The Importance of Sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep is much more important than you think. In fact, it is vital for overall health and performance potential.

Yet despite this, many people get an inadequate amount of sleep due to many factors both intrinsic and extrinsic. Below are things that you can change to help improve sleep.

Sleep Hygiene

“Sleep hygiene” is the term used to describe the habits and rituals around bedtime and sleep. Practicing good or bad hygiene is up to you. Positive habits will support a good night’s sleep and prevent you from laying awake, tossing around, and waking up tired and exhausted. This can be especially true for wheelchair users who challenge their bodies and minds on a daily basis, remaining in seated positions all day. Decent sleep hygiene will help the nervous, as well as the musculoskeletal system to recover and recharge overnight.

Studies have shown that inadequate rest impairs our ability to think, to handle stress, to maintain a healthy immune system and to moderate our emotions. In fact, sleep is so important to our overall health that total sleep deprivation has been proven to be fatal: lab rats denied the chance to rest die within two to three weeks. Other typical effects of sleep deprivation include heart disease, hypertension, weight gain, diabetes and a wide range of psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Considering that our immune system may already be suppressed by various conditions and daily stresses on our bodies’ systems, the reasons listed above clearly show how important a good night’s sleep is for our overall health.

So what can you do?

A good sleep routine is not only created in the evenings. It starts with your behaviour throughout the day:

1. Make sure you get some sunshine during the day. Our circadian rhythm and our sleep-wake cycle are closely connected. Such exposure will help the brain understand that it is supposed to sleep when it is dark and be awake during the daylight. You may have noticed during winter months that sleep is more disturbed due to the shortening of available sunlight..
2. Limit naps during the day except for short power naps (max 20-30 minutes). I personally have a bad habit of having a nap and waking up a few hours later! That can affect the ability to sleep when you are supposed to.
3. Watch what you eat and drink. Avoid going to bed with a full stomach or drinking lots an hour before going to bed. Stay away from caffeine or similar stimulating substances from noon onwards. If you catheterise then maybe consider a night bag solution to keep you from having to get up in the night.
4. Try not to have your final training session close to the time that you are planning on going to bed. This will stimulate you by having your nervous system firing!
5. If taking medication, talk to your doctor about side effects and timings to see if there is any way to move things around to help with sleep.

Furthermore, there are several other things you can do to support quality sleep:

1. Develop a bedtime routine such as taking a warm bath, meditating, reading a relaxing book, and going to bed at the same time.
2. Limit screen time and blue light exposure at least one hour before going to bed as this will trick the brain into daylight exposure and wake you up again. There are ways to have a night mode on most new phones and computers that reduce blue light.
3. Create the “perfect” sleep environment. Make sure you sleep in a completely dark and cool room (16-18c) and eliminate noise. If complete silence is uncomfortable, using “white noise” I have used Harry Potter Audiobooks in the past to great effect! It might be useful to also leave anything that might wake you up again (mobiles, TV, books) out of the room.
4. Sounds logical but is often underestimated: find the right mattress and pillow for you. I have a special supportive pillow that’s incredible!

How is your sleep hygiene? Can you optimise your sleep? Or are you already doing everything to wake up energised and ready to smash anything that life throws at you?