Maybe My Vitamin D is Low...

Short answer, quite a bit. When I was a kid, I remember watching a TV show depicting daily adventures of a 40 year old dad. He had gray hair and a gray mustache. Perhaps he had a lot on his mind that turned his hair gray but I'm under the impression that our society looks younger and younger nowadays. We feel younger, too. But we're not younger on the inside. Our organs know exactly how old we are! Adults above the age of 60 have less muscle, less blood flow to the liver and less kidney mass. Why is this important? Because liver and the kidneys metabolize and get rid of the drugs we take! If you've been drinking coffee your whole life, all day long, and had no trouble falling asleep, it may change as you get older. Suddenly, maximum concentration of caffeine increases from 15 minutes in a 20 year old, to almost two hours in an elderly person, so you keep drinking more because you don't feel the effects right away, as you used to. It also takes much longer for your ...

Last night I got home pretty late and felt like I had so much to do! Walk the dog, cook dinner, laundry and a quick vacuum, let me just check my email before going to bed. Once I was in bed, I had a pretty difficult time falling asleep. Shouldn't I be tired after this busy day? Or maybe something I was doing, or not doing, had an impact?   One of the complains I hear frequently from patients is difficulty falling asleep, difficulty maintaining sleep, or both. You would be surprised how many people have trouble with this! We live in such a fast paced society, we're exposed to light constantly, look at our phones and TV's and then, surprise, we can't fall asleep. There could be several reasons why folks have trouble with this. One of them is lack of proper sleep hygiene techniques. ("Sleep hygiene", such a silly expression, I didn't invent it, I swear!) This basically involves letting your body know it is time to sleep. So, what does your...