As we come to the last episode of the year I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on 2018 and the wonderful guests we have had on Unstress. This year on Unstress we've covered topics such as sleep, nutrition, environmental issues, regenerative agriculture, functional movement, disease and mental health. In this episode, I review my highlights from the year and give you clear takeaways to be able to focus on your health moving into 2019.

Selected Links from the Episode

Previous Unstress episodes 

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, this is the last episode of the year and it's been quite a year, we've covered some amazing territory, I've had some fabulous guests as I've often said the podcast is how I just love doing it because I get to ask all these experts, all these wonderful people questions every week and they answer them and I learned so much and I hope you do too.

I just wanted to recap on some of the themes we covered this year because it's a great opportunity to just take stock of what we've done. We kicked off of course, early in the year with a whole section on sleeping and breathing and there's no accident about that. I've often said if it's the most important part of the day. We talked to the sleep physician that I work with here in Sydney, Dr. Hanna and we went into some basics. I then spoke to the sleep whisperer, Dr. Chris Winter who's written that fabulous book “The Sleep Solution”.

Of course, sleep is all about consistently good night's sleep, is a question of quantity getting enough sleep and for 90% of us that is seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And quality breathing well while you're asleep and that led us onto a whole range of podcasts that I've done sprinkled throughout the year on breathing because breathing something we get very little thought to and yet the more I learn about it the more I realise it is just so important. It actually does balance out our body chemistry, it can affect our mood, we can use our breath so effectively to calm down. We can use our breath when we exercise to increase our breathing rate and our energy flow, we can use our breath to control our autonomic nervous system which is what we spoke about with extreme wellness with Professor Mark Cohen.

And I had two fabulous guests Rose Albert Courtney who is an osteopath but after 30 years of Osteopathy decided that the best thing she could do for her patients and her knowledge was to do a PhD in breathing after 30 years of practice. And she is an absolute legend what she doesn't know about breath well, I wouldn't say isn't worth knowing but anyway she knows a lot. And then, of course, we spoke to Patrick McEwen who is one of the senior people in the Buteyko breathing technique.

So, breathing and sleeping were a very important part of it. I just think it is worth reflecting on what it and what happens when you're not breathing well because hormonally growth hormone goes down and we need that for repair, that part of our nervous system the sympathetic or flight-or-fight part becomes far more active and our cortisol levels go up. The parasympathetic which is the rest and digest goes down. Testosterone fertility libido and even testicular size get that goes down when you do not get a consistently good night's sleep. Our DNA is affected and that part of our DNA that is involved with our immune system is down-regulated and that part of our DNA our genetic makeup which promotes chronic inflammation is up-regulated. That is a serious problem because chronic inflammation is the common denominator in all disease.

We hear a lot about insulin resistance and of course, when you're not sleeping well insulin resistance is increased and that increases your likelihood of contracting diabetes or being obese. And there are two other hormones one called leptin which controls fat metabolism, that goes down so you're not metabolising your fa...