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Steve Magness

26 Feb, 21 tweets, 5 min read

Sleep is the best performance enhancer this is. Yet, many of us neglect or lack the recommended dose.

We all know we need to sleep more. Instead of telling you that, let's look at the science of sleep and how to get better at it:

THREAD on Sleep 👇👇👇👇

An hour after we fall asleep, anabolic hormones start to flood our system

Testosterone & human growth hormone (HGH), both of which are integral to muscle & bone growth, are released after the first REM cycle and pulsed throughout the night

Sleep= Performance Enhancing Hormones

HGH levels peak about 1.5 to 3 hours after you fall asleep, with subsequent pulses of release during each subsequent phase of deep sleep.

If the onset of sleep is delayed significantly from your routine, your HGH levels decrease significantly.

In one study, going from 8 hours of sleep to 5 hours of sleep for a week decreased testosterone levels by 15% in young men.

So if you think testosterone levels are important to your performance...then get some sleep!

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Along with anabolic hormones comes a bump in protein synthesis and muscle repair overnight.

You can boost protein synthesis by taking 20-30g of protein prior to sleep. Many elite athletes have taken note and drink a whey- or casein-based protein drink prior to sleeping.

Now, what can impact our sleep? Light

To understand lights impact, imagine a world with no clocks/lights. Light signals your inner world when to be active & when to shut down. Now we live in a world where light can be on at any time. Our once reliable signal is gone

What to do?

1. Go Outside
Light regulates your circadian rhythm. An early dose of light triggers our early cortisol release AND sets the approximate time for our nighttime melatonin release. Think of these as working in concert. Morning cortisol is essentially an energy release…it’s good.

Think of early light as a trigger to your brain that you need to be awake, and to set the ‘countdown’ for when sleep is likely.

If you delay this cortisol hit to later in the day, it shifts your melatonin release to later, delaying the drowsiness that comes with it.

What's this I hear about blue light?
Blue light is great early in the morning. It's not so great before bed.

If you dose your eyes with light, when it’s not used to it, you’ve confused your inner clock. Dose it without enough light and you push back sleepiness.

For instance, in a study that looked at reading a traditional book and an e-book 4-hours before bed, the e-book readers experienced a 90-minute delay in their bodies’ release of melatonin.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

And we can't blame all of this on blue light. Although the receptors in your eye appear to be most sensitive to blue light, other light can have the same effects. It just takes longer.

Other research shows that light exposure in the middle of the night may impact everything from dopamine levels to learning and cognition.

In one study, having a night light impaired sleep and cognition. A nice review of the subject:
nature.com/articles/tp201…

Routines:
It’s better to be prepared than to miss out. Your brain largely works in a predictive manner, anticipating what’s to come rather than waiting and hoping. If you always run first thing in the morning, your hormonal system will adapt in preparation.

If we repeat things often enough, our brain and body figure it out and sync the hormonal and neurochemical release in anticipation of that event.

Same goes for sleeping. If you are on a routine, your brain can better predict when that hit of melatonin needs to be released.

What about naps?

In one study, researchers pitted napping against coffee. Those who took a nap of 15 to 20 minutes awoke with more alertness and went on to perform better than those who drank 150 milligrams of caffeine, or about the same amount in a Starbucks grande-size coffee.

In a review on the efficacy of napping, sleep scientists found that a 10-minute nap yields the greatest benefits.

Even if you don’t actually experience the sensation of falling asleep, simply closing your eyes can help switch your active brain off, allowing it to recover.

Most experts suggest 10-30min naps.

Longer naps we run the risk of waking up feeling even groggier and more sluggish than before we fell asleep. This condition, called “sleep inertia,” occurs when we are awoken in the middle of a deep sleep cycle.

In summary for better sleep:
1. Establish a routine
2. Early light exposure. Go watch the sunrise! Limit at night. Sunset is your cue to 'power down.'
3. If sore and fatigued, protein before bed for muscle repair.
4. Short naps!

And finally, knowing that sleep is important can often cause us to have anxiety about getting sleep.

Don't force it. It's like working out, sometimes you're going to struggle and that's okay, but if we can improve our sleep over the long haul, we'll be better. Play the long game

If you enjoyed this thread, I tweet about the science of performance 2x per week. Follow along!

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