Every fitness enthusiast is aware of the triad of exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Focusing on these three factors is the key to success. Thousands of articles, websites, and books on training and nutrition optimization exist.
And justifiably so, but sleep information is considerably scarcer. This article will provide a very general overview of how to get the most out of your sleep.
First, why is sleep significant? Because sleep deprivation seems to make almost everything worse and because it is so prevalent in today’s society.
Most of us do not even realize we are living in a chronic state of sleep debt because it is so prevalent. In terms of health, it increases your risk for virtually every disease imaginable.
It makes dieting more difficult by making you hungrier, more susceptible to cravings, and more likely to lose muscle mass. It worsens your training performance and significantly hinders your recovery.
Additionally, it impairs your disposition, memory, motivation, and quality of life. The traditional 8h guideline is a good rule of thumb, and larger training volumes may necessitate additional sleep.
Everyone’s sleep requirements are marginally unique. For example, many people claim they only require six hours of sleep.
In reality, however, research has shown that they are frequently accustomed to that level of energy and do not perceive its effects.
Extreme rare genes cause people to require less sleep than the average individual. If you believe that you only require 5 or 6 hours of sleep, you should be able to get that amount of sleep every day without an alarm, waking up naturally and feeling refreshed in the morning. This is extremely rare.
There is also a normal variation with age, as individuals report requiring less sleep as they age. Although they may require additional sleep, they are unable to obtain it due to the calcification of the pineal gland, which regulates melatonin, which occurs with age.
Also, older people tend to nap more, which may be a natural attempt to compensate for the sleep deficit.
The circadian rhythm, which is the body’s natural internal mechanism for managing our sleep cycles; and while it behaves like an internal clock, it is also calibrated by external cues.
Many individuals’ circadian rhythms are in shambles, jeopardizing their health, performance, and diet, typically because they unknowingly permit external cues to disrupt them.
Good sleep hygiene is the most important thing you can do to avoid disrupting your circadian rhythm. Most importantly, going to bed and waking up at consistent times every day. One of the best ways to help with this is to invest in a high quality bed. Your bed can make a massive difference in your sleep quality. Insert plug for affiliate bed offer here.
If you only remember one piece of advice from this article, let it be this: maintain a regular sleep schedule. It will be more beneficial than you can imagine. Ideally, the consistent sleep schedule should also include weekends.
Many people oversleep on the weekends because they are attempting to make up for lost sleep during the week. Catching up is preferable to nothing, but the negative effects of sleep deprivation persist.
You should make every effort to prevent that from occurring. If it is unavoidable, make the compensation small, such as waking up at 8 AM instead of 7 AM.
However, avoid drastic changes, such as from 7 AM to 11 AM. Additionally, napping is a viable solution. Both during the week and on the weekend (though this may prove logistically challenging).
This will allow you to recover lost sleep much healthier, as it has been demonstrated that naps are beneficial.
As part of the normal circadian rhythm, they should ideally be taken after lunch, when the body becomes naturally sleepier. Avoid napping in the late afternoon, as it will make falling asleep more difficult.
You should also limit your naps to 20 to 30 minutes, as longer durations will cause you to enter deeper stages of sleep, making it difficult to wake up and induce lethargy.
A good bedtime ritual is another important aspect of good sleep hygiene. You should attempt to develop a routine that is associated with falling asleep.
This may involve preparing clothing for the following day, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, reading, or keeping a journal.
There is no magic formula, so you must find something that works for you. For instance, I find reading highly effective at inducing sleep, whereas others disagree. While many find that taking a shower is beneficial, it makes me more alert.
The most important of the external cues that calibrate sleep is blue light (although it does a bit into the green zone as well). You may have heard that using electronic devices at night is detrimental to sleep; here’s why.
The LEDs emit an excessive amount of blue light, which disrupts sleep. It tricks your body into thinking it’s daytime when it’s not, thereby inhibiting the production of melatonin, which is required to fall asleep.
Utilizing blue-light-blocking glasses or installing blue-light-blocking filters on your electronic devices is a way to help mitigate this issue although I would suggest that you just limit the use of electronic devices an hour or two before bedtime.
Another reason to limit the use of your phone before bed is the mental stimulation it causes. Social media algorithms are often optimized to induce feelings of anger, disgust, curiosity, and FOMO (fear of missing out), while watching videos or movies often produce feelings of excitement, anticipation, and fear. All of these emotions can lead to a higher state of alertness of feeling of being awake.
The true effect of the two factors, light and stimulation, is still debatable, and more research is required to disentangle them, but it is evident that both are detrimental.
Therefore, it is recommended to avoid not only blue light but, ideally, all electronic devices as well. If possible, try to choose non-stimulating activities, as discussed in the bedtime ritual.
While we are trying to avoid light, specifically blue light, at night time, we want to embrace that light in the morning to help signal to our body that it is time to be awake.
Unfortunately, indoor lighting is often insufficient, as natural sunlight is usually required to achieve a significant effect. A morning walk is one of the best practices you can incorporate.
Some other common mistakes that most people make in their daily routine are consuming caffeine and alcohol. Caffeine is a stimulant that keeps you awake, and it’s effects are surprisingly long lasting. You should avoid consuming caffeine up to 6-8 hours before bed, although this will vary based on the individual, as dose, genes, sex, and size can effect caffeine metabolism.
Alcohol also can be problematic for sleep, even though you may think that it actually helps with going to sleep. While that it true, the quality of the sleep you get after consuming alcohol can be effected negatively. Again, this will vary based on the individual, as dose, genes, sex, and size can play a role in the effects of alcohol, additionally, the body is able to metabolize alcohol much more quickly than caffeine, so the time period for avoid it is in the range of a couple of hours, instead of 6-8.
Although regular exercise is beneficial for sleep management, engaging in it too close to bedtime can be detrimental because it causes arousal and makes it difficult to fall asleep.
Consequently, avoid exercising too late in the day; 3 hours before bedtime is the closest you should push exercise. If that’s the only time you can fit it into your schedule, aim to relax as much as possible as soon as possible after training.
Three other factors to consider when sleeping have to do with the state of your room, the temperature, how dark it is, and noise level.
The optimal sleeping temperature is about 68-69 F, that temperature allows you to snuggle under the blankets and get nice and cozy without getting too hot as the cold air you breath in will help to cool you down.
This may seem extreme to some people and also like a massive use of energy, so the important thing to note is that if you are too warm it can be extremely difficult to fall asleep. This is because the body’s core temperature drops during sleep and in order to drop it has to dissipate its heat which can be difficult if the room temperature is too high.
Darkness is important for reasons we have discussed before, especially the blue light, but light in general can also just be fairly distracting for some people. If you can’t afford blackout curtains in your room a great alternative is a sleep mask insert affiliate plug for sleep mask.
You may be surprised to hear that if your room is too quiet it can actually be more difficult to fall asleep. Having a good level of non-distracting background or white noise can actually help you fall asleep, so download a white noise app or have an air purifier in your room going at night to help you more easily drift to sleep.
To recap, your sleep is one of the most important aspects of your overall health, you will spend about a third of your life in bed, so invest in a good one! Take your sleep seriously and it will take care of you.