Dr. Ben Bikman

I'm not going to do that.

And so as much as me as a scientist knowing that it would be better for me to have breakfast and lunch and fast through later part of the day, including supper, I'm not going to do that.

Because I care more about being a husband and father than I do about having a six-pack or whatever.

So I'm going to – my own way of doing it is – well, maybe without – I don't need to explain my own situation.

But I think that intermittent – finding one meal of the day or at a minimum just have three meals a day.

And try to have about four hours between those meals.

And then the most important thing –

I would say, and this is where we pity the shift workers and thank them, it would be evening.

Do not snack in the evening.

Especially one of the things I think that people don't appreciate is as much as they're monitoring their sleep and they're wondering why they have night after night terrible sleep habits, the most common cause of insomnia is elevated body temperature.

So they're too hot.

And one of the most common causes of being too hot is hyperglycemia.

Most people don't appreciate that when your blood glucose levels spike, you activate your sympathetic nervous system.

And of all the times of the day when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you don't want it to be turned on when you're trying to go to bed.

That's when you want the parasympathetic to dominate.

So when someone eats that evening snack of spiking their blood sugar, then they go to bed in a hyperglycemic state, they're going to have all of the signs and symptoms of anxiety.

They're going to be laying there hot.

their heart is going to be beating hard and fast, and they're going to feel that pulse pounding and wonder, what am I anxious about?

Why can't I just sleep?

Well, it's not because you have anxiety.