NSDR (Yoga Nidra) Has Drastically Improved My Diabetes Management
It’s a rather normal week so far, you feel fine, work, exercise, eat and sleep. The usual stuff.
All feels fine and smooth. Until it doesn’t!
Suddenly, I notice some small aches popping out from nowhere, the sense of fatigue increasing, a constant lack of focus. Even doing the stairs sends the heart rate to the moon as if I were racing against Usain Bolt.
Not only that: the blood glucose, otherwise regular and stable, starts to fluctuate around the edges of acceptable ranges
Lucky as I am to see my blood glucose evolve live on my smartphone as a type 1 diabetic, I immediately understand something’s up.
What’s going on?
Stress: The hidden T1D disrupter
As far as my experience goes, there is an almost one to one relationship between all of this occurring and me being stressed for some reason.
I have already covered the “stress” topic in other articles in the past, but it never fails to amaze me how each time is different. I always get to add a small piece to the puzzle, to understand my physiology and my organism a bit better, and to discover and try new ways to get back on track.
Stress for me historically originates in the work environment or in physical activity. Some hot potato to manage at the office or my inability to take a day off from exercise to recover are some constants in my life - which I am working hard to address. Immature as I am, I still allow these two silently work together in the background, compound and only realize they’re there when they come to the surface and become inescapable.
Provided that the goal is not to reach this point to begin with, once stress starts to produce its damage there are several things we can do to bring everything back to normal.
One tool I’ve been relying on more and more is Non Sleep Deep Rest, or Yoga Nidra. Let me share my experience with it, and how incredibly impactful it has turned out to be for my time in range, blood glucose stability and carb-to-insulin ratio.
And well being in general.
What is NSDR (Yoga Nidra)?
I won’t act as a neuroscientist, so I’ll rely on the real one, Andrew Huberman, to bring you a definition:
“Non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, is an umbrella term for a variety of practices that guide your brain and body into a state of deep relaxation without falling asleep completely. Yoga nidra (also called yogic sleep) is a more specific practice, typically involving a body scan or guided meditation while lying down.”
Ever since I have discovered its existence, I have been deploying it here and there during the day, and I’m quite persuaded of its incredible power for recovery and overall wellbeing. I love it because it is immediately and easily accesible, and most importantly it is incredibly effective.
I use it especially to gain some energy and focus back on days when I am more sleep deprived. I also deploy it to give myself a simple nice break on ordinary days when I particularly physically active. My preferred times are right after workouts, before meals, during work breaks or whenever I feel I need it, to bring my nervous system back to a state of calm and speed up the recovery.
As far as my experience goes, there really is no reason not do it. I feel it helps me sleep better when I do it in the evening, it helps me focus better at work when I do it at lunch break, it helps me move to the next task in a more relaxed state when I do it after a workout. Ever since I’ve made a regular post workout ritual, I also feel that my aches and small pains are gone more quickly.
And - but this is purely anecdotal - I’ve observed it has a dramatic beneficial effect on my blood glucose regulation on days when my CGM looks like a rollercoasters.
NSDR (Yoga Nidra) and Type-1 Diabetes
As I mentioned, one of the immediate and most visible aspects of life stress on Giovanni the type-1 diabetic is the rise of fasting blood glucose and the sudden increase in insulin needs. Which is: an increase of insulin resistance. That is not only Giovanni’s problem, though! Every diabetic will face the effect of cortisol. Its detrimental impact on insulin sensitivity has been widely documented, and they are the direct consequence of our inability to manage stress and emotions.
While in the past my coping strategy for higher blood glucose levels was to simply eat less and inject more (a very poor short term patch. How naive I was!), I have now made it a point to go down to the source of insulin resistance and heal my organism holistically and properly.
And it looks like my observations and experience do have some backing by science. Quoting an interesting article I’ve been reading:
Studies show that mindfulness meditation is one of the best ways to lower your cortisol levels immediately and over time. […]
You don’t have to pay for a course or go on a retreat. You can find free videos online, like this one or this one. You’ll be glad to hear meditating for just ten minutes a day has profound effects on stress levels. […]
If you have insulin resistance or diabetes, studies show that lowering your stress levels can help reverse your insulin resistance.
That starts to make sense to me now. On stressful periods, I see my blood glucose rise over the night, waking up with levels between 200 and 250. I notice my insulin intake for the same usual meal is higher, and that the blood glucose spikes more easily after each meal. I feel that my body is slower at recovering from a session and that reflects on the next session, compounds the damage and increases the sense of fatigue.
Introducing NSDR has changed this pattern and helped me steer the wheel of my stress management. Once again, the benefits of NSDR I am about to describe are purely anecdotal and cannot be labelled as “hard evidence” that spurs from a rigorous scientific experiment. But I have been paying close enough attention to at least conclude that there is no randomness either.
On days where all the factors would normally lead to imbalances in blood glucose and insulin dosages, to increased sense of fatigue and less perceived recovery, squeezing 10 to 20 minutes of deep relaxation have fostered the following benefits:
My fasting blood glucose after the session came back under normal levels, without any “rollercoaster” like pattern,
My hunger and craving for foods at any moment (often the consequence of sleep deprivation) was significantly decreased, if not eradicated,
Pains, DOMS, and muscle soreness were all relieved,
Provided that I eat slowly and avoid rushing through carbohydrates rich meals, the ability of my organism to make use of the injected insulin around meals improved (i.e.: no blood glucose spikes after the meals, as it is often the case when stress or sleep deprivation are left unmanaged).
I can’t “prove” these things. But in my experience there is a clear “before” and “after” NSDR. If in the past I would chase after my hyperglycaemias with more insulin, and give in to my food cravings, the calm produced by NSDR has also helped me deal with the urge to “act”. In a state of alertness, I am in control of my nervous system, and am more capable of rational decisions such as not rabbit yet another bite of some food, or opting to go for a walk instead of injecting more bolus.
What I have seen leads me to at least ponder that there is something very powerful and yet unknown (to me at least) in Non Sleep Deep Rest. Something that, among many other things, brings the metabolic, blood glucose and insulin sensitivity houses back in order.
Noticing stress
The tricky part is to notice stress at all. Taking the time to reflect on the day and paying attention to each small signal is crucial in this, and that is why I rigorously journal every day. Going on autopilot and crossing the fingers that everything will be fine eventually is not a strategy to me, and if it was it would be a very frustrating and unsuccessful one. Many of us, myself included, are too busy with work tasks and the crazy rhythms of modern life to pause and observe what goes on in the body.
Once the signals are seen (journaling is great for this), though, we can take action. And that is where the slowing down the pace shows its incredible power. NSDR is the first “emergency break” I hit when I don’t know where to start, it is a low hanging fruit that is always available.
I just search it on youtube, hit play, and relax for at least 10 minutes wherever I am, on my sofa or on the bus.
When I access this state of relaxation, then reducing stimulation in general becomes much much easier. I prepare my meals eat in silence, without my phone or laptop. I stop listening to podcasts or music while working or walking. I read more, or spend some minutes staring at the sea, the sky, the landscape. I reduce the frequency and the intensity of my workouts. All of these things spark from that initial bout of silence and relaxation I find in NSDR, and are all conducive to a proper fix.
And indeed the body adjusts. Actually, the mind, the soul and the body do. It is an holistic healing. Blood glucose management and insulin sensitivity are a part of this whole, an expression of it which we diabetics can observe thanks to our Continuous Glucose Monitors.
In the past, higher blood glucose simply meant more insulin. How wrong I was! The easy fix never works in the long term. Once I started to understand my body better, I saw that until I was able to manage my emotions, my stress, my life rhythm and breathe slowly and with more awareness, then any solution would never be a long term one.
If you’re struggling with your type-1 diabetes management, perhaps you could consider seeking more silence and a state of deep relaxation. If you’re nailing your dietary choices and daily movement already, as I think I am, then the cause of your blood glucose disruption might simply be hidden in the unknown universe of the crazy life rhythms and stimulations we’re exposed to.
By experience, I can testify that silence and deep relaxation work like magic. Except that it is no magic, it is science!
