Sleep…why does it matter?
We all know that sleep is important, I mean we all know how bad we feel after one bad night. But why does it matter when it comes to our reaching our fitness related goals?
What happens if we don’t get enough…
Sleep is essential for maintaining proper brain function, this affects things such as our memory, alertness and reaction times for example. Combine this with a possible decrease in metabolic rate and an increase in appetite, poor sleep is massively going to affect our decision making and make it harder to adhere to our nutritional goals. Even in the gym performance can decrease and our recovery takes a massive hit leading to further decreases in performance.
Furthermore from a health perspective, poor sleep can lead to a decrease in endocrine function, increased susceptibility to disease and illness such as altzheimers, cancers, diabetes, autism in children…even poor sleep while you’re pregnant can affect your babies health.
So enough scaremongering from me, you probably get that it’s pretty important by now to make sure you’re getting a good nights sleep.
what can affect sleep?
There are many different factors that can affect your sleep quality and quantity. I’ll be covering the main ones in this blog post…
Bedtime/discipline
So simple yet so effective, if you know you get up at 6.30am every morning, and usually need 8 hours of sleep then you can set 10pm as your bedtime. If you currently aren’t doing this then figure out what’s stopping you. 9 times out of 10 this will be either TV or looking at your phone, so something as simple as turning off the TV at 9.30pm every night may be enough to improve your sleep. Literally better sleep at the press of a button!
Routine
Following on from bedtime, you want to get into a routine with sleeping. Going to bed at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning will naturally increase the quality of your sleep.
Nutrition
Being in poor physical shape or poor eating habits can have a knock-on effect on your sleep. If you’re eating a lot of highly processed junk foods in the evening and attempt to go to bed with elevated blood sugar, it may lead to restlessness and inability to get to sleep in the first place. A poor nights sleep then has a further negative effect on your blood sugar levels.
bLUE LIGHT EXPOSURE
TV’s, phones, laptops all let off blue light which actually sends signals to the body that it’s time to wake up and inhibits your ability to get into the later stages of sleep.
Caffeine
Caffeine is a stimulant that bonds to the same receptors in our brain as adenosine (sleep drive). This inhibits the ability of adenosine to attach to these receptors, however, it still builds up in the background. Eventually, the caffeine wears off and this build-up of adenosine hits us which gives us ‘the crash’. This leaves us with a greater need for sleep and often leads to more coffee.
At night we sleep some of the adenosine off but wake the next morning after a poor nights sleep with some adenosine built up. We then reach for the coffee again, you can see how the cycle is endless.
Caffeine also has a half-life of 5 hours, meaning if you had a coffee at 4pm with 200mg of caffeine in it then at 9pm you would still have 100mg in your system.
Stress
Poor sleep has a negative effect on your stress levels and high stress can affect your sleeping habits and quality. It’s a vicious cycle and when ones off, the other usually is as well. Stress is a whole other subject that I will cover in another blog, however just consider all of the stressors you’re under, even training.
Training with high intensity in the evening will stimulate your CNS and have you in a sympathetic state (fight or flight mode) which isn’t where we want to be when trying to sleep for the night. This is often unavoidable as people have to train after work in the evenings. I’m not by any means saying don’t train in the evenings but be aware of all of the things on this list you're potentially doing to negatively impact your sleep.
what to do about it…
Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day.
Improve your daily nutrition.
Avoid blue light pre-bed (most phones have blue light filters now).
Avoid caffeine within 8 hours of intended bedtime.
Manage your stressors.
Assess sleep environment (pitch dark room, adequate temperature, no lights/noise).
Adhere to your new sleeping habits.
So now that you know how important sleep is, not only for training but for overall health, I hope that you will value sleep a little more. Follow the guidelines above and I guarantee you will see an increase in performance, the way you look and the way you feel.
NEED HELP?
Feel free to send me a message on Facebook, Instagram or via e-mail (conormoranpt@yahoo.com) if you’re struggling with this or have any questions, I’d be happy to help.