Tag: sleep

  • The Profound Importance of Sleep. (Hint: It’s essential)

    Sleep is one of the most essential, yet often overlooked, pillars of health. Despite the importance of sleep, modern society often treats sleep as an afterthought, with work, entertainment, and social obligations taking precedence. However, scientific research has continually shown that sleep affects nearly every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. From cognitive function and emotional regulation to immune system strength and longevity, getting adequate sleep is critical for a healthy life.

    The Science of Sleep: Stages and Cycles

    Sleep is not a uniform state; rather, it occurs in cycles that repeat throughout the night. These cycles consist of different stages:

    • Light Sleep: The transition from wakefulness, where the body begins to relax and prepare for deeper rest.
    • Deep Sleep: The most restorative phase, during which the body repairs tissues, strengthens the immune system, and consolidates memories. Most deep sleep occurs in the early part of the night.
    • REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep: The dream stage, essential for learning, creativity, and emotional regulation. REM sleep is most abundant in the latter half of the night.

    Each stage serves a crucial function, and disrupting sleep cycles—whether through poor sleep habits, alcohol consumption, or an inconsistent schedule—can have significant negative effects on overall health.

    How Sleep Changes Throughout Life

    Our sleep patterns change as we age. Infants require a great deal of sleep, sometimes up to 17 hours a day, as their bodies and brains develop. During adolescence, the circadian rhythm naturally shifts later, leading to later sleep and wake times—a fact that school schedules often fail to accommodate. As we reach adulthood, sleep stabilizes, but many adults fail to prioritize it, leading to chronic sleep deprivation. Understanding these changes can help individuals and policymakers create better sleep-supportive environments.

    The Role of Adenosine and Sleep Pressure

    One of the key drivers of sleep is adenosine, a chemical that builds up in the brain throughout the day. This accumulation creates sleep pressure, making us feel tired. However, substances like caffeine can block adenosine receptors, temporarily masking feelings of fatigue. Caffeine has a half-life of about six hours, meaning that even hours after consumption, half of the caffeine remains in the system. This can delay sleep onset and reduce sleep quality, especially if consumed later in the day.

    The Misconceptions About Melatonin and Napping

    Many people turn to melatonin supplements to help with sleep, but it’s important to understand their role. Melatonin helps signal to the body that it’s time to sleep but does not necessarily keep you asleep. For those struggling with frequent awakenings, addressing other factors—such as light exposure, stress, or bedtime habits—may be more beneficial.

    Napping can also impact sleep. While short naps (20-30 minutes) can be refreshing, napping too late in the day can reduce sleep pressure and make it harder to fall asleep at night. Proper nap timing is crucial for those looking to balance rest with maintaining a solid nighttime sleep schedule.

    Sleep and Its Profound Impact on Health

    The effects of inadequate sleep extend far beyond feeling groggy the next day. Research has linked sleep deprivation to a multitude of serious health risks:

    • Cognitive and Emotional Health: Lack of sleep reduces the brain’s ability to process and retain information. It also weakens emotional regulation, making individuals more prone to irrational decision-making and heightened emotional reactions.
    • Memory and Trauma Processing: Studies suggest that proper sleep aids in learning new information and skills, as well as in processing traumatic or distressing memories, helping individuals either forget or rationalize them more effectively.
    • Neurodegenerative Diseases: Chronic sleep deprivation has been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to the buildup of harmful proteins in the brain that are typically cleared during deep sleep.
    • Cardiovascular and Metabolic Health: Sleep loss is linked to higher blood pressure, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disturbances that can lead to diabetes. It also negatively affects metabolism, increasing the likelihood of weight gain.
    • Reproductive Health: Both men and women experience declines in reproductive health when sleep is inadequate. Testosterone levels, sperm quality, and menstrual cycle regularity can all be negatively impacted.
    • Immune Function and Disease Resistance: Insufficient sleep can weaken the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to infections. It can even reduce the effectiveness of vaccines by impairing the body’s ability to produce antibodies.
    • DNA and Gene Expression: Research has shown that sleep deprivation can alter the expression of genes, including those related to inflammation, stress response, and cellular repair.

    Alcohol and Sleep: A Common but Harmful Misconception

    Many people believe that alcohol helps them sleep, but in reality, alcohol disrupts sleep architecture. It suppresses REM sleep, leading to fragmented, lower-quality rest. While it may help with falling asleep initially, the trade-off is lighter, less restorative sleep throughout the night.

    How to Learn More About Sleep

    For those interested in a deeper dive into the importance of sleep, Dr. Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, is a must-read. This book provides a comprehensive look at the latest sleep research and explains why sleep is fundamental to our health and survival. It is a fascinating and informative read that can help anyone understand the importance of good sleep habits.

    Additionally, the Sleep Foundation is an excellent resource for learning more about healthy sleep practices. Their website offers evidence-based information on sleep disorders, sleep hygiene, and strategies to improve overall sleep quality.

    The Broader Societal Impact of Sleep Education

    The consequences of widespread sleep deprivation extend beyond individual health. Improved sleep habits could revolutionize productivity, education, and healthcare. Schools that adjust start times to accommodate teenagers’ biological sleep needs see improved academic performance and mental health outcomes. Workplaces that prioritize healthy sleep habits see better efficiency and lower absenteeism. Even in medicine, a greater focus on sleep education could lead to better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.

    Conclusion: A Call to Prioritize Sleep

    The science is clear—sleep is a cornerstone of health, and its benefits extend into nearly every aspect of our lives. After reading about the overwhelming evidence supporting the importance of sleep and its role in longevity, cognitive function, emotional stability, and disease prevention, I made significant changes to my own sleep habits. The improvements in my energy, focus, and overall well-being were immediate and profound. Because of this, I highly recommend that everyone take sleep seriously, implement better sleep practices, and consider reading further into the subject.

    As a general recommendation, adults should allow themselves at least 8 hours of sleep per night to experience the full benefits of rest.

    Prioritizing sleep is not a luxury—it is a necessity. By making sleep a priority in our personal lives and advocating for better sleep practices in society, we can create a healthier, more productive world for everyone.

  • Three Simple Foundations for Better Health (That Most People Are Skipping)

    If you feel low-energy, overwhelmed, or stuck in a cycle of trying to “do everything right” with your health and still not feeling better—you’re not alone.

    We live in a world saturated with health and wellness advice. Some of it is good. A lot of it is excessive. And some of it is, frankly, bullsh*t.
    Conflicting rules, fear-based messaging, and loud certainty from people who benefit from you staying confused have left many people feeling paralyzed instead of empowered.

    This post isn’t about optimizing every variable of your life.
    It’s about giving you a solid starting point—and explaining the why behind it—so you can stop feeling like you’re drowning in information and start moving forward again to better health.

    If I could only give three pieces of advice that would help the majority of people improve their health, they would be these.

    Not because they’re flashy—but because they work.

    1. Go to Bed and Wake Up at Roughly the Same Time Every Day

    Aim for consistency first. Perfection comes later—if it comes at all.

    Many people struggle with sleep not because they don’t know the rules of “good sleep hygiene,” but because our modern world actively fights against our biology. Artificial light, screens, irregular schedules, late meals, stress—none of this existed at scale for most of human history.

    At the center of this is your circadian rhythm: your internal biological clock that regulates sleep, hormones, metabolism, energy, and even mood.

    The reason consistent sleep and wake times matter isn’t because it’s trendy—it’s because this rhythm thrives on predictability. And unlike many aspects of health, this is something largely within your control.

    That doesn’t mean you need to be perfect.
    It took years to arrive at your current sleep patterns. You don’t undo that in a week.

    Consistency is the lever. Even being within a reasonable window most days is a win.

    If sleep feels like a mess right now, start here—not with supplements, gadgets, or anxiety about “doing it wrong.”

    2. Increase Your NEAT (Yes, the Boring Kind of Movement)

    NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis—basically all the movement you do that isn’t formal exercise.

    It’s underrated because it’s not impressive.
    It doesn’t look like marathons, PRs, or sweaty gym selfies.

    But it may be one of the most important contributors to overall health.

    Increasing NEAT can look like:

    • Having a dance party with your kids
    • Walking with coworkers after lunch
    • Parking farther away at the grocery store
    • Pacing while you’re on the phone

    Many people believe exercise is where all calorie burn and health benefits come from. It’s not. Exercise has specific purposes—strength training for strength, running for cardiovascular health—but the human body is not designed to be sedentary the rest of the day.

    Think about systems like the lymphatic system: a pump-less system that relies entirely on movement to help clear waste and byproducts from the body. No movement, no flow.

    Your body was meant to move often, not just intensely.

    NEAT isn’t glamorous—but it’s foundational.

    3. Eat as Close to Whole Foods as Your Budget, Time, and Mental Bandwidth Allow

    This advice isn’t about food purity.
    It’s about protecting yourself.

    There are entire industries that benefit from fear-mongering and food shaming—telling you what you should eat without acknowledging your resources, culture, stress, time, or access.

    We are not all the same.
    Social determinants of health are real, and pretending otherwise only creates guilt—not better outcomes.

    At a baseline, focus on:

    • Eating a balanced diet
    • Getting adequate protein
    • Eating around your target energy (calorie) needs

    If you can do that consistently, then you can decide whether tightening up certain food choices makes sense for you.

    People argue endlessly about seed oils, inflammatory foods, ingredient labels, fortified vitamins, and even how you feed your kids. The truth is—we know far less about nutrition than many “experts” claim. Our understanding is closer to what we know about the ocean floor than a solved science.

    Adequacy beats obsession.
    Consistency beats purity.

    Get your baseline nutrition in first.

    Why Simple Advice Works (Even When It’s Not Exciting)

    Humans survived for thousands of years before:

    • Algorithm-driven advice
    • Hyper-palatable foods
    • Wearables tracking every metric
    • Constant optimization culture

    We tend to overcomplicate health under the banner of improvement while skipping the basics—like changing the tires on a car that won’t start because we’re ignoring the engine.

    My own journey took me from obesity, to being extremely frail and undernourished, to chasing aesthetics, and eventually to chasing understanding—learning how to apply knowledge in a way that actually fits real life.

    Simple doesn’t mean easy.
    It means foundational.

    What Happens If You Actually Do This?

    If someone committed to these three principles for 6–12 months, they might see:

    • Increased daytime energy
    • Better stress and emotional regulation
    • Improved sleep and recovery
    • Healthier metabolic markers
    • Improved mood
    • Weight loss or gain (depending on their needs)

    This list isn’t exhaustive. And outcomes will not be identical—health is individual. But improvement is very realistic.

    Where to Start

    You don’t need to do all three at once.

    Commit to one:

    • Practice it until it becomes a habit
    • Then add the next
    • And the next

    See where this simple journey takes you.

    If this post feels like someone reaching out a hand and pulling you out of the river of noise—you’re not imagining it. That’s exactly what it’s meant to be.

    You don’t need more information.
    You need a place to start.

    And this is one.

    If you want support putting these, and more, into practice, click the button below to see my coaching options!

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  • Foundations First! Why Do I Coach Holistic Health?

    The more I read about human physiology—and the more I study the chronic conditions affecting the majority of the population—the clearer something has become:

    The health and wellness industry is pouring most of its energy into too narrow of a field.

    We’ve decided that health can be solved with:

    • The right training style
    • The right diet camp
    • The right supplement stack
    • Or the right level of intensity

    And if it doesn’t work for you?
    The implication is usually that you failed.

    I’m pushing back on that.

    Not because exercise, nutrition strategies, or performance goals don’t matter—but because they are often layered on top of foundations that were never built in the first place.

    What I Mean by “Foundation-First”

    When I talk about foundation-first coaching, I’m talking about four things:

    • Sleep
    • Stress
    • Environment
    • Education

    These are not exciting.
    They don’t sell well.
    They don’t make for dramatic before-and-after photos.

    But they influence every single bodily system.

    When these foundations are addressed early, one of two things usually happens:

    1. A large portion of the problem resolves itself
    2. Or we can confidently rule them out as the bottleneck

    Either way, progress becomes clearer and more sustainable.

    This is what holistic health actually looks like—not treating systems in isolation, but recognizing that improving foundational inputs benefits the whole human at once.

    What I’m Pushing Back Against

    I’m explicitly pushing back against the idea that we can fix widespread health issues with:

    • CrossFit (or any single training modality—nothing against CrossFit on it’s own.)
    • The Carnivore Diet (or any all-or-nothing eating pattern)
    • Supplementing our way out of poor sleep, chronic stress, or environmental mismatch
    • Skipping “boring” fundamentals because they don’t sell well

    Yes—you can build big biceps while sleeping poorly.
    But big biceps won’t protect your cardiovascular system from the effects of chronic undersleeping.

    Health and performance are not the same thing.

    And holistic health is far more than the guy telling you that you can eat an entire pizza if you just follow his program.

    Why This Shift Happened for Me

    This shift didn’t happen because I accidentally stumbled into better habits.

    It happened because of research.

    I became increasingly interested in physiological adaptation—how the body responds to stress, recovers, and changes over time. The deeper I dug into topics like sleep, circadian rhythm, environment, and behavior change psychology, the more I realized how niche this foundational knowledge is treated in the industry.

    Somehow, we’ve decided that:

    • Fancy lighting
    • Extreme transformations
    • And profit-driven certainty

    Are more valuable than teaching people how to work with their biology instead of against it.

    I will forever be changed by learning the basics well.

    Not because everything else is wrong—but because I now understand what everything else is built on.

    The Problem with All-or-Nothing Health

    Many popular “health solutions” feel all-or-nothing:

    • Intense training plans
    • Restrictive diets
    • High accountability pressure
    • Expensive programs that promise certainty

    When they fail—and many do—people are left wondering why health seems to work for everyone else but them.

    Often, the issue isn’t motivation or discipline.

    It’s foundational health.

    We already struggle with shrinking attention spans and constant distraction. Expecting people to maintain extreme interventions without stable foundations sets them up to fail—and then blame themselves for it.

    What Foundations Actually Do

    Foundations:

    • Remove guesswork
    • Reduce friction
    • Treat the whole human
    • Create capacity for experimentation

    Think about how many times you’ve jumped head-first into a new program or diet, only to realize two or three weeks later:

    • You don’t feel motivated anymore
    • You don’t feel better
    • And it cost more money than you’d like to admit

    Foundational habits don’t require:

    • Motivation
    • Subscriptions
    • Fancy e-books
    • Or constant decision-making

    They are building blocks.

    They’re boring—but they work.

    They create a system so that future you doesn’t have to keep asking, “Why isn’t this working?”

    Why This Approach Gets Skepticism

    We are hardwired for extremes.

    Big changes feel meaningful.
    Quiet consistency feels underwhelming.

    But here’s the truth:
    If you’re ready to make extreme changes to your diet or training, you’re also ready to make smaller, equally substantial changes that support your long-term holistic health.

    Foundations don’t limit you—they free you.

    They give you the stability to explore other approaches without constantly starting over.

    This Is the Season I’m In as a Coach

    This post is for people who have been chewed up and spit out by the health and wellness industry.

    It’s also me clearly delineating where I stand.

    I’m not saying everything out there is wrong or nothing else works.

    I’m saying holistic health is bigger than trends—and deeper than marketing.

    As long as I see gaps where foundations need to be built or repaired, I will address them with clients first. This is the season I’m in as a coach.

    You don’t have to sprint toward me or buy into anything overnight.

    You can walk nearby.
    Ask questions.
    Follow along at your own pace.

    And trust that building the foundation will support whatever comes next.

    If you are ready to make a change but feel like you need support, check out my coaching services by clicking the button below!

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  • Welcome to Real life: The origin story of Better health

    Hi, I’m Kyri Jones.

    And like a lot of people I work with today, I didn’t start in a good place with my health.

    In my late teens and early adulthood, I struggled with my weight. When I tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, I was classified as obese—33% body fat—and told to come back after I got it under control. I wanted to change, but I had no real understanding of how.

    So I did what most people do.

    I chased trends.
    I bought supplements.
    I followed whatever advice was loudest at the time.

    And I ended up swinging from one extreme to another—overweight to underweight. At one point, I looked and felt worse than when I started.

    That’s when it clicked:
    The problem wasn’t just what I was doing—it was how I understood health in the first place.

    A Different Approach to Health

    In 2018, I decided to take a different path.

    I invested in learning—earning my certification as a personal trainer through the American Council on Exercise (ACE), and later adding specialties in fitness nutrition, functional training, and sleep and recovery coaching.

    But more importantly, I kept going beyond certifications.

    I spent time studying physiology, diving into research, and learning from experts like Dr. Matthew Walker on sleep, Dr. Robert Sapolsky on stress, and evidence-based approaches to nutrition and long-term health.

    Because I didn’t just want better health habits—I wanted to understand why it works.

    And over time, things started to change.

    Not through extremes.
    Not through hacks.
    But through small, consistent habits that actually fit into real life.

    Why This Exists

    Fast forward to today—after military service, deployments, building a family, and stepping into life as a stay-at-home parent—and I kept noticing something:

    The same problems are still everywhere.

    People are overwhelmed.
    They’re exhausted.
    They’ve tried everything—and nothing sticks.

    And every day, they’re being sold quick fixes instead of being taught how to build something that lasts.

    That’s where this comes in.

    Who This Is For

    This is for the people who don’t have perfect schedules.

    Busy parents.
    Working professionals.
    People trying to juggle responsibilities while running on low energy and low time.

    It’s for the ones who:

    • Struggle with consistency
    • Feel stuck with their weight or energy
    • Know they need to make a change, but don’t know where to start

    And maybe most importantly—it’s for people who are tired of starting over.

    What I Believe

    I don’t believe in extreme diets.
    I don’t believe in shortcuts or “hacks.”
    And I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions.

    Health isn’t something you force—it’s something you build.

    Small habits. Big change.
    Build health that lasts.

    My approach is simple: meet you where you are, help you build momentum, and guide you step-by-step until you don’t need me anymore.

    Because the goal isn’t dependence—it’s independence.

    If You’re Here

    You don’t need to overhaul your entire life overnight.

    You don’t need more noise, more pressure, or another plan you can’t stick to.

    You need a way forward to better health habits that actually work in the life you’re living right now.

    That’s what this is about.

    If that’s what you’ve been looking for—stick around.

    Check out coaching services