With the clocks changing here in the US, sleep might be at the forefront of your mind. So, let’s investigate sleep because if you live to 80 and sleep an average of 7-9 hours a night, you will spend 1/3rd (25-30 years) of your life sleeping. Essential to hormonal regulation, tissue repair, and memory consolidation, sleep is one of the most powerful tools we can access to improve our physical and mental health.
Worried about your hormonal profile—focus on your sleep.
If you are trying to recover better from your training—focus on sleep.
Trying to improve your learning—focus on sleep.
Unfortunately, we often ignore sleep’s impact and even brag about how little sleep we can “get by on.” While sometimes life gets in the way and limits our sleep, this should be the exception, not the rule. Bragging about getting by on limited sleep is like bragging about an injury—not something to brag about.
The CDC and National Sleep Foundation have great information on sleep available. Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep, is also a highly recommended resource. Specific to daylight-saving time and sleep, Walker references that in the spring, the clock change also comes with a spike in heart attacks, while the “fall back” clock change shows the opposite correlation. That lost hour of sleep causes a spike in heart attacks—don’t look down on lost sleep!
In fact, “drowsy driving” is a known risk factor for traffic accidents, and lack of sleep generally decreases performance and increases risk in various ways.
What can we do to sleep strong?
That subject is too large for a newsletter, but Walker’s book is highly recommended. We can change how you think about changing your sleep.
Gray Cook provided an excellent addition to the concept of the SAID principle. Specific adaptation to imposed demands is a well-known principle, and it can be enhanced with Grays’s additional perspective—the organism’s specific adaptation to the environment’s imposed demands.
Targeting an intervention to improve your sleep without defining whether you should be going after the organism or the environment might be why you are frustrated and not getting results. This is true for sleep and many other areas.
For example, if you are taking melatonin to improve your sleep but the issue is a lousy mattress, good luck with that melatonin changing your mattress and sleep.
Melatonin or other sleep aides (to be discussed with your Dr.) are organism-based solutions. They will not change the environment, aka the mattress.
A new mattress will not work when the problem is screen time before bed. The environment cannot overcome the organism being cued to wake up by the light from the screen. And taking the time to filter your sleep issues by those things that are organism-based and those that are environment-based might be the key to improving your sleep.
What do you need to do to sleep strong?
Speaking of sleep, you can rest easy knowing that Metal Tuesday is coming!
StrongFirst’s biggest promotion of the year is rapidly approaching—get busy making your list.
Until then, check out StrongFirst’s newest merchandise.
