Get A Good Nights Sleep

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The Best Form of Recovery is SLEEP

Get a good nights sleep this is a key part of any healthy lifestyle. Like eating right and exercising safely and correctly, sleeping well is essential to feeling your best during the day. It affects how you feel, your relationships, your productivity and your quality of life. While you sleep, your brain goes to work, consolidating the day’s learning into memory and re-energizing the body.

MY BIGGEST HURDLE

One of the biggest hurdles that I face as a lifestyle coach is getting my clients to get adequate amounts and quality of sleep.  One particular client of mine used to come to the gym at 6.30am in the morning after having crawled into bed at around 1.00am.

How do you think that client performed during the ensuing workout?  Pretty dismally don’t you think?  The training sessions were simply adding to her already overloaded adrenal system, compounding her highly stressed body and adding to her woes.

Until we were able to get on top of her sleep deprived state, we were not able to make any progress with her weight loss goal.

And often her excuse for such a poor sleep was work commitments.  I struggle to fathom how working till 1.00am in the morning to meet a tight work deadline can be healthy for you?

Pulling one or two late nights for the sake of a project I can accept, but constantly doing this over an extended period of time is not only detrimental to your health, it can make achieving those health and wellness goals nothing but an eternal dream, that will never be eventuated.

Surely, working more productively with adequate amounts of sleep is better for both you and your employer.  After all, isn’t being healthy the number one factor to be able to “give it your all” at work?

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THE SLEEP WAKE CYCLE

Commonly referred to as the Circadian Rhythm (from the latin terms “circa” meaning round and “dian” meaning day) our sleep wake cycle is governed predominantly by the sun, Moon and the environment that we live in.

Through evolution, the human body has evolved a cool system that is designed to wake us up in the morning and send us off to sleep in the evening.

During the early hours of the morning when the sun is rising, its light stimulates our skin and eyes and this activates the pituitary gland (incidentally located directly behind the eyes) to release a hormone that wakes us up.  (Seratonin)

Another hormone called cortisol is also most activate during these early morning hours and should continue to remain high until around mid day.

In the afternoon, Cortisol levels should begin to fall, especially as the sun goes down, allowing another hormone, melatonin to increase levels of growth and repair hormones.  If we follow our natural sleep/wake cycles, our physical repair takes place between the hours of 10.00pm and 2.00am and after 2.00am the immune system and repair energies are more focussed on mental repair.

So getting to bed at a reasonable hour (at least by 10.00pm) is a MUST if you want to achieve those health and wellness goals you are seeking.  Or even just to be able to adequately perform to your optimum.

WHY IS THIS?

If you cast your mind back to our hunter gatherer days, it makes perfect sense that we have this circadian rhythm.  Wake early in the morning, head out hunting, catch our food for the day, be back by lunch time to feed the clan and lie around and relax for the rest of the afternoon.  Without TV, when the sun goes down, you may as well hit the sack and do it all over again tomorrow.

WHERE HAVE WE GONE WRONG?

Our 21^st century lifestyle sees us doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things that we have not yet evolved to cope with.  Shift work is the first thing that springs to mind.  The human body was never designed to be a nocturnal animal and as a result, occupations where working through the night have one of the highest levels of sick leave.

The invention of the light bulb was a great step forward for our quality of life, however, the fact that it meant we were able to stay up till all hours of the night created a different set of problems.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF POOR SLEEP

If you do not get your required amount of sleep, then the brain is unable to perform all of the required amount of rest and recovery of the body.  Do this for one night and it’s not such a big deal.  Repeat this over and over again and if this lack of sleep continues, you can find yourself becoming more and more tired, until eventually, you run the risk of falling ill or over training.

The average person needs somewhere between 6-8 hours of sleep a night, but it differs for every person. Some people may need as much as 10 hours a night and others need much less. If you sleep longer on the weekends than during the week, you probably aren’t getting the sleep you need every night.

We all have too much to do, so take time out and recharge yourself by getting a good night’s sleep. The quality and quantity of your sleep can make all the difference to how productive you’ll be the next day.  Don’t underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep.  In fact the quality of a workout can be attributed back to two things: the quality of last night’s sleep and the quality of what you’ve recently eaten.

BUT I’M A NIGHT OWL

I hear this many, many times from my clients.  But I’m a night owl, or I can’t get to sleep before mid night, or I have too much work to do.

If you’re overweight, stressed out, lack energy and constantly tired all the time at work, or maybe you have sugar highs and lows, then you feel the way you are because those exact same hormones that are meant to wake you up and send you off to sleep, they’re not working properly.

So to say you can’t get to sleep when you’re meant to is absolutely correct.  However, if you’re reading this, then clearly you need to do something about it, because together we’ve already identified that “SLEEP” is a problem for you and it needs to be sorted sooner rather than later.

The obvious answer then is to do something different for only a fool keeps doing the same thing expecting a different result.  The only decision you have to make is whether or not you’re prepared to make those changes.

But what can you do about it?  What can you do to maximise the chances of getting a good night’s sleep?

Here are my TOP TEN TIPS to help you get the sleep you need and deserve.

1.         Maintain a regular bed and wake time schedule, including weekends.   Try and get to SLEEP by 10.00pm.  Regardless of what you are doing the next day, whether it is working or a weekend, try and keep the same bed time and wake time.  By setting up a consistent routine of going to bed at the same time and waking at the same time, your body’s hormonal and adrenal systems will be able to settle into your routine and moderate  your hormones and adrenals to a constant level.

2.         Establish a regular, relaxing bedtime routine such as soaking in a hot bath or hot tub and then reading a book or listening to soothing music. Again, this bed time ritual will enable your body to wind down, increasing your chances of falling asleep when you eventually crawl into bed.

3.         Create a sleep-conducive environment that is dark, quiet, comfortable and cool. Eliminating light will prevent the unnecessary release of waking hormones.

4.         Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows. You may need to shop for ones suitable for you.  Regularly rotate your mattress to extend its life.

5.         Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex. It is best to take work materials, computers and televisions out of the sleeping environment.  Light from computers and televisions stimulate the waking hormones.  The electromagnetic energy generated by these pieces of equipment also adds stress to the body, which activates Cortisol.

6.         Finish eating at least two to three hours before your regular bedtime. This will enable the digestive system to well and truly kick in before going to bed, so that once you fall asleep the brain can use all of the micronutrients extracted from the last meal to help repair, recover and recuperate from the day’s activities.

7.         Exercise regularly. It is best to complete your workout at least a few hours before bedtime. This is an absolute given.  Exercise (especially strenuous) will place stress on your body, as well as make you tired.  This will lead to your sleep demands to increase.

8.         Avoid nicotine (e.g., cigarettes, tobacco products). Used close to bedtime, these can lead to poor sleep. Nicotine is a stimulant, not what you need when you are trying to get to sleep.

9.         Avoid caffeine (e.g., coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate) close to bedtime. Again, these can keep you awake. Again, caffeine is a stimulant.

10.       Avoid alcohol close to bedtime. It can lead to disrupted sleep later in the night.

So, there you have it, my take on getting a good nights sleep.