Learn the secrets to peak health and performance as we dive into the transformative power of sleep. I’m excited to share insights from top sleep experts like Dr. Matthew Walker and Shawn Stevenson, showing how sleep is the foundation of physical recovery, mental sharpness, and long-term wellness. Drawing from my experience working with athletes, I’ll explore just how crucial a good night’s sleep is for muscle recovery, cognitive function, and keeping your hormones and immune system balanced.

Ever thought a simple bedtime routine could improve your sleep quality? We’ll break down how winding down with habits like reading and meditation can set the stage for better rest. Even becoming a little bored before bed can work wonders for your sleep. We’ll also look at hidden sleep disruptors like alcohol’s effect on REM cycles and how adjusting the timing of your workouts can help you fall asleep more easily.

Lastly, we’ll highlight how sleep directly impacts athletic performance and overall health. Getting enough rest can improve reaction time, sharpen your mind, and boost physical metrics like jump height and sprint speed. Beyond just performance, sleep is essential for injury recovery, reducing inflammation, and lowering the risk of chronic diseases. Join me in embracing the power of quality sleep and self-care, so you can share these insights on your journey to optimal well-being.

Here are 10 Tips to Improve Sleep

1. Stick to a schedule – Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This helps regulate your internal clock.

2. Create a sleep-friendly environment – Make your bedroom cool, quiet, and dark. Blackout curtains, white noise machines, and a temperature between 60-67°F can do wonders.

3. Limit caffeine and alcohol – Both of these disrupt your sleep quality, especially if consumed later in the day.

4. Get sunlight exposure during the day – Natural light helps regulate your body’s internal clock, making it easier to fall asleep at night.

5. Move your body – Regular physical activity improves sleep, but try to avoid vigorous workouts close to bedtime as they can make it harder to wind down.

6. Wind down before bed – Create a relaxing pre-sleep routine. Avoid screens and blue light at least 30-60 minutes before bed – this helps your body naturally produce melatonin.

7. Watch what you eat – Avoid heavy meals late in the evening. If you’re hungry, a small snack that includes protein and carbs (like a banana with peanut butter) can help.

8. Practice relaxation techniques – Try deep breathing, meditation, or progressive muscle relaxation to reduce stress before bed.

9. Optimize your sleep position – Side sleeping is generally best for spinal alignment and reducing strain. If you struggle with neck or back pain, pay attention to your mattress and pillow support.

10. Take short naps – If you’re really tired during the day, limit naps to 20-30 minutes to avoid disrupting your night-time sleep.

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Transcript

Dr Alec: 0:01

Welcome back to the Hercules podcast. I'm your host, dr Alec, and today we're diving into a topic that is absolutely essential for athletes, fitness enthusiasts and anyone looking to optimize their health performance wellness. We're talking about sleep. We'll be exploring why sleep isn't just about rest. It's truly the cornerstone for physical recovery, mental alertness and long-term health, and we definitely want to highlight that long-term health. We're going to unpack some top strategies that I recommend to all my patients for improving their sleep and take a deep dive into some of the science behind why quality sleep could be a secret weapon. So let's jump in. So why does sleep matter?

0:47

Sleep is often underrated, especially in the fitness world, where grind culture sometimes glorifies pushing through fatigue, but the truth is sleep is the foundation of recovery, performance and longevity. Studies by experts like Dr Matthew Walker which, if you've never checked him out, you really should I will link to some of his resources below. He's the author of why we Sleep and insights from Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson reveal that sleep impacts everything from muscle recovery, cognition to hormonal function and immune system and, in the context of physical therapy, it's where we make our quote-unquote gains. This is where we actually recover from the stimulus we give it inside our sessions. So some key studies to look at and to be familiar with here are Dr Matthew Walker's research that takes sleep deprived individuals and have shown up to 60% reduction in overall recovery rate compared to those who sleep only seven to nine hours a night. For all my people that come in and say I do well on four hours of sleep, that's just not true. In fact, I've worked with a few firefighters and police officers over the years and what I have found is those weeks that they might have off or they're on a different shift schedule maybe they moved to the daytime shift instead of nighttime magically all their pain starts to go away and they heal a little better, and that's by no surprise. It's not like we're doing anything different in the clinic or they're doing really anything different at home, but they're actually starting to sleep again in the manner that humans may have been meant to sleep in. We're not nocturnal animals by design.

2:38

Another study to look at was actually published by the Journal of Sports Science Athletes who slept less than six hours had a significantly higher risk of injury compared to those who get the recommended eight hours. And this is huge when we look at youth athletes, because we're talking with some of my 13-year-old, 12-year-old patients, when what they did the night before they spent the night playing video games and then got four or five hours of sleep, went to school, sat in school all day, then they get on the football field, maybe after eating a Pop-Tart and sleeping four hours, and then their ACL tears. Is it a direct correlation? Absolutely not. But when these things add up over time, this is when we start to get more of that chronic sleep deprivation that can impact what we do in the clinic and how people recover. There's no amount of physical therapy, rehab, doctor medicine, fitness that can be done if you don't actually recover from those stimulus. In fact, if you're not sleeping during the week, don't even bother doing some of those programs. You're better off sleeping eight hours. There's so much. I'm going to use the word magic and sleeping because it truly does show some magical recovery properties, from just how you feel to what you perform on the field.

4:00

As a personal antidote here, I remember working with an athlete who was constantly battling minor injuries. No matter how we modified his training, something would always flare up. It became super frustrating, not only for the patient but for me, the clinician as well who was giving him all the textbook right things. It wasn't until we really honed in on his sleep habits making sure he wasn't getting enough, making sure he was getting enough high quality sleep that we started to see major improvements in both recovery and, more importantly, performance on the field.

4:32

Think of sleep like the base of a pyramid. Without it, everything else, such as training, nutrition and even your mindset, will basically crumble underneath it mindset will basically crumble underneath it. When you sleep, your body is in a state of repair and growth Muscles, brain and even your immune system, which is why, during COVID, sleep was very important. Use this time to recover and prepare for the next day's stressors. Whether that's hitting a new PR in the gym or recovering from an injury, it doesn't matter. Sleep basically makes anything that's physical, mental or basically anything that involves being human better. So let's get a little bit nitty-gritty on the science behind it. You can see that there's obviously something to not sleeping enough. But why might that be the case? So let's break down what happens when you sleep.

5:27

Sleep occurs in cycles, primarily alternating between something called REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement, and non-REM sleep. Each stage has its unique role in recovering performance Deep, non-rem sleep. This is the stage where most of your muscle repair occurs. This is super important for recovering after an injury. Think about ACL or shoulder rotator cuff surgery or a total knee replacement. These involve muscle, they involve tissue, they involve ligaments. They need repair. Growth hormone is released during this time and your body is in a full repair mode.

6:06

If you're not getting enough of this deep sleep, you're missing out on this critical recovery window. You're missing out on quote-unquote gains. Your muscles aren't going to get bigger. They're not going to get stronger. Your movement patterns aren't going to get better if you don't sleep Now REM sleep.

6:22

This stage is crucial for cognitive function and memory consolidation. This is everything that has to do with the brain. It's also when your brain processes and stores the skills you practice throughout the day, like I mentioned earlier with motor control. So if you've been working on new movement patterns, say, your knee caves in at the bottom of a squat, or when you land off a box, you land in some awkward position. This is the time at night where what you did during the day to practice that actually becomes something that you can use again the next day, or more permanent or stronger, where you jump off this box and you actually do better the following time. Rem sleep helps to solidify these motor skills huge.

7:04

I'm going to star this one Huge point in why sleep's important. Another study highlight here is a study conducted at Stanford University found that collegiate basketball players who increase their sleep to at least 10 hours per night which is a lot. Most people don't have. That especially if you're a busy adult with kids and you work out and you do 10 other things Found that increasing the sleep at least 10 hours per night improved their free throw and three-point shooting accuracy by 9%. That's huge, amazing. This shows how directly sleep can influence things like motor learning, physical performance, or in other words, how you shoot a basketball, how you hit a baseball, how you land off a box, how you Olympic weight lift All these things have a motor skill component.

7:57

You don't sleep. Good luck recovering from these things. Things, oh, that's great and all so. All the science, I'll give you all of that. But why does this matter? How can we make this better? So here are my top 10 tips for better sleep. How can we actionably improve on our sleep each night? Because it's not easy. We live in a very hectic world. There's a lot of things now in society that don't set us up well for sleep anymore. The simple fact that we walk around with a phone in our pocket could be one of them. So let's go through my top 10 tips the Hercules top 10 tips for sleeping that we recommend to our clients as well. Number one and I'm going to say this with pretty much anything we do in here consistency is key. Going to bed and waking up the same time every day and night helps regulate our internal clocks. This consistency reinforces our sleep-wake cycle, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up feeling refreshed. So if we're more consistent with how we sleep and when we go to sleep, it's going to be easier to in fact sleep sleep it's going to be easier to in fact sleep.

9:08

Create a sleep sanctuary. I love this one. This is personally one that I try to do, and I'm not going to lie to you. It's not always perfect. Your bedroom should be a haven for rest. A cool bedroom is ideal. I've seen everywhere between 60 to 69 degrees. A lot of people don't sleep this cold. This is what research shows and, from a personal antidote, I've found that the first few nights of doing this is really uncomfortable because it's cold. Then you get used to it and in fact, a lot of my athletes say that they actually sleep a lot better once they get used to it. Their bodies are really warm. They carry a lot of muscle mass and this is where you need to cool it down. At night it helps to fall into some of those deeper sleep patterns.

9:48

A room that's dark and quiet, no light showing please Block out all those little lights that pop off, or alarm clocks or phones might come off. The little fire alarm Cover these. Something with a little piece of tape does the trick a lot of times. I would also suggest investing in blackout curtains. You can go as far as white noise machines as well. To be honest, you don't need to get super techie with this. I'd rather leave the tech out of the room. Some blackout curtains people get really creative with this. If you don't want to buy fancy ones online, you more than happily can. As far as the white noise machines, like I said, if your room is quiet, leave it alone. If you live near train tracks and the train's always coming through, this might be a helpful way to start blocking that out. Again, I suggest just total no noise, quiet, quiet. This can really make a big difference. This is a really hot topic. Number three here limit blue light exposure.

10:53

Blue light from screens inhibits something called melatonin production. This is the hormone that promotes sleep. This is often what you see in stores like target or walmart or publix, where they're your sleep aids the ones that you don't need to go to the docs for. In fact, they work really well. The problem is your body gets used to this extraneous outside of our body production of it and will shut its production down by itself. I don't recommend this unless sleep's been a big issue for you. You're going through a tough time in life, maybe you just a newborn. I would suggest just improving your sleep patterns and actually using your melatonin, but there's a whole host of medical reasons why this might not be the case. So please consult with your doctor. But let's assume all your hormones are going well or doing well. Please aim to shut off your screen at least an hour before bed. This is going to help with that melatonin release and production.

11:50

Our body works on these light cycles and if we're blasting our eyes with light, that it wasn't meant to be because when we were wild animals back hundreds and thousands of years ago we didn't have electricity and we didn't have this constant light in our eyes. Our body learned to go to sleep as soon as the sun went down, which, yes, I understand. Sometimes the sun goes down at 630 in Florida, wherever you live. So it's not going to make it super easy. But there's some tricks. And, to be honest, I get a little weird with this. Kate, our super admin, and my wife here at Hercules. She laughs at me every time I put on these blue light-blocking glasses. They're big, orange, funky, it looks like construction glasses, but they help to block out some of that blue light.

12:36

This is not perfect. Honestly, I'd rather have all the lights off. That's going to help with sleep the best. But if you are a human living in modern society, it's really tough to do that, especially when you're not going to bed at 6.30 at night, which I don't do and I don't play not doing it. So I'll use these glasses at times, especially when my sleeping is bad. I should use them all the time. So I stress that Sleep is like number one consistency. If you're not consistent with it, it doesn't really work. One night of blue light blocking glasses it's not going to solve your problems. I've seen clients experience immediate improvements in their sleep quality from just adjusting some of this blue light entry into their eyes, and I think it has less to do with the blue light at times and more with the fact that they're not constantly overstimulating themselves for something like a TV. And I'd say that's probably one of the biggest culprits, because a lot of Americans, right before bed, they'll pop the TV on, watch their favorite show, which I'm guilty of. My hand is being raised. I love popping in for a baseball game late at night. That's why I use the blue light glasses. It allows me to have a little fun after a long day and, the same token, help my sleep as well. Oh gosh, number four. This would probably be number one on my own personal list.

13:53

Avoid stimulants. I love coffee. Who doesn't? I love espresso. I love all things.

13:59

Caffeine Probably too much so. Caffeine and nicotine, which a lot of my clients don't dabble with these days, but it can also be a stimulant as well. These both can disrupt sleep. Limit caffeine intake after 2 pm is what's recommended. Coffee has an extremely long half-life, so my recommendation is in fact to stop closer to 12 if you want to really optimize sleep. I would have maybe one cup and stop closer to 12.

14:28

If you want to really optimize sleep, I would have maybe one cup and stop by 8am something, 12 hours before you go to bed. So if you're starting to wind down for bed around eight o'clock, I would stop your caffeine intake at 8am in the morning. And that's really tough for people like myself who like to walk around with a cup of coffee. I would say how would you substitute that? Because I have found in my personal experience something about actually holding the hot cup is enough to give me that sense of coffee and just that routine in the morning. So I will often wake up, I'll have my coffee first thing in the morning. I do this better at times in my life Right now is not one of them and basically after that first cup we'll move into something like an herbal tea that's non-caffeinated, or maybe a sparkling water, something that gives you that hint of holding a beverage during the day and working that's not necessarily water, which some people can say is more boring through the day, and working, that's not necessarily water, which some people can say is more boring through the day. Again, these are all tips that work for me. You might find what works for you in substituting out some of these stimulants. But my hercules recommendation for you really want to optimize sleep, I would cut off your caffeine consumption 12 hours before you want to go to bed. If you go to bed at 7 o'clock at night, that last cup of coffee should be last sip should be done by 7 am in the morning, and this all depends on how much coffee you drink as well. You're drinking three cups of coffee. Yeah, even stopping by 7, that coffee is going to hang around in your system. So one cup 12 hours before you go to bed should be enough to really give you that caffeine hit that you want. And in fact, caffeine has some health benefits as well. We'll touch on at a later time. But this will then allow the coffee to get out of your system enough to where it's not disrupting some of that melatonin production and some of your sleep cycles.

16:23

Number five on our list Power down with a routine. I love this one. This is where I put on my blue light glasses about an hour before bed and I start doing things consistently before bed. That triggers my body. Hey, we're getting ready for bed here. This can include everything from foam rolling and light, stretching, to reading, to meditation. I've used some variation of all these in the past. I find reading works really well for me. I find it a little boring to read a paper book unless it's a very interesting topic for me, something nerdy. So I will pick a book that's not nerdy and interesting to me because I want it to start making me a little bored, a little bit tired. I think something about our society nowadays tells us we have to be excited and turned on all the time, and I think there's some power in being bored, not only from just a recovery standpoint but from a getting ready for bed standpoint as well. You fall asleep when you're bored. Think about school back in the day and falling asleep on a desk. You were bored in class, so make yourself bored in those last hours.

17:30

The other thing I tell my clients is stretch and mobilize. Stretching and mobilizing promotes relaxation, which is often why we don't recommend certain types of stretching prior to really fast activities such as sprinting. This is another topic in itself. That's why static stretching has been shown not to be the most effective route to mobilize or get warm prior to something very ballistic in nature. Again, sprinting, cutting maybe, playing baseball, playing football hard. Metcon Again, shoot me some questions on that. We'll do another podcast on that at another time. But to get back to powering down with our routine, I often recommend for my patients that are looking to stretch and maybe get into mobilization as a two-for-one at that time as well, something called a progressive muscle relaxation technique. For my clients it's simple and it's an effective way to reduce tension throughout your body, which will again promote that relaxation response that we're looking for.

18:35

Limit alcohol. This could be a whole topic in itself. There's really not much benefit from alcohol. I know people are going to come at me with the resveratrol thing in wine. Look, just because a brownie has a gram of protein and protein's good for you doesn't make a brownie good for you. A little bit of resveratrol in the wine is not enough to justify a health benefit and the lack of sleep from it. You're impacting your recovery more than you're helping anything else, and the amount of wine you have to drink to receive a dose of resveratrol, that's enough to give you whatever health benefit it will. It's just it's not worth the amount.

19:18

So limit alcohol and I would say, cut out alcohol entirely. But yes, I'm going to get a lot of shade. I love a whiskey from time to time. Just be careful with the amount and just know when you're drinking it. It's something you are doing in the social setting that you enjoy and you limit yourself, but there's no health benefit to it. Just know that. Hey, this is like going to a theme park. I'm going to have fun for the day and I might eat too much cotton candy that day and not feel well the following morning. So that's up to you. You decide on how you want to handle that.

19:50

But limit alcohol. It makes you drowsy but it does disrupt sleep cycles, especially REM. Think about the stuff with your brain and the motor skills. So let's say you learned a new skill that day. Let's call it double unders. Or you changed your swing pattern in a baseball swing and then you go have a couple beers that night and go to bed. Disrupts your REM sleep. You don't get as much carryover from that session. You just did a lot of hard work that day and you maybe didn't get all the benefit you could from it. Be really careful with alcohol. The results in a lighter, less restorative sleep.

20:26

Limiting or avoiding alcohol can lead to significant improvements in sleep quality. I would say this could be a big one that, if you, and a really big, easy one that, if you cross off the list, can make you sleep a lot better. However, I will say if you are going to drink alcohol that day, the further away from sleep, the better. Most people like to end their night with a glass of wine. I would say move the other way From my boat, have a beer on the boat. Drinkers, that actually is a little better because you're starting to flush some of that stuff out of your system a little longer before sleep.

21:01

Again, recommendation for optimizing health, wellness and performance. Just cut it out entirely. Number seven exercise. Exercise is huge. We promote this. This is part of what physical therapy is fitness in general. You got to exercise. Exercise can help with sleep, but when it's not too late in the day. So this goes for my 9 pm.

21:27

Go to the gym and hit a sesh people. Yes, it's great. Sometimes it's the only time you can go. So, pros and cons, right, you can't work out that day. Maybe you have to work out at 9 pm because you need to get that stimulus in. Just know you're not going to optimize your recovery that way and this is where that all or nothing approach can be dangerous. We need to understand that we can't have perfect life setups. That's why athletes benefit and get super gains from what they do, because their lives are set up for physical activity optimizing performance. For more of my weekend warriors it's really tough to fit in taking kids to school, working a full 40, and exercising. So just know that exercising closer to bed can disrupt sleep. So I would suggest find a sleep spot, a sweet spot for your sleep and exercise.

22:23

Exercising early in the day usually works best. Now there are certain times in the day where more ballistic, higher intensity work might be better from a performance standpoint. Again, this is getting really nitty gritty into exercise, but in general, exercising right before bed is going to disrupt sleep. All your hormones are up. Your cortisol is up a little bit from the workout you just performed. That's going to impact how we actually go to sleep. Your body temperature is up as well. You have to cool that off. So, like I said, if you can exercise a little earlier in the day, that's best. If not, again, it may not be 100%. You might get a 70%, 80% benefit. I'm making those numbers up just to show it's not all or nothing. It's not like you get no improvement from your sleep that night. It just means it might be a little bit less than if you exercise earlier in the day.

23:15

Number eight mind your nutrition. I love this one. Nutrition is huge. You don't track your nutrition. If you don't even think about your nutrition, you should. This goes up there with sleep in terms of the importance beyond what you get from exercising.

23:31

Avoid heavy meals or spicy foods close to bed. I love Sumo House in Vero Beach. Shout out to Sumo House. Number five spicy. Really shouldn't do it close to bed. Not only does it upset your stomach that affects how you sleep, but that increased body temperature and just fullness makes it hard to sleep.

23:49

If you're hungry before bed, opt for a lighter snack. There's a lot of recommendations you can give for that. I would say opt for a lighter snack and leave it there. You can look for foods that have would say opt for a lighter snack and leave it there. You can look for foods that have magnesium and tryptophan in it that help to promote sleep. Think something like turkey at Thanksgiving. We've all heard that. And now the reason why you eat turkey and you get sleepy, I think some of it's that we crammed a ton of food into our body and our body is like nope, we're done going to bed. But there is a chemical in there, a substance I should say that can help to promote sleep. Magnesium is another one as well. You find that in your leafy greens usually. Again, if you can avoid eating two to three hours before bed, which is tough with busy schedules that's optimal Number nine get sunlight exposure.

24:40

Love this one. Get up, go outside immediately 15, 30 minutes longer if you can Get some sun on your skin. If you need to wear sunblock, you can Highly recommended in Florida but just know that our skin is where we make some of that vitamin D when the sun hits it, and that helps to regulate sleep as well, amongst a whole bunch of other hormones, and vitamin D can be a whole topic on itself. But I'd say get out, get some sunlight exposure early in the day. That helps to regulate some of those sleep-wake cycles and it triggers to our body now we're going to be awake, and that allows for this natural buildup of sleep pressure when it starts to get dark. Our body now we're going to be awake, and that allows for this natural buildup of sleep pressure when it starts to get dark, our body knows it's time to go to bed. We're creating this consistency and it all feeds into that number one tip, which was consistency with sleep.

25:32

Number 10, this is where most people go to first when they talk about sleep, and they ignore the nine other things that have a 99% benefit on how to improve your sleep, and that is sleep supplements. Yes, they're fun to talk about. Things like melatonin and magnesium can be super helpful. There's a bunch of other stuff on the market. Consult with a doctor first, of course, especially if you have certain blood markers that are off or you're on other medications, and I'm going to highlight, especially if you're on other medications, it's important to identify some of these underlying factors that are off or you're on other medications, and I'm going to highlight, especially if you're on other medications. It's important to identify some of these underlying factors that are contributing to sleep if you haven't gotten your blood work checked. But as far as supplements, they can be helpful if you're optimizing everything else or you have a huge gap in one of your blood markers or you're going through something in life. There you're on a medication. I'm not going to go super into this because, like I said. I believe this is like the 1% improvement in sleep. That's what you're looking for. Things like magnesium can be hugely impactful on that, but again, if you're not doing the other nine things, the 99% that 1% is not going to make up for it. Awesome, you have our 10 tips on improving sleep.

26:42

So why improve sleep? We talked about how sleep works a little bit. We talked about how to actually improve the sleep. So why should we improve sleep? Why is this important for performance and recovery? So let's get into the specifics on. Let's start with athletic performance here. So let's get into the specifics on. Let's start with athletic performance here. Adequate sleep improves things like reaction time, cognitive function, physical performance metrics like a jump height or sprint speed or how much you can lift on a barbell, for example.

27:12

Research shows that sleep deprivation can reduce glycogen stores and negatively affect the body's ability to repair muscles. When you're training hard and you're not sleeping enough, you might notice that your strength plateaus or you experience delayed recovery. It's not just a coincidence. Your body isn't getting the resources it needs to rebuild some of that breakdown in muscle tissue, or even your brain's ability to reproduce some of the signals it needs to send to your muscles to do what they need to do for your performance. Sleep deprivation is a huge impactor on sleep performance or on performance, excuse me. Another highlight from a study is one published in the Sleep Medicine Reviews that demonstrated that even one night one night of sleep deprivation can lead to 20% reduction in maximal strength For athletes in the gym or active individuals. That's a huge impact. Let's just ballpark numbers here. If you have a 300-pound back squat and you didn't sleep well, you got four hours of sleep the night before. That could be something close to 60 pounds off that top end number there. So you might be able to squat 240. If you're competing in powerlifting, think about how big of an impact that can make on your total. Think about how that can impact a CrossFit workout in a competition.

28:38

This is personal story time, but I've been to a couple CrossFit events where the night before some of these athletes went out and had a couple drinks hung out with their friends. The event didn't start till 11. And then they were so stressed the next day about why they didn't perform well and I don't know if it's just a ignoring the problem thing or it's truly lack of education there. But you didn't set yourself up for success by impacting your sleep before. I think, because sleep is something that you don't see the benefits or necessarily feel the benefits in the moment, and it's a consistency over time thing, much like exercise and nutrition. It's something that often goes out the window. And I think sleep it's even more the case because at least with working out you feel some sort of sweat and burn. You think something's happening in the moment. Sleep you know what. You lay your head down, you go to sleep. You wake up the next day. We've been doing it since we were bored. It's something that doesn't seem sexy in nature, I should say, and probably the thing that impacts our performance the most at times, especially when you're not sleeping well. So just take all this and take a step back and realize the small things are important.

30:01

Sleep is also critical for injury recovery. This is where the physical therapy side will come into this. When you sleep, your body releases things called cytokines. These are proteins that help reduce inflammation and aid in tissue repair. Without enough sleep, cytokine production decreases, slowing down recovery times. Sleep, people, that's how you're going to recover.

30:22

Another personal antidote here I've had a couple ACL patients I've worked with. They tend to be more on the adult side. They have some athletic return to sport goals, but it's not their full-time job. They have families. These are the people that go oh, I stopped thinking about my nutrition. Oh, I sleep a little less. I don't need to. I'm not working out as much. It's the wrong way to think about it. You need your tissue, you need your muscle to repair at night, to actually get through everything that you need to, not only in the gym. In fact, I've told this to certain people that have come in If you're not sleeping, there's no point in doing some of your exercises. Have come in. If you're not sleeping, there's no point in doing some of your exercises. You might be doing more harm than good at that point. So that's for athletic performance. What about for just general health, wellness and longevity? I think that's where a lot of people's heads are going these days, especially as you move out of maybe more hard fitness programs like CrossFit into more of longevity programs.

31:22

Sleep can impact things such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline, think dementia and Alzheimer's. All these things are impacted by sleep. Going back to Dr Matthew Walker, who I mentioned earlier, he emphasizes that consistently getting less than six hours of sleep is associated with a shorter lifespan. So if you're looking at longevity and you're taking all these random supplements that turn your mouth blue or you wear all these fancy doodads on your head and feet and blah, just start with sleep. If you're not sleeping, you know those eight to nine hours or even more than that at times, depending on your activity level you're actually impacting lifespan by not recovering enough.

32:11

In terms of body composition and weight management, this could also fall under athletic performance. Sleep is also crucial. This could also fall under athletic performance. Sleep is also crucial. When we're sleep deprived, our bodies produce something called grenolin, the hunger hormone, and leptin. This is the satiety or the fullness hormone. This combination not only increases appetite, but also cravings for high calorie foods. Your body thinks it's in a state of stress when it doesn't sleep enough. It views the fact that you woke up and you're running around as the lion's chasing you and it's trying to get fuel to support that, when you really don't need that fuel. From just an energy perspective.

32:53

For athletes with health, wellness and longevity, this means that sleep isn't just about building muscle, enhancing recovery. It's also a key factor in maintaining some of that leanness and body composition, which is super important for longevity and health. Being overweight, even being an athlete, you might be a stud, but the same token, you're impacting longevity and there's a lot of things in sports that are already take away from longevity. Just FYI, it's hard to be really healthy and long-term focused when your sport might require hitting max intensities every day. So mitigate that by sleeping better.

33:35

So what are some practical applications and takeaways here? I gave you a lot of information 10 tips on how to improve sleep, why sleep's important, some of the science behind it. Let's just talk about some practical things with putting this into practice. Remember, small steps lead to big results. You don't need to overhaul an entire routine. You don't need to go buy a thousand supplements and honestly I don't even recommend that. I would say start with one change. This is called habit changing and if you've never read the book Atomic Habit, I really think you should. It's an amazing book. It could be super impactful in how you improve not only your sleep but just general habits throughout the day. So if you're struggling with certain addictions or difficulty changing your patterns, I would give that book a read. It's really powerful.

34:29

So, getting back to sleep, start with one change, like limiting blue light or setting a consistent bedtime. Hint hint. Start with a consistent bedtime. Track your sleep with a wearable device or start with a sleep journal. Track what you're doing. Things that are tested and measured are things that get improved. I say that all the time in the clinic. That's why I'm so OCD at times with tracking things, because if we don't track it, we don't know if it's actually improving, and that's why so many people fall off the wagon. I know they're boring at times and don't really move the needle in the moment, but they're the things that allow us to keep moving the needle appropriately.

35:08

So again, be consistent. Take one step at a time. Don't do all 10 tips at once. If you can do all five, more power. You can do five at a time, more power to you. Let's start with one a week and build off that. Just make things slow and consistent. We don't always need the sprint to the finish line.

35:31

I'm someone that does that all the time. Take it from me. It doesn't usually pan out. One step at a time, just be consistent with it. That's huge. So I just want to say thanks, guys, for tuning in or back into the Hercules podcast. I hope you got some actionable items and you learned something about sleep today and why it's so important for recovery, sports performance, longevity and injury recovery, injury rehab as well. If you enjoyed this episode, share it like it, give it to a friend. Just share the health knowledge. I think this world needs it, especially as things become more hectic and there's so much going on these days that it's important to take a moment to just relax and focus on yourself again, something I don't do all too well at times, but take it from me, it's super important. Till next time, guys, keep hustling, keep pushing, and we'll be back next week with a new topic. Have a great rest of your day.