Performance & Weight-Loss

Sleep & Metabolism

It seems self-evident to assume that the link between poor sleep and weight-gain has to do with the lack of energy and motivation to engage in physical activity, as well as the association between short sleep and our sweet-tooth cravings the next day. But contrary to our intuitions about the seemingly passive role of sleep, poor sleep engages a cascade of processes that actually set in motion pathophysiological processes that often lead to insulin resistance, diabetes, blood sugar instability, increased fat storage and other adverse metabolic effects. These processes create a snowball effect that make it ultimately impossible to sustain a healthy lifestyle despite our self-proclamations aimed at marshaling 'willpower'— or admonitions from Hollywood-style trainers on TV. You don't need a "Drill-Sergeant"— you need to understand your sleep patterns in greater detail.
Poor sleep quality, short sleep times, and common sleep disorders such as sleep apnea set in motion little tiny shots of an adrenalin-like substance through incessant bursts of nerve activity. Adrenalin may sound like a good thing when it comes to energy, but like stress itself, and like popular energy drinks, it may feel good while you're juiced up— not, however, when your brain is prevented from consolidating important stages of deep sleep. Subsequently, your body sets in motion a cascade of metabolic adjustments and appetite releasing processes that work to seriously undermine any measures you've taken to control your diet. Even when you are rigorously controlling your diet and exercising, you are effectively exchanging 'good' lean tissue for increased percentages of fat. Want to get back on track? Test for OSA.

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Sleep for Fitness

It is simply a natural function of the human form to be physically active. Physical activity is, in fact, a consistent product that many of our core physiological processes anticipate by their very nature. Two consequences arise from this relationship. Firstly, a lack of activity has profound consequences on basic normal metabolic functioning. Secondly, the consequent flip-side of the fact that human physiology anticipates consistent physical activity is the observation that the human movement system is highly efficient. What does this basic two-sided relationship mean? It means that the common notion that exercise is merely a weight-loss tactic is entirely and radically wrong-headed. A lack of physical activity has basic implications far outweighing simply a tendency for weight-gain. Activated muscle is required to retain insulin and blood-sugar health, independent of the goal that we often hear for exercise; i.e., "burning calories". Skeletal muscle serves as a vast reservoir for utilizing insulin-mediated blood sugar. This is not a trivial role for 'normal' activated muscle, as the alarming rate of pre-diabetes and diabetes disclose in the unnatural state that is the modern sedentary lifestyle. In addition to basic cardiometabolic functioning— stress management, emotional health, and increased protection against neurodegenerative disorders remain equally "basic" to the function of consistent physical activity. 
The energy available to you from your diet undergoes dramatic changes when you engage in consistent exercise. But all exercise is not the same, and fuel availability is not simply on or off. The details are important, both for the performance athlete and for the person interested in exercise only as part of a health-management program. Many fitness advocates do not appreciate the fundamental relationship between the body's fuel use dynamics, and the dietary and sleep patterns that impact performance. It is not simply about marshaling available energy for exercise, it's about understanding which energy stores are tapped into for everyday living. For example, when sleep is altered, lean muscle tissue is preferentially torn down, as opposed to the fat we want to burn. This has been demonstrated even for young, healthy athletes who exercise consistently. Poor sleep impacts fuel-use dynamics. Moreover, even a modest shift in our basic circadian rhythm— which underlies the orchestration of our basic sleep-wake cycle and all of the associated hormones that dictate our energy and performance— can impact our mental and metabolic performance significantly.

These topics may at first appear to be outside the gamut of the sleep sector, but if there is any single lesson that we hope that you learn from the resources that we provide, it is that sleep is highly integrated with nearly every important process of the body.

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