Sleep
is so important for good health, a great body and high energy levels. Yet so
often we forgo sleep to stay up late ‘relaxing’ in front of the TV/computer or
to put more time in to work.
Here
are 5 reasons why a lack of quality sleep is costing you your health, your
energy and your body.
1. Lose more fat: Lack of sleep interferes with
natural hormonal cycles and leaves you with elevated ghrelin levels and
depleted leptin levels. Ghrelin is a hormone that increases appetite and makes
you crave food; leptin is it’s opposite, signalling satiety and that you do not
need to eat. Just a single nights insufficient sleep causes significant change
in these hormones – imagine what chronic lack of sleep does! Lack of sleep
leaves you fighting a losing battle, trying to use willpower to overcome your
bodies’ own hormonal signals.
2. Hormonal rhythms and
balance: Ghrelin
and leptin are not the only hormones affected by sleep. Growth hormone is
released during deep sleep cycles and is one of the most important hormones for
muscle gain, fat loss, and anti-aging. It is declined growth hormone that is
primarily responsible for greater difficulty gaining muscle and losing fat as
you age. You do not want to accelerate this! Remember how good you felt and how
easy you stayed in shape when you were a teenager?
3. Recharge the batteries: Simple and obvious; lack of
sleep makes you tired. This leads to decreased focus and clarity of thought,
less energy, more desire to overeat sugary food and bad moods. Staying up
forcing yourself to work - after productivity drops and mistakes increase - is
a waste of time and detrimental to your health. You are better off recharging
and coming back with a fresh head the next day. You will end up redoing the
work anyway if it is not up to standard. We often feel like a hero, pushing
ourselves to the limit – it really is better to manage your energy and work
when you are most productive, i.e. when you are refreshed.
4. Recover and grow: You don’t get bigger and
stronger in the gym. Training is the stimulus that leads to an increase in
muscle size and strength when you recover.
Your body recovers at rest. You can train as hard as you like, if your body is
not receiving sufficient food and rest to recover from it, you will not make
progress and just end up wearing yourself down. Push, push, push may work for a
little while, but long term it is a recipe for disaster.
5. De-stress and refresh: Just like your body, your brain needs a rest too. If you push it too hard with insufficient recovery, you will be stressed, unhappy and unproductive. This is not going to serve you in any way in the long term.
The 5 compelling reasons why you need to sleep more, and sleep better inevitably leaves you wondering; how exactly to do that. Here are some brief tips to improve sleep quality.
- Keep to a routine of sleeping and waking approximately the same times each day.
- Watch caffeine intake later in the day and avoid alcohol. It may help you fall asleep, but restricts deep sleep and you wake up feeling like you barely slept.
- Make your room pitch black and slightly cool.
- Turn electronics off and wind down for half an hour before sleeping. Trying reading, bathing or meditating.
- Start your day right with a high protein breakfast. This sets up your neurotransmitters and hormones for the day; avoiding the mid-afternoon energy crash and need to use caffeine and sugar as a pick me up.
- Write a journal, tomorrows’ to do list and your thoughts/anxieties down on paper before sleeping. This allows your mind to relax and not keep you up all night thinking.
- Leave the smart phone outside the bedroom. Don’t answer emails or do work stuff immediately before trying to sleep.
