Why Sleep is so Important for Your Health

I want to take you back to school quickly.

Remember at the end of each term when you would dread (or enjoy) taking home your report card to your parents and you were especially worried about what your math teacher had written on it (because you had been slacking off in class).

Well, today we are going to try a similar concept, but for your health habits.

For most of us, there will be one aspect of our health habits that we excel at, a few that we have enough discipline to manage, and one that we really struggle with or disregard entirely.

In today’s newsletter, we are going to look at one thing most of us probably don’t get enough of: Sleep.

Imaging a report card for your health behaviours. Are you getting straight A's, or are there some areas of your health that need more work?

Touching Base:

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How Sleep Powers Your Performance

As fitness fanatics, we love to spend time making sure that we have the best gym or running program that will keep building our strength, power, and endurance.

Whether designing it with your EP or S&C coach, or doing it yourself. We want to make sure that our performance/health does one thing, improve.

Though we are so particular about what we train, how we train, and when we train, we can often forget that sleep powers our performance.

By getting adequate sleep, we allow our body to recover and more importantly adapt to the demands we impose on it.

Sleep also boosts our brain’s plasticity, meaning that the new skills we have learnt at training can become ingrained, improving our future performance.

How a Lack of Sleep Hinders Your Health.

Sleep is one of those key behaviours that keeps us alive.

By not getting enough, we open the door to a whole host of health issues, including but not limited to:

• Weight gain and obesity

• Dementia

• High blood pressure

• Type 2 diabetes

• Depression and anxiety

• Reduced immunity

• Increased pain sensitivity

It’s quite the list.

Many of our reasons for trying to stay fit and healthy are to prevent or manage these conditions.

But if we aren’t getting adequate sleep, then we are stacking the odds against ourselves.

Slashed Sporting Success

The impacts of sleep deprivation aren’t limited to the general population.

For those of us still intent on being athletes, a lack of sleep will cause the following effects on our sporting performance:

• Decreases in strength, speed, and reaction time

• Increased risk of injury and concussion

• Altered decision making and diminished concentration

• Reduced learning and memory

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How do I Know if I’m Getting Enough Sleep?

A good rule of thumb here:

Does the current amount of sleep you get allow you to maintain daytime wakefulness?

For most adults, this is around 7-9 hours per night.

Where some can get confused here is falling into the trap of thinking sleep equals the amount of time spent in bed.

E.g. You turn out the lights and put down your phone at 9pm, then your alarm goes off at 5am.

You’ve been in bed for 8 hours, but that doesn’t account for how long it took you to get to sleep, if you woke during the night, and if you wake before your alarm.

That’s where smart watches or health monitors like Apple Watches or Whoop bands can be useful. They will show how much time you spent asleep, how much deep sleep and REM sleep you got, and the quality of your sleep.

How to Improve Your Sleep

There are a few simple changes you can make to improve your sleep.

The first and easiest thing that we can all do, spend less time looking at screens at night (TV’s, phones, computers).

Having over 100,000 times the processing power that NASA used to send Apollo 11 to the moon in the palm of your hand is nothing short of incredible.

But, staying up late and doom-scrolling through social media is the worst use of that power. Try to put down your phone or turn off the TV around an hour before you plan on going to sleep.

Read a book instead.

The second thing to do, stop having caffeine at least 10 hours before you plan on going to bed.

For some of us, that might be a difficult challenge, especially after a long day of work and you need a pick-me-up before you go to the gym.

If you find that you need a mid-afternoon boost, try doing a Yoga Nidra or Non-Sleep Deep Rest protocol. You can find them on YouTube for free, and only take 10 minutes to do.

These are my favourite ones to use: Andrew Huberman NSDR or Ally Boothroyd Yoga Nidra.

Lastly, create a consistent bedtime routine.

Having that mid-week or weekend sleep-in may feel great. But you’ll have no doubt noticed that the early start the next day is much harder.

Best bet, pick a time to wake up each day of the week and stick to it as best you can.

Once you do that, your body will naturally find its rhythm and the time that it wants you to go to sleep at.

There might be a 30 minute margin that you allow either side of this time but don’t let it blow out beyond that.

Final Comments

Being healthy or striving to improve your performance is more than just lifting weights or going for a run.

Sleep allows us to reap the rewards of our hard work at training.

So, put some more effort into your sleep.

Chat soon,

Jono