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The detail and importance of sleep is rarely well considered or understood.

This is because it’s an area of life where we must “give in”, we’re not striving or doing anything, so it’s not glamorous and get’s little credit. None the less, it’s a hugely critical and not well understood part of our lives.

What follows is a brief summary with concepts taken from various sources.

1) Circadian Rhythm

Your Circadian Rhythm is your inbuilt evolutionary drive to follow the movements of the sun. This has been refined through countless generations of evolution and existence on this planet.

Imagine a graph plotting your state throughout the day. We rise early, with our energy levels peaking early, to fuel a hunt in the cool morning air, or whatever activities out ancestors may have engaged in, with this level slowly decreasing throughout the day. We’d return to the cave before dark, perhaps socialise around the campfire, but in essence we would not fight the patterns of day and night excessively. This is what SHOULD happen naturally, this is NOT what many of us are experiencing at present, many of us feel more alert toward the end of the day, which is a problem.

In other words, at our core, we have an internal body clock with all sorts of regulations and mechanisms going on at certain times of day in certain quantities. It doesn’t matter for the purposes of this post which hormones kick in at what times, what does matter is just to appreciate how far we have deviated from this pattern and that there might be effects to that.

2) Timing

People think 8 hours sleep is the holy grail. Yes and no. In a winter environment where the days are shorter, and less nutrition is available outside, a low energy expenditure pattern with more sleep might be more appropriate. In the summer time, vice versa. Flexibility and listening to your body are key.

What is interesting is the TIME you go to bed. It the hours BEFORE midnight where physical repair is at it’s highest…so if you’re struggling to recover from the gym for example, consider getting to bed by 10pm, if not earlier. The morning hours of sleep after midnight, are where psychological and emotional repair come into play.

3) Perpetual Summer

In summertime, we are programmed to seek carbohydrates because they become more naturally available (fruit), these alter insulin sensitivity and cause a weight gain in readiness to sustain us through the winter. All part of mother nature’s plan.

In modern times however, we have a preponderance of carbohydrates even faster acting and more available than fruit (sweets, bread, pasta, cereal, biscuits…etc) so the mechanism has become a corrupted.

When you then consider the effect of the light bulb, we now have summer timings of daylight, all year round.

Put together the keeping at bay of the darkness of winter, and the availability of the nutritionally barren sugary products, and hey presto, you’ve got a powerful negative lever on your health.

4) Cortisol

Cortisol is your stress hormone. It’s the one that makes you feel hyped up, alert, and ready to go. Without going into hormones too much, it is part of a veritable soup of hormones that serve myriad functions and have their own rhythms accordingly.

Many of you reading this will have supressed levels of cortisol in the morning, and higher later on in the day, caused by modern lifestyle. A healthy “naturalised” person, would have the opposite, high in the morning, lower as you get nearer to rest throughout the afternoon and evening. Imagine the consequences on your sleep of having your cortisol going the wrong way at the wrong times…you might eventually get to sleep, but what quality will the sleep have?

Cortizol has been shown to heavily influence weight gain, particularly around the middle in men.

Consider how you can down shift the stress in your life, how you can manage what's bothering you, how you can make practical changes to your daily routine to accomplish this.

5) Stimulants

Many of us keep ourselves going with stimulants throughout the day. This is essentially, artificially induced stress. A stimulant is anything that picks up your energy or alertness, but has little or no nutritional merit. This includes caffeine and sugar.

When you artificially “trick” the body in this way, it’s natural proclivity to mange it’s own state naturally, is impeded…so not only do you paper over the cracks of your energy levels, but you also drive a wedge down into the crack as well. No pun intended.

Television and computers can have a similar effect. Turn down the brightness on your monitor. These flickering hypnotic lights over stimulate the brain especially at night. They also all give off EMF (Electro Magnetic Frequency) waves which can impede natural systems. In Scandinavian countries they are savvy to this, even electrical wiring is heavily insulated within building regulations to minimise this effect...much less so here, if at all.

One little tip is to remove all appliances from your bedroom.

6) Digestion

Sleep is where you move into “rest and digest” mode. Without this, you will not get optimal benefit from your nutrition. In someone who eats well, this is a problem, in someone who eats poorly and takes in little actual nutrition, it’s a big problem. Now you’re getting replenishment from where exactly…nowhere, that’s where.

7) Incorporating Reality

Obviously all this is not exactly convenient to a modern lifestyle. For me, I’m in the process of rebuilding my health so this takes priority with the occasional late night and frequent day game. Your priorities may differ.

Just be aware that it’s all very well taking an egotistical attitude to health, but if you add more pushing and striving, into a life where no doubt you’re doing that at work all day too, you need to support yourself so that you can recover. Strive, but rest too.

Everyone should be more conscious of creating conditions in which the quality of sleep can help them improve their lives sustainably.

Nighty night.

PS