Put Your Phone Away for Better Health

I stayed up way too late scrolling on my phone the other night, and I was woken up way too early by my growling stomach demanding food, now.

It got me thinking about the connection between sleep, physical and mental health, body composition, stress and...our dearly beloved cellphones.

As handy as all our apps can be for tracking progress at the gym, calculating macros, providing workout feedback and sleep data, and even streaming fitness classes, the flip side of looking at our phones all day and all night is that we hack our body's systems in a negative way.

Our hormones are chemical messengers that control our body's processes, like ghrelin, the "hunger hormone" that gets released when our food and energy intake is low, and leptin, the fullness hormone that tells our body we're satiated and can stop eating.

Many of our hormones have regular, 24-hour cycles affected by light and dark. So when we're up until the wee hours of the night looking at the glowing blue light of our devices, we throw our hormones all out of whack.

It deregulates our appetite hormones so we might feel more hungry than usual, and the artificial light also interferes with our body's production of melatonin, which is the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. (Yes, you can supplement melatonin. Sometimes you should! But if you're flooded with blue lights all day and night, you should also try addressing the cause, not just the symptom.)

Often, when we're looking at our phones too much, it's either because we're stressed and trying to numb ourselves, or the things we're reading and consuming are causing us to become more stressed. (This is why I avoid Facebook!)

The primary stress hormone is cortisol, which is necessary in certain amounts. When our stress is elevated, however, it can affect our hunger hormones, which might make us more hungry, and it can affect how well we sleep.

And like those bad infomercials that we watched late at night before cellphones...wait! There's more!

If we don't sleep soundly or for long enough, we're more likely to be tired, irritable, and unable to perform well a the gym and in our daily life. Chronically restricting sleep elevates our sympathetic nervous system activity, which puts us in "fight or flight" mode and increases heart rate and blood pressure, which in turn increases cardiovascular risk factors.

Plus, as most of us have probably experienced, when we're tired, hungry, and grouchy, it can sometimes make everything else feel frustrating or unsatisfying.

In certain cases, we address it by eating, resetting our bedtime, taking a walk, or talking to a therapist or a trusted friend. In other cases, we zone out and tune out by...staring at our devices with glazed eyes until way too late at night, which creates a vicious cycle.

Getting adequate sleep is a huge factor in our physical, mental, and emotional health. When we're chronically fatigued, it's impossible to function optimally and there's a huge toll on our bodies and our minds.

This week:
Challenge yourself to get curious about your own habits with sleep and cellphone use.

No judgment or shame -- most of us have room to improve! Observe your phone usage and its impact on the amount of sleep you get as well as your mood. Is it taking time away from other activities, like exercise, sleep, or connected time with family or friends?



FURTHER READING:

Precision Nutrition: All About Sleep

Baylor study: Cellphones Can Damage Romantic Relationships, Lead to Depression

Marie Spano, MS, RD, CSSD, CSCS on Instagram: Effects of Cell Phone Use on Sleep and Performance

Psychology Today: Sympathetic Nervous System Functions