Sleep Educational Content

Lesson 1: The consequences of a lack of good sleep.

As soon as our lives get busier, more chaotic, our sleep is typically the first thing that suffers… Why? Because is doesn’t necessarily have visible, immediate consequences. The attitude “i’ll be fine, it’s only a few weeks” turns into months, if not years of a lack of sleep. We become so used to surviving on limited sleep that we don’t even realise how our body is suffering. We don’t know how more productive and better our bodies will function with decent amounts of sleep. “YOU don’t know, what YOU don’t know” - Socrates. Let’s look at both, the immediate and long term consequences of a lack of sleep.

Immediate consequences:

• Increased stress

• Body cramping

• Hypertension

• Attention, memory and decision making

• Performance (Power output, maximal speed, reaction time and endurance)

• School & cognitive performance

• Emotional distress & mood disorders

• Psychosocial health

Long-term / chronic consequences:

• Hypertension

• Dyslipidemia

• Cardiovascular disease

• Weight-related issues

• Metabolic syndrome

• Type 2 diabetes

• Cancer

As you can see, a lack of sleep, especially long term has a big impact on our overall health and quality of life. Imagine if an elite athlete only had 5-6 hours of average sleep each night? It would make it very hard for them to perform consistently, throughout a long career. Let’s talk athletic performance consequences.

Athletic Performance & a lack of sleep

A lack of sleep chronically has shown to impact performance. One night of poor sleep, will not have a dramatic impact on the way you perform. So, you may have guessed, consistency is king. If you’re consistently getting 7-9 hours of solid sleep, you won’t be a victim to the short or long term consequences of a lack of sleep. So how do we improve our sleep quality and quantity? Lesson 2: Sleep - playing the long game and reap the rewards.

Lesson 2: Sleep - playing the long game and reap the rewards.

To allow your performance to reap the rewards from a good recovery is all about the long game… That is consistent quality and quantity of sleep for an extended period of time. So how do i improve my quality of sleep?

Sleep Quality:

How well are you sleeping? If you’re tossing, turning, waking up in the middle of the night, going to the toilet; then your sleep is not as good as you think! Your sleep quality is influences by many factors. It might not just be one reason why you’re currently not getting a good night’s rest. Check out the main factors that impact sleep quality:

• Room temperature (too hot or cold).

• Bright light exposure (within 30mins of sleeping). E.g. screens, tv or even lights in your room.

• Eating a big meal thats not easily digestible before bed.

• Alcohol - raises HR & body temperature.

• Stress.

• The time you consistently go to sleep & wake up (circadian rhythm)>

• Having enough exposure to natural sunlight.

• Caffeine (after 12pm- too much in our system whilst we sleep elevates HR (heart rate) & Body temperature).

• Excessive noise.

Which of these factors do you believe impact your sleep? It might be one, two or even more. You may not even know that your sleep isn’t great, however you have gotten into a habit of getting used to having a poor sleep. If you think 2+ more of these factors influence your sleep, It’s time to improve your sleep and take action (i’ll show you how at the end of the content).

Sleep Quantity:

Athletes that are physically active need considerably more sleep than the average sedentary person. To allow for adequate recovery, most people that are active will need somewhere between 8 and 12 hours of sleep. It really depends of two main factors: Activity levels, Quality of sleep. Roger Federer sleeps on average 12 hours per day when in training camp. You may think that’s an absurd amount of sleep, but in reality it not… He practices for 4 hours in the morning, 4 hours in the afternoon plus a gym session at night. His activity levels during training camp require him to sleep considerably more to allow him to recover and perform at his best each session. Hopefully now you can see that we need sleep to perform. Whether that’s cognitively in the office or out playing sport.

Lesson 3: Circadian Rhythm: Why it’s important?

To maintain a healthy lifestyle, understanding our natural circadian rhythms can have a huge impact on how we plan our sleep schedule, work, and workout times for optimal functioning and peak performance. Circadian rhythms are biological rhythms that align to the 24-hour day and peak at different periods of the day and night related to different biological processes. This rhythm initiates various biological processes within our bodies to keep us functioning at our best when we need to and to rest and recover when we need to.

How does our Circadian Rhythm get out of balance? Normally this occurs when the time we go to sleep and wake changes. E.g. You stay up late three nights in a week to play video games. By the end of the week you notice it’s hard to get to sleep at your normal time of 10pm, this is a sign that your Circadian Rhythm is out of balance. So why is this a bad thing?

With so many body processes impacted by the circadian rhythm (E.g. certain hormones released at certain times to enable correct function. If our rhythm goes rogue, our body doesn’t function correctly which impacts the how we function.

So the key take away is to have consistency around your sleep routine. Consistently go to sleep within 2 hours of the same time and your body will function considerably better.

Lesson 4 - Sleep Cycle & Understanding our sleep

In this lesson let’s discuss our sleep cycle and the importance of each part of the cycle. There are 4 distinct stages of the sleep cycle:

1. Transitional light sleep

2. Light non-REM sleep

3. Deep non -REM sleep

4. REM sleep

All stages important to your overall sleep health, but the two main types of sleep that we’ll focus on in this article are Non-REM and REM. Non-REM sleep , which includes light and deep sleep, accounts for about the majority of your sleeping time. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is where you may spend some of your time dreaming. This typically takes place during the last half of your night’s sleep. What we want you to understand is the importance around REM sleep and how people can miss this stage.

REM sleep is a critical for learning, memory, and a time when the brain consolidates, processes, and stores information. As this occurs in the last half of your nights sleep, it can sometimes be missed due to not enough sleep or a poor quality sleep. So let’s reframe that for you… If you give yourself only 3-4 hours sleep or neglect the quality of sleep, effectively you’re giving yourself no time to store information into your memory. So that night where you stayed up till 2am to study isn’t as effective as you may have thought! Hopefully you can’t see when we neglect our sleep, it doesn’t just make us tired but also impacts how we learn and store information! Your 6 hours sleep may be impacting you more than you think!

TASK 1 - CREATING A BETTER SLEEP HYGIENE

Sleep hygiene 101