Sleep
Sleep
How can you easily improve your memory, creativity, and focus to be at your mental-best each working day? How can you increase your energy so you have more of a willingness to follow an exercise routine? How can you very quickly improve your blood pressure and heart health, and also improve your ability to lose body fat? You can do all of this with the most influential performance enhancer of them all: a good night sleep.
The World Health Organisation recommends getting 8 hours of sleep each night for optimum health. Sadly, two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain this amount of nightly sleep.
A Japanese study that spanned 14 years, monitored the health effects of 4,000 male workers and compared their sleeping habits. The study concluded that those who were getting 6 hours of sleep or less were 400-500% more likely to suffer a heart attack when in contrast to those who were sleeping more than 6 hours each night. In other research, every year 1.5 billion people around the world adjust their clocks, as they switch to/from daylight savings time. As the days become longer and we go from spring to summer, we move our clocks forward 1 hour, losing an hour of sleep as a result. What global hospital reports show is that when we lose just this 1 hour of sleep, heart attacks increase by 24% the next day. On the flip-side, when the other half of the world move from autumn to winter, and they gain an extra hour of sleep, hospital reports show a 21% decrease in heart attacks the following day. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true! How can losing just one hour of sleep each night contribute such a massive percentage jump? It makes you think how fragile your health can be if you’re one of the many who are constantly under-slept and sleep-deprived. The common joke is when people say ‘I don’t have time to sleep’ or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ is rather unfortunate, as if you adopt this mind-set you will be dead sooner and the quality of that (shorter) life will be worse (1). Sleeping less than six hours a night is directly correlated with not only death from all causes, but death from specific causes as well: cardiovascular disease, cancer, mental illness, diabetes, or accidental death from fatigue (often from a motor vehicle accident).
The reason why humans need to sleep for 8 hours each night, according to the latest sleep science, is to keep in tune with the human body’s natural circadian rhythm that we have evolved and developed for millions of years. The circadian rhythm is a naturally occurring daily clock that’s set within our brain, and it communicates daily human processes like when to be awake, when to sleep, when to eat, it affects your mood and bowel movements, and it helps to release hormones to keep your body finely balanced. Modern science and MRI scanners have helped us better understand and observe the neural activity that goes on in the human brain, and we can now compare the differences when we sleep versus when we don’t sleep enough. When our sleep patterns are in tune with our circadian rhythm, thus being 8 hours asleep versus 16 hours awake, we can optimally store and remember new memories, embed new motor skills (learned via a skill, sport or exercise), remove metabolic waste that builds in our brain (while we are awake), and prepare our body to be in an improved condition for the next day.
By getting a full 8 hours of sleep, the brain can cycle between two distinct phases, called NREM (non-rapid eye movement) and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Each of these sleep stages has different roles to play, and each of these are equally important to learning and retaining new knowledge. These two phases of sleep occur in 5 typical 90 minute cycles over an 8 hour period throughout the night. NREM sleep is more abundant at the beginning of the night when we just fall asleep. NREM sleep is often referred to as deep sleep, where the main purpose is to transport the most recent memories of the day from the hippocampus (the short-term memory centre) to the cortex (the long term storage area of the brain). NREM sleep in effect hits the ‘save button’ on any newly learned memories of the day, and by doing so, it clears the hippocampus so that we are ready to take in new memories the following day. REM sleep does occur all throughout the night as part of a cycle between the two different stages of sleep, however it is more abundant in the final 90 minute cycle of an 8 hour sleep period. REM sleep is a critical stage of the sleep process, as the brain takes those newly saved memories that was generated from the deeper NREM sleep stage, and collides those new memories with past memories, therefore building more refined and better new associations with what we’ve just learned – inspiring creativity. Getting sufficient REM sleep can often explain that “a ha, now I remember” moment, when suddenly the brain recollects a memory that was once forgotten. This is a key reason why short-sleeping, and not getting a full 8 hours of sleep can deprive the brain of this REM sleep stage that is critical in helping us better understand new ideas and concepts that we have experienced when we are awake.
From a physical point of view, it’s not a big surprise that getting a good night sleep prior to exercise will improve your energy and athletic performance the next day. Which means that your overall strength and fitness will improve faster because you’re able to put in better quality efforts when you are training. However, there is also much benefit to getting a full night sleep post exercise. Post-performance sleep accelerates muscle repair, reduces inflammation, improves central nervous system recovery, and improves memory (2)
See the performance stats below that shows National Basketball Association (NBA) player Andre Iguodala, of the Golden State Warriors. The image shows the improved performance of key game output when 8 hours or more of sleep are achieved, compared with having less than 8 hours of sleep (3)
From a weight-loss perspective, does sleeping less cause us to eat more? Evidence shows it does. Dr Eve Van Caulter, from the university of Chicago, has conducted many years of research on how a lack of sleep influences our hormones, and makes us gain weight. Leptin, is a satiety-signalling hormone (it tells us when we are full and when to stop eating), and Ghrelin is a hunger-instigating hormone (it tells us when we are hungry and when we need to eat). Unfortunately these two hormones get switched the wrong way when we are sleep deprived, and this lack of sleep causes our body to enter a stressed state. The result is that we lose our hunger control. When we sleep less, our hormone leptin gets deactivated (which makes us eat more), and our hunger is set to high (due to the hormone Ghrelin being ramped up to the max). In Van Caulter’s studies, participants who were sleep deprived ate 300 calories more each day compared to those that had slept for longer. I know what you’re thinking, 300 calories doesn’t sound like much. However, if you are someone who is constantly under-slept, that equates to an extra 9,000 calories per month – which can equal approximately 2kg of weight gain. In another study Van Caulter performed, she discovered that when participants were sleep deprived their consumption of chocolate, ice cream, potato chips and pretzels increased by 30-40%. I’m sure you can now understand why we binge eat on junk food when we’re tired. I’m not trying to say ‘get more sleep or else’, but I’m just trying to make you aware of how something so simple as a good night’s sleep can have such a big influence on your hormones, and your body weight. The good news is that getting 8 hours of sleep each night will stimulate higher areas of your brain that will help you control your hormones and rein in your cravings. The good news is that you can definitely correct this imbalance, you just need to make it a priority, set some sleep rules and get into a good habit, just like brushing your teeth in the morning.
A lack of sleep isn’t the sole reason why a high percentage of the world is overweight. The obesity epidemic is taking over the world, and this is also due to processed food intake, lack of exercise, stress, and other lifestyle choices. However, sleep should be thought of as equal importance alongside diet and exercise as fundamental ways to stay in control of our body weight.
In modern culture, sleep is often brushed-off as a weakness and there is a misconception that longer hours at work enforced by management grinding down employees leads to greater productivity – it doesn’t. Some workplaces can now realise the benefits of a well-slept work force. Financial bonuses have now been introduced to employees of some big U.S. corporates like Aetna, where-by staff who consecutively get 7-9 hours sleep each night are rewarded (measured via sleep tracking devices). CEO Mark Bertolini, has discovered that sleep investment in his staff has lead to greater productivity, creativity, increased enthusiasm of staff, less staff turn-over, and has lead to less sick days been taken – ultimately improving every aspect of his business (4).
Routinely getting a full night sleep is a fundamental pillar of good health, alongside a healthy diet and regular exercise. Everyone should personally try to improve their sleeping habits as an important vital cog in their personal health and wellness, because the science now shows, and we can better understand that sleep is a key contributor to a longer, active, and healthier life.
(1) Matthew Walker, “Why We Sleep”, ‘To Sleep’, p4
(2) Sleep Foundation, “Should I Nap Right After My Workout?”, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/physical-activity/should-i-nap-right-after-my-workout
(3) Ken Burger, “In Multibillion-Dollar Business Of NBA, Sleep Is The Biggest Debt” (June 7, 2016), https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/in-multi-billion-dollar-business-of-nba-sleep-is-the-biggest-debt/
(4) Matthew Walker, “Why We Sleep”, ‘Organisational Change’, p333
5 Tips for improving your sleep
5 tips for improving your sleep
1. Aim for eight hours sleep each night, and stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on the weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder for you to wake up on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so when it’s time to go to sleep
2. Relax before bed. Don’t over schedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual
3. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, tea and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to fully wear off. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal
4. Take a hot bath or shower before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep
5. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes, or if you are starting to feel anxious, get up and read a book in a dimly lit room, or listen to some relaxing music. Don’t eat anything at this time, or you’ll train your body to expect food at that time of the night. Once you start to feel sleepy again, then go back to bed. You need to associate your bed with sleep, if you’re constantly lying awake in bed you’ll be training your body to think that it’s normal
Tips for Getting a Good Night’s Sleep, https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/pdf/MLP_Summer2012web.pdf