Experts advise healthy adults to sip water or other fluids throughout the day and to aim for an average of about 8 to 12 cups. That amount might vary depending on age, size, gender, activity level and medical conditions.
Some studies show that women who skip breakfast several days a week have higher levels of cortisol throughout the day - and disrupted cortisol rhythm is linked to metabolic diseases that are already more present in perimenopause, like insulin resistance and abdominal obesity, according to experts.
“Chrono-nutrition” is an emerging field that aims to understand how timing of food-intake may impact our health by affecting our circadian rhythm. This 24-hour “master” clock affects several hormones, including insulin, cortisol, epinephrine, melatonin and growth hormone. Each day, we experience an episodic release of cortisol under normal sleep-wake conditions.
Creatine is one of the most well-studied and safest supplements. It’s an amino acid that we get in our diet from animal muscle (such as beef, seafood, pork, and poultry) and we store creatine in our own muscle. Carnivores get an average of 1–2 g creatine /day from eating the above sources.
UCSF Women’s Sports Medicine dietitian Lindsay Orbeta was recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle article, “Can this ‘extreme’ rule about when to hydrate help you get better sleep?” The piece examines a hydration guideline proposed by a former Boston Celtics sports nutritionist, who suggests consuming 80% of daily fluids by 4 p.m. to enhance sleep quality.
