What's so good about sleep anyway?

If you have read my blog before you will already know that I love experimenting and testing out things that could make a big difference to my life. In particular those linked to optimise my longevity, vitality and performance.

Why do I do it? Because, I fully believe in experience based learning. If you don’t try something, how do you know if it works, or if it doesn’t. For many years now I have been curious to learn how my body responds to certain dietary and training interventions and more recently have begun to experiment easy ways of ‘hacking’ my systems using technology in the form of gadgets and apps.

Being the best version of yourself takes a lot of trial and error.

Us humans are complex beings and we are all as different on the inside as we are on the outside, so what works for me, may have the opposite effect on you. I also like a system based, scientific approach to my biology and physiology, not a ‘well it must be true because I read it in a magazine’ or it was endorsed by a celebrity or athlete.

What goes into us in the form of food, sights, thoughts, muscle stimulations and sounds determines what comes out. Our behaviour, our performance, our memory, our health. If we want something good/better to come out, we need to put something good/better in.

There are many ways of testing out every conceivable area of your body and mind health, some of which are expensive, time consuming and sometimes even dangerous.

Muscle stimulation units to enhance performance, neuro-feedback devices or studying microbes…the list is endless. Thankfully, most of my experiments involve no cost (or danger) at all.

If you want to improve something or know if something is working, you have to track it. Where did we start and where are we now? Has our experiment worked? AND remember, it’s just as important to ask the question ‘why didn’t my experiment work?’

I’ve used many different apps to track and quantify my own personal data. On a daily basis I log my food (Want to know what I ate on this date 3 yrs ago? I can tell you), track my sleep and measure my heart rate in response to different forms of exercise. I’m sure many of you do these things too. In my blog ‘Every breath you take….every move you make’ I talked about the value of fitness trackers and explained how these could help you to increase your daily activity.

Now, this is not a blog about all of the experiments I have done and the science behind everything I eat and every product I use, but a look into some of my proposed ideas for 2016.

In last week's blog 'Happy New Year Resolutions?' I listed a series of questions I asked myself at the beginning of 2016 in order to focus on developing some actionable steps to make each month as productive as possible. Two of the questions particularly relevant here are 'What areas of progress would you like to see this year for improving your physical health?' and 'What are some daily choices you can add to your life that will improve your health?'

Three of the most important areas you can focus on when it comes to self experiments and hacking your health are food, sleep and stress…why? Because even small changes in each of these areas can make immediate and dramatic impacts on your life.

Optimising what you eat, in my opinion, is the single most important thing you can do to improve every area of your life. Food is powerful beyond the imagination. The more research I have done and the more nutritionally based self experiments I have tried, the more my ‘diet’ has and will continue to evolve and improve. My current nutrition focus is something I never would have envisaged myself trying, and it’s certainly giving me some interesting results.

In 2016 I will be focusing more on the other two important areas, that of sleep and stress. I will also be exploring the impact cold has on my body with the emphasis on cold adaption….which obviously will involve me subjecting myself to ridiculously low temperatures. Now, I may be English, northern English to be more precise, and now living in Switzerland, a snow covered country for most of the winter but I still hate being cold, so for me to do this is bordering on insanity. I am fully aware that getting out of your comfort zone is a very empowering thing to do, but that’s a story for another day.

What's the plan?

For the first part of this year I’m going to be focusing primarily on the area of sleep and more specifically will be experimenting with natural, inexpensive, science based methods to enable me to improve both the quality and quantity of my sleep. I am also going to be testing out some of the recommended technology to see how effective it is.

I have been using a sleep tracker for over a year now and although it hasn’t helped me to get more sleep or a better quality sleep, it has made me more aware of how little I am actually getting and how different situations affect my length and depth of sleep. The data I will continue to collect will also be useful for me to use to determine how effective the methods I intend to put in place over the next month will be.

What’s so good about sleep anyway?

Let’s look at this from the other angle. What’s so bad about not getting enough sleep? It’s more than the immediate effects such as a bad mood and a lack of focus or the other signs you are over tired like being over emotional, hungry and clumsy. Sleep deprivation can also have profound consequences on your long term physical health.

Here’s the scary side of a lack of sleep

Stroke Risk Even without the typical risk factors, like being overweight or having a family history, lack of sleep can increase your risk for stroke, according to research.

Contributes to Obesity Lack of sleep can make you gain weight! Really? Maybe ‘if you snooze you lose’ seems like a good saying after hearing this. Sleep is essential if you want to lose fat or maintain a lean body. Too little sleep can contribute to some less-than-ideal food choices, including serving yourself larger portions, and a craving for junk food, thanks to some complicated hormonal changes that occur when you don't get sufficient shuteye. It seems that six hours of sleep or less bumps up production of the hunger hormone ghrelin and limits leptin, which helps you balance your food intake. In addition it would seem that a reduction of sleep is associated with unfavourable nutrient partitioning meaning when in calorie deficit, more weight will be lost as lean mass than body fat.

Increases Diabetes Risk Studies have examined the link between poor sleep and insulin resistance, a telltale risk factor for diabetes. They found that among healthy teenagers, the shortest sleepers had the highest insulin resistance, meaning the body is not using insulin effectively. Other studies examined fat cells, in particular, and found that cutting back on sleep increased insulin resistance in these cells, even when calorie intake was restricted.

Fuels Memory Loss You probably know that on the days when you are most tired, you're forgetful and unfocused but sleep deprivation can lead to permanent cognitive issues. The less we sleep, the less we benefit from the memory storing properties of sleep. But, a lack of sleep can cause brain deterioration, which may at least in part explain memory loss later in life.

Damages Bones Long-term sleep deprivation seems to contribute to osteoporosis. Sleep loss causes the body to decrease its release of human growth hormone which is responsible for strengthening bones and repairing the wear and tear of the day.

Could Increase Cancer Risk? A small (but growing) body of research suggests that short and poor sleep can increase risk for certain types of cancer.

Damages Your Heart The stress and strain of too little sleep can cause the body to produce more of the chemicals and hormones that can lead to heart disease.

Lack of sleep could also accelerate the signs of skin ageing as the body will produce cortisol (the stress hormone) which can break down collagen and weaken the skins ability to repair at night. Lastly, when our sleep suffers, so too does our immune system, which makes us more susceptible to disease and infection.

I’ve always known how important sleep was to my health but never really took getting more of it very seriously, until now.

The Science of Sleep - It’s not as easy as just spending more time in bed

In the 'Happy New year Resolutions?' blog I talked about how new year resolutions were often just a list of wishes with no real action plan, and that was the main reason that they fail. To make changes you need to create daily achievable habits and build them into your routine. But, what should those habits be? How do you know they will work? This is where I turn to science based research to help me.

I have talked a lot about hormones here already and how they negatively effect us due to a lack of sleep but guess what? - when it comes to a good night’s sleep, it’s hormones again…but this time, they are going to help us. Understanding which ones and how to optimise them surely must be the key to improving our health.

Hormones that make us feel sleepy

The magical hormone responsible for regulating sleep cycles is Melatonin, which is naturally released with darkness and tells our body to sleep. It not only regulates your natural sleep pattern, it reduces stress and is also an antioxidant which means it slows down the ageing process. When we are younger our melatonin levels are high but unfortunately we see a gradual decrease as we age.

Several things can also throw off the body’s natural melatonin production. These include jet lag, shift work but the most common cause is due to unnatural light exposure after the hours of darkness. Blue light is the most harmful which is emitted from mobile phones, computer screens and TV’s. So yes, reading from your iPad before going to bed is worse that reading a good old fashioned book! Even waking up in the night and checking the time on your phone can stop the body producing melatonin straight away! Unfortunately, whether you have the light on for an hour or a second, the effect is the same.

It seems the problems that have arisen are largely due to our modern lifestyles which are dramatically different to how our ancestors used to live. They weren’t staying up late using laptops, or watching TV, instead they used the light to determine when to go to sleep and when to wake up.

Increasing melatonin

So, if melatonin is so great and the production of it will help me improve my sleep, the action I am going to take needs to answer the question; 'What simple changes could I make to naturally increase my melatonin levels? The easy answer could be to use a supplement but the problem is repeated use of an artificial melatonin could actually reduce my bodies natural ability to produce it. So instead, I need to develop lifestyle habits that will maximise my production of melatonin without the need for external help.

What am I doing already?

• I always seem to sleep better after a hot bath just before bed (the rise and fall of the body temperature seems to promote sleepiness) and do this occasionally during the week. It's even better if I throw in some epsom (magnesium based) salts which my body will absorb through the skin. Although I've never tried it, you can also get magnesium oil which you can rub into your skin, preferably before bedtime.

• Most nights I sleep in complete darkness (hurray for blackout blinds) as even the slightest bit of light can disrupt your biological clock and melatonin production.

• I regularly eat eggs, nuts/seeds, salmon, chicken, bananas and oats which are well known for their melatonin boosting powers.

• I always eat an evening meal containing protein and fat or a low glycaemic carbohydrate food to optimise tryptophan levels (tryptophan is a sleep enhancing amino acid that contributes to the production of serotonin, a brain chemical that helps us relax and is used to make melatonin).

• I take a magnesium supplement after dinner and again just before going to bed. Magnesium is the most powerful relaxation mineral available. However, it needs to be supported with the correct nutrition for the body to be able to absorb and utilise it. (time for another blog)

• My phone, although it shouldn’t be charging in my bedroom, is put onto airplane mode to avoid EMF’s which can disturb sleep.

What I am not so good at - What am I going to try to improve my sleep?

• Occasionally I will impose a sleep curfew on myself but that never seems to last long and I find myself going to bed later and later. As I write this, I am committing the ultimate sleep sin. It’s 11.30pm and I’m drinking coffee and staring at a computer screen!

• I will make a concerted effort to be in bed by 10pm every night. It’s probably unrealistic to do this 7 days a week but I will try to be as consistent as possible. Apparently, every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after. Now, I don’t know how true this is but I’ve read it more than a handful of times so it’s probably worth consideration.

• I have installed F.lux onto my phone, iPad and computer (it’s free). It changes the colour on your screens depending on the time of day. F.lux uses warmer colours after sunset to match indoor lighting. Although there have been no scientific studies to prove it works, the idea seems plausible and worth trying out.

• I have already ordered a pair of orange blue light blocking glasses and will wear them as soon as it gets dark

• I have downloaded ‘Pzizz' which is an app that claims to help you to get to sleep faster with a combination of soothing sounds and voice cues aimed at helping you relax and destress.

• I will replace my after dinner coffee for herbal tea (yes really!) Not only does the caffeine act as a stimulant, it will also begin to drain magnesium out of my body.

• All of the above strategies will be recorded each night on a simple chart to assess their effectiveness.

It seems getting a good night’s sleep is both an art and a science and of crucial importance as far as our health is concerned.

With a few simple strategies we can all get the high quality, restful sleep our bodies and minds deserve. There are no short cuts and we need to make sleep a priority. Our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing depends on it. Take charge of your actions and surroundings, be consistent and let’s enjoy the Zzzzzzz’s.