Q The quality of my sleep has taken a dive over the past few weeks due to a number of late nights spent working and all the stress that goes with it. I also find that I struggle to fall asleep after working late into the night and never feel rested when I wake up these days. What’s worse is that it’s now starting to affect my performance in the gym. What can I do to get my sleep back on track? Michael via email
A There is no question that adequate sleep is crucial for optimal health, recovery and performance. Time and again, science reveals how a lack of good quality sleep of at least 7-9 hours a night is essential for humans to thrive. Yet, life happens and we're often left trying to cope with just 5-6 hours of interrupted or restless sleep and this quickly catches up with us. We covered the long-term health implications of curtailed sleep and long work hours in our Jan-Feb 2017 issue (check it out on Zinio if you missed it), but to summarise, researchers from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland showed how the combination of long working hours and a lack of sleep earlier in life has negative effects on a man's health in his later years.
However, the implications of your predicament are more immediate, in that it's starting to affect the quality of your training. The main reason for this is that your lack of sleep is hampering your ability to recover from heavy training sessions, which means you're probably entering a state of under-recovery. This happens because the process of muscle repair and the restoration of the immune, nervous, hormonal and muscular systems happen predominantly during periods of deep sleep.
Sleep is also responsible for maintaining optimal levels of cognitive skills such as speech, memory, innovative, and flexible thinking. In other words, when you suffer from a lack of sleep, you're going to struggle in all aspects of life, not just in the gym.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2017 من Fitness His Edition.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2017 من Fitness His Edition.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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