand are all fair game, to name a few.

So what qualifies in the realm of bad habits? Reading in bed or watching TV with your head propped up. Routinely using a laptop or even a desktop computer with the monitor too low. Long periods of studying or writing with the material on the desk under your chin. Handwork, such as knitting, done with your hands close in to your chest. Sleeping on your back with your head on a pillow that is too high, or on your side, curled up tightly in the fetal position.

There are many others. The bottom line is: if you keep your chin down close to your chest for long periods of time doing anything, you have the potential for this sort of problem.

The good news is that fixing this problem is generally not complicated as long as you find someone who can properly diagnose what’s happening. Once you’ve done that, treatment is relatively straightforward.

Chiropractic adjustments help tremendously. The adjustment has to be done in a position and direction where the nerve root is not impinged in any way. When done properly, this seems to clear the nerve root of any impingement and minimize any radiating symptoms experienced.

The adjustment isn’t the whole fix, however. Lifestyle habits must be changed. In other words, keep your chin up! This is crucial to keep the vertebrae aligned and free of any wedging so that things have time to heal. This is analogous to having your skin cut with a knife. The wound will heal cleanly with minimal scarring if it is dressed properly and the edges are held closely together with stitches or a butterfly bandage.

On the other hand, if every day you go in and spread the wound apart with your fingers, you’ll be left with a nasty scar or, worse, the wound won’t heal at all.

Once the adjustment is made and lifestyle habits are addressed, residual issues can be tackled. Long periods of time with poor or diminished function and improper biomechanical support to tissue in the shoulder or arm can leave joints inflamed and muscles gnarly. Get in with a good Applied Kinesiologist, Rolfer, or massage therapist to work out the kinks.

Don’t let anyone tell you that the types of pains I’ve described here are a “normal” part of life. Keep your detective cap on and take an inventory of your usual activities that could be contributing to your condition. With a little persistence you’ll pass up that “normal” life for an optimal one!

Last time we talked about how we get to sleep and two of the more
important hormones in our body when it comes to that topic: cortisol
and serotonin. In a nutshell, stress raises our cortisol levels, and
also lowers our serotonin levels.

Low serotonin and good, restful sleep generally don’t go together.
So what do we do? Address the stress! If we can eliminate or control
the things that elevate cortisol, the serotonin in our brain will do its
job, bringing about peaceful slumber.

The problem is most people think of stress in one dimension.
Wrapping your head around the idea of psychological stress is pretty
easy. Our language is full of clues: being “stressed out” or a “stress
ball” are terms people use to refer to someone under a lot of mental
or emotional strain.

We intuitively know that this kind of stress can have very real, physical
effects. Having a “tension headache” is a not so subtle physical
manifestation of a more nebulous psychological state.

There are other forms of stress. Structural stress is a concept that
goes far beyond the realm of just the building engineer. Our bodies are
under structural stress from poor posture, physical exertion, or an
accident of some sort.

We are also plagued by chemical stress when we’re fighting off a
virus, encounter a bacterial toxin, or eat foods to which we’re allergic.
Mobilize your immune system for any reason, and you’re under stress.
Cortisol levels rise appropriately.

Other forms of stress are not as well known. Simply not eating
breakfast deprives your body of a needed, early source of fuel. The lack
of glucose keeps your cortisol elevated at a time when you want it to
begin its long, gradual taper down to the low point that will help
induce sleep later that evening.

The decline of our sex hormones — what begins in our 40s for both
males and females — will also produce a high baseline level of cortisol
until our bodies figure out how to handle this shift in our physiology.
This adjustment is generally complete shortly after menopause in
women, and at an equivalent time in men.

Intense exercise also elevates cortisol. That regular racquetball
game or spinning class may leave you spent and relaxed, short term.
It can have long term consequences for the total amount of stress your
body is under, however.

Many of these forms of stress are controllable, some are not. The
real question is, what can we do to mitigate them so that their
detrimental effects are minimized and we can get a good night’s sleep?

Our first task is to address the the culprit that is our primary source
of stress. In many cases, multiple sources need to be addressed before
a noticeable change is observed. Some are more simple to fix than
others. We’ll start with the most straightforward, and move on to the
more complex.

If you’re not regularly eating breakfast, having a small to medium
amount of good, whole grain foods in the morning is a healthy way to
raise your blood sugar levels. Whole wheat toast with butter, oatmeal,
or a non-sugary, whole grain cereal are good examples. A piece of
fruit will do the trick, too.

High protein breakfasts are filling, but don’t do as good a job at
raising your blood sugar levels in order to start cortisol on its long,
day-time decline necessary for sleep to ensue easily.

Removing yourself from a source of constant psychological stress is
frequently the best way to address such issues from a health
standpoint. If that’s not possible, relaxation techniques, low-intensity
exercise, or meditation are good mediators.

Ultimately, if you consider your source of psychological stress out
of the realm of your control, focusing on the forms of stress you can
control will be the best way to lower your overall stress and get you
to sleep.

Eating the right foods is a very important, controllable form of
chemical stress. Job one here is eliminating foods to which you might
be allergic. Remember, anything that causes your immune system to
mobilize is a cortisol producer. Food allergies definitely fall into this
category.

Once that’s done, cutting back on foods that are adrenal
stimulants — the adrenal glands are where cortisol is produced —
is often helpful. The worst offenders seem to be red meat, shellfish,
salt, and greasy foods. Eating “comfort foods” or generally ignoring
any internal urges to “eat healthy” is what often happens to many of
us when we’re under psychological stress.

Stress in any form — be it psychological, chemical, or structural — is
cumulative. Times of psychological strain are when we need to eat as
well as possible to keep our overall level of stress down.

Another common cortisol-elevator I see in the office is intense
physical exertion, be it exercise at the gym or clearing your garden.
Anything that significantly elevates your heart rate or causes you to be
out of breath is most likely going to be what exercise physiologists
consider anaerobic exercise.

“Anaerobic” is a term meaning “without oxygen”, and it implies that
your body has to resort to alternative metabolic pathways to create the
energy you need to perform a task. These alternative methods of
energy production are cortisol stimulants. If you regularly exert
yourself to the point of huffing and puffing, add that to your list of
controllable stressors, and back off a bit!

Many people do have cortisol-raising factors that are much harder to
control, however. Women in their 40s often suffer sleep trouble as their
normal level of ovarian hormones begin a gradual decline towards
menopause, which usually occurs in the early 50s. Until the body
adapts to this new state — that is, after menopause is complete —
they need an alternative to help them handle stress and sleep in those
in-between years.

Patients we see with this type of pattern frequently benefit from a
low-dose, natural hormone supplement or an adrenal adaptogen. An
adaptogen is a substance that elevates function when it is depressed,
and reduces function when it’s elevated. An adrenal adaptogen can
lower cortisol levels that originate from the adrenal glands when they
are too high.

Herbs like licorice and rhodiola have been used for this purpose for
centuries. Low dose, natural hormones can also calm cortisol
production in the adrenal glands at a time when the body is searching
for additional sources of hormones as the ovaries decline.

Males are not immune from this pattern, either. Male sex hormones
also begin to decline in the early 40s. Sleep trouble, among other
symptoms, can often ensue. Adrenal adaptogens like ginseng can
often be very beneficial in helping a sleepless male while he adapts to
this new life stage. There are many different types of ginseng, so
finding the right kind that works for a particular individual is key.

Nutritional deficiencies can also impact your ability to sleep. A
lack of vitamin B6 hinders your ability to produce serotonin from its
precursors. For that matter, a simple lack of the serotonin precursor
tryptophan, an amino acid, will directly affect how much serotonin
you can manufacture. These are chemical stressors — without these
vital nutrients the body has to adapt, if possible, and pull resources
from another system in order to function.

Clearly, there are numerous options to evaluate in order to
determine how to get someone to sleep better. My role as a doctor is to
help people evaluate which areas seem to be the biggest factors for
them personally. Individually, our goal is to be as healthy as possible,
eliminating stress and providing our bodies with the raw nutrients it
needs to thrive.

Keep in mind that this scenario is not the only thing that can affect
your ability to sleep. Sleep is a very complex activity, as far as our
brains are concerned, and should be revered as such. Other hormonal,
environmental, or physical factors are possible, and should be
evaluated by someone qualified to do so.

Regardless of the symptoms you experience, going through the
process of identifying and then hopefully removing big sources of
stress in your life will help you to become much more healthy over all,
and in the process give you a good night’s sleep!

Welcome to the first issue of Vibrant Health, a regular e-newsletter covering health topics as diverse as you! We’ll start off exploring something that we all do, just not as regularly or peacefully as some of us would like: sleep! Know someone who’d like to sign up? Send them to www.collinsdc.com/list/?p=subscribe. Enjoy!

- A. Chandler Collins, D.C.

Aid for the Sleepless

So why can’t you sleep? The numbers of people affected by sleeplessness are legion and the causes are numerous. Aside from the obvious causes of sleeplessness — a noisy environment, being sick, stuffed up, or otherwise uncomfortable enough to cause you to have trouble relaxing — there seems to be a large number of people out there who have trouble sleeping that can’t really nail down what’s causing it.

I’ll offer a common scenario for why many people seem to have trouble sleeping. It’s not the only explanation by any means, but we see it walk in the office frequently enough that it warrants special attention.

Part of the problem is what we seem to accept as “normal”. I can’t tell you how many times I hear people say something to the effect of, “Oh yes, I sleep fine. I get up two or three times a night, but it’s no big deal.” Folks, getting up two or three times a night is not normal. It may be common, but it is definitely not normal.

Part of our task here, then, is to understand what a true, normal sleep pattern really looks like, both from a practical and a physiological standpoint. Once we have that firmly established, figuring out where one individual is straying from this path is a much easier task.

For normal sleep, the most obvious thing to point out is that we should sleep through the night without interruptions. Many people assume that they wake up a couple of times a night because they have to go to the bathroom, and not the more likely explanation, which is that after they have awoken they notice an urge to empty their bladder. In other words, their usual pattern of waking up several times a night provides their body the opportunity to urinate. If they were sleeping more soundly the need to visit the bathroom would be less pressing.

Getting to sleep should also be relatively effortless. Overly long rituals of relaxation, or worse, self-medication with prescription, over-the-counter, or over-the-bar depressants should not be necessary. If you regularly climb into bed, shut your eyes, and then toss and turn for an hour or more before finally falling asleep, something is not right. You should then be able to stay asleep for six hours or more. Anything less is probably inadequate.

So what makes us sleep? There are lots of ideas and plenty of research in the area. Probably one of the most well-known theories, and one that seems to hold true clinically, is that a hormone in your brain called serotonin is largely responsible for sleep. As long as the brain pathways for this hormone are working properly, sleep ensues. A question the sleepless might ask, then, is what would interfere with the ability of the brain to produce or utilize this hormone?

Let’s go back to the obvious. We all intuitively know that we can’t sleep when we’re “stressed”. Why would that be? Sure, your brain may be busy processing all the thoughts and feelings surrounding the object of your worries, but there still has to be some mechanism by which your body temporarily suspends the sleep-inducing serotonin system in your brain so that you can go on sleeplessly figuring out how to solve your problems.

That’s where another hormone called cortisol comes in. Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone”. It is released throughout our bodies when we are under any type of stress, be it psychological, chemical, or structural. It is also one of our primary blood sugar hormones. This means that any time we don’t have enough blood sugar to fuel our activities, cortisol is utilized to raise our blood sugar levels so that we can handle whatever tasks our bodies are presented with.

Cortisol levels are highest right after we wake up — that is, right after we’ve finished (hopefully) 6-8 hours of sleep, during which time we typically wouldn’t eat or drink. Cortisol is secreted to keep feeding your brain and other vital organs with the blood sugar, or glucose, they need to survive. Normally, cortisol levels are highest right after you wake up, and then begin to lower right after you eat breakfast and give your body its first jolt of glucose.

What does this have to do with sleep? Well, we know that serotonin is associated with sleep. We also know that we can’t sleep when we’re stressed. It just so happens that serotonin levels happen to be inversely related to higher levels of stress and thus, higher levels of cortisol. This means that anything that might raise your cortisol levels will correspondingly lower your serotonin levels, interfering with your ability to sleep.

Interestingly, part of cortisol’s normal, 24-hour cycle involves a spike in its levels around 3 in the morning, give or take an hour. This is a very common time for people with sleep trouble to awaken. It seems that if you have something that abnormally elevates cortisol during the day, that extra spike that comes along mid-evening can lower your serotonin to the point that you wake up at night.

Those with high daytime levels of cortisol are easy to spot. Remember, cortisol is a blood sugar hormone. Part of the problem, however, seems to be that the energy we derive from blood-sugar produced by cortisol tends to be edgy and anxious. The high cortisol producers of the world then typically crave sugar or alcohol late in the evening. The alcohol and sugar give a quick jolt of glucose to rapidly drop cortisol levels. This then helps to remove the edginess and allows serotonin to rise and sleep to ensue.

Lack of sleep is frequently not the only symptom. Low levels of serotonin affect us in a number of ways. Perhaps the most well known consequence of inadequate amounts of serotonin is depression. Serotonin is the hormone that popular anti-depressants like Prozac and Zoloft work on. Their job is to artificially elevate serotonin so that your mood is not adversely affected. Your gastrointestinal tract function is also almost entirely dependent on serotonin for healthy, regular function. Sleeplessness and a sluggish gut thus frequently go hand in hand.

All of a sudden we have a plan of attack for figuring out how to sleep better. If we can narrow down the main things that tend to raise our cortisol levels, we can reduce the total amount of stress our bodies are under, raise our serotonin levels, and put us back on the road to a good night’s sleep.

Luckily the culprits are relatively clear. Essentially, anything that increases our levels of stress, in any form, will also raise cortisol levels. Our task is to find and treat the actual culprit of depressed serotonin levels so that getting to sleep by artificial means is unnecessary.

Next time, we’ll talk about the myriad ways our serotonin levels get disturbed and, more importantly, what we can do about it!