Importance Of Sleep

Sleep is often overlooked when assessing your lifestyle.

What many people don’t realise is that sleep can massively affect your weight and ability to lose or gain weight. Lack of sleep or poor quality sleep affects the production of the fat burning hormones.

Sleep recovers hormones to repair our muscles.

During sleep our recovery hormones spike in order to repair our muscles after exercise, this is why if you are training regularly good quality sleep is essential.

The hormone called leptin is responsible for not only our appetite but also how much fat the body stores, the main way to regulate our leptin levels is through consistent high quality sleep.

Studies have shown that when sleep quality is poor the levels of leptin within the body drop leading to an increased appetite and in turn weight gain, regulated levels of leptin help with feeling full.

When the levels of leptin drop the opposite hormone grehlin spikes. Grehlin is the hormone responsible for an increase in appetite.

The key ways I recommend to my clients to help improve sleep quality are;

1. Consistent sleep patterns, ensuring you are sleeping for similar amounts every night and going to sleep and waking up at similar times every day which will help allow your bodies circadian rhythm (natural body clock) to get into a consistent routine.

2. Reducing screen time prior to sleep. Blue light affects your body’s ability to prepare for sleep because it blocks the hormone called melatonin which makes you feel tired. Therefore avoiding screen time 40 minutes before intended sleep will help promote the production of melatonin and in turn make you more tired.

3. Reading is a great alternative to screen time as it can help you fall asleep quicker as your brain and eyes are working hard so naturally become tired.

4. Breathing is something which is forgotten about when it comes to sleep but in fact can aid good sleep. Deep breathing before bed can help you feel relaxed and reduce levels of stress in turn improving sleep quality. Before bed you can try 4-7-8 breathing technique which involves long inhales, holds and exhales.

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