The Win On Purpose Podcast
The Win On Purpose Podcast focuses primarily on health and fitness tips and discussions, but we love to celebrate ALL THINGS in regard to being the best you can possibly be in business, relationships, and personal development. Win on purpose means just that, purposefully taking action to become your best self, and following your purpose to develop the passion needed to excel at anything in life!
The Win On Purpose Podcast
19: The SECRET To Optimal Health, Weight Loss, And Mental Health
Unlock the secret to thriving health by unveiling the power of sleep with me, Coach Adam Kelley, on the Win On Purpose podcast. Ever wondered why you feel so off after just a few nights of poor sleep? This episode promises to shed light on the profound impacts of rest on every facet of your life, from boosting your brainpower to sharpening your emotional resilience. Join us as we review the staggering statistics around sleep deprivation and its links to mood swings, impaired decision-making, and heightened risks of chronic illnesses.
Dive deeper into the grave consequences of skimping on sleep, including its effects on sexual health and lifespan. We'll navigate through the scientific connections between lack of sleep and conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and even reduced libido. Hear firsthand how inadequate rest disrupts hormone regulation, leaving you vulnerable to weight gain and frequent illnesses. Sleep isn't just a nightly ritual—it's a cornerstone of your well-being. Together, we'll explore how chronic poor sleep can shorten your life, urging you to reevaluate your nightly priorities before it's too late.
But don't worry; it's not all a nightmare. This episode is packed with actionable tips to turn your restless nights into rejuvenating slumber. From managing your hydration to tweaking bedtime habits, discover how simple adjustments can transform your overall health. Personal anecdotes and a sprinkle of humor ensure that this isn't just an informative session but an enjoyable one. Tune in, take notes, and start winning on purpose, one restful night at a time.
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What's up, guys, welcome back to the one on purpose podcast with coach Adam Kelly. Appreciate you guys for tuning in again. So this episode I go into one of the top classified secrets when it comes to our health and optimization and just feeling our best and looking our best and performing our best, and that secret tip is sleep. Guys, sound simple, but it but it's not. Most likely.
Speaker 1:You know if you have struggled with sleep, you know just how hard it is to get a good system going and figuring out how to improve your sleep quality and your sleep duration. So we dive deep into the negative consequence. Well, actually, we start with statistics when it comes to sleep, then we dive into the negative effects of inadequate sleep, then we dive into the negative effects of inadequate sleep, then we look at the positive effects of adequate sleep and then I give you guys a handful of very easy, practical tips that you can implement, starting tonight, to get the best sleep of your life, so you can wake up feeling your best and ready to conquer the world and to win on purpose, guys. So please share this episode with someone you know, because I guarantee you at least 10 people around you have terrible sleep and an easy area to start improving on guys. So enjoy the episode and we will see you on the other side.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Win On Purpose podcast From health and fitness, business, personal development, relationships and more. We promise you will find inspiration to help you win on purpose in all areas of your life journey. Now for your host, adam Kelly.
Speaker 1:What is up? All my people, welcome back to another episode of the Win On Purpose podcast. Appreciate you guys for tuning in today. If you will, please give a like and a share and some good comments, some five stars, all that good stuff, guys. It really helps us with the algorithm getting the podcast out there to more people, helping us to get exposure, helping us to share valid, sound, evidence-based information with the masses, to help solve some of the confusion and just kind of clear up our minds on what actually matters when it comes to our health and our well-being and our productivity and all things that cause us to win on purpose. So it is a beautiful, cold day today. We're actually recording this February the 13th.
Speaker 1:So just a little life update since last time we talked, because I noticed as I was listening to the last episode that uploaded this Monday and it's talking about micronutrients and giving you a breakdown of the different, you know, vitamins and minerals that our body needs, what good food sources to get it from all that. But I noticed how I was arrogantly bragging that for a couple weeks nobody in our household had been sick and that we were all feeling good finally and got over all the sicknesses that were going around and lo and behold, a couple days after recording that episode, I ended up getting sick. My whole household got sick what we believed to be the flu we weren't actually tested for it but just considering the symptoms and what everybody else who's been dealing with flu A have been dealing with, it lined up perfectly. So I was down, my family was down for several days. It was horribly miserable. So glad to be on this side of things. So I kind of waited a little bit last minute to record this episode because I want to make sure I could actually talk without coughing constantly and my, you know voice being all messed up and just trying to gather my thoughts and actually be able to think and communicate properly, because that was not happening. So so glad to be on this side of things. I just really found it, you know, amusing as I'm listening to the podcast episode in bed, sick talking about how well we are and how you know we're not dealing with anything. So just, you know, kind of a opportunity to make fun of myself there. But, with all that being said, we can move on. This episode is episode number 19.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're almost at the 20 episode mark, rocking on along, and today we are talking about the secret to optimal health. Okay, and I know a lot of times I say there are no secrets, there's no magic, there's no. You know, you don't know what's best. You got to find it out here. But this is a bit of a secret and it's just because because really most people don't consider how important this topic is, it gets highly overlooked, especially in our current society of you know just work until you're dead. You know you sleep when you're dead seven days a week, go, go, go. And that's why I feel that it's kind of a secret, because I don't think a lot of people really consider how important this topic is when it comes to our health physical health, mental health, spiritual health, how we feel, how we look if we're burning body fat or if we're losing muscle tissue. You know libido everything is affected by this one topic. So it is very, very important and I do feel like it's kind of a secret. So here you go, guys. I am giving you top-notch, highly classified, secret information that the powers that be do not want you to know, because you just might change your health for the better.
Speaker 1:And that topic is sleep. I just wanted to hear the crickets there for a second. Yes, it's not very entertaining, it's not very exciting, but it is highly, highly crucial for our health, for performance in the gym, performance in regular life, for our productivity, for everything, guys, sleep is. This is something that I deal with a lot with clients, because I work with a lot of type A type individuals that you know they're running businesses, they're running companies, their bosses, their parents, their spouses. You know they have extracurricular activities with their kids, they have work, they have their hobbies, they have, you know, time with friends. And trying to balance sleep is usually one of the last things that people consider. It's like, hey, I'll just do my best and whatever happens happens. Or it's that I just don't have time to get all this stuff done in my day, so I need to stay up later. And I need to get up earlier in order to have more time to get stuff done. And we're going to discuss that a little bit, because a lot of people think that they're doing themselves a service by skipping sleep to get stuff done, but in actuality, we're usually a lot less productive and a lot less successful at everything that we do whenever we skip out on sleep. Ok, so definitely important. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about a few statistics here.
Speaker 1:I like to give you guys some numbers to think about, and this is basically looking at sleep quality and sleep duration in America, because we need to be very clear on the difference between those two terminologies. Sleep quality is not the same thing as sleep duration. So a lot of people when they hear you know, get adequate sleep, they're thinking duration Okay, I need eight hours of sleep, all right, and that would be great. That is highly recommended. However, sometimes, in in most cases actually, sleep quality is more important than sleep duration. Okay, because it doesn't matter if you're down for eight hours a night if your sleep quality is terrible. You didn't get eight hours of sleep. You didn't get that restorative, you know, replenishing, rejuvenizing sleep. You didn't get those healing benefits and those recovery benefits that come from that deep sleep. We're missing out on all those benefits. So we're really, even if we're down for eight hours, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day if our quality of sleep is terrible. So you definitely want to clear that up and keep that on your mind as we continue on with this discussion.
Speaker 1:So recent data indicates that the average American adult sleeps approximately 6.5 hours per night and this actually is marking a historically low figure. So we've never lived in a time where people got such little sleep. I think a big part of this has to do with our culture and our society. So, you know, we have constant electricity. We have artificial lights that we can keep on throughout the night. That keeps us up, keeps our brain thinking it's still daytime, whereas, you know, back in the olden days all you had was fire for light. So, you know, whenever it's dark, hey, it's time to wind down and get ready for bed, because we can't do anything else, we can't see. It's less safe outside with wild animals, things like that. At nighttime you got a lot more predators coming out and you know we understood how important sleep was more in the past, I believe, because our life was so much more physically demanding than it is now.
Speaker 1:It's a lot easier to operate with less sleep now because physically we don't have a lot being demanded from us and also we have drugs or AKA supplementation like caffeine, which is fairly new as far as how accessible caffeine is and how much people are using, and I feel like that's also part of the issue because we know caffeine can disrupt sleep, sleep quality, um and a lot of people are way over dosing not overdosing, but overdosing caffeine on a regular basis, trying to get away from the fact that their sleep quality sucks. Trying to get away from the fact that their sleep quality sucks. So that's kind of how I feel, what's leading into such a low number of sleep, which is again, you know, a historically low amount on average. So, obviously, the recommendations well, I say obviously, but if you don't know, the recommendations for sleep is about seven to eight hours, or seven to nine hours, depending on which organization you listen to. I feel like that's a good number to shoot for, that seven to eight hours of sleep, and that can be very powerful, especially with consistency.
Speaker 1:So a 2025 survey by SingleCare found that the average person gets less than seven hours of sleep per night, with 50 to 70 million adults in the US affected by a sleep disorder. So definitely definitely a crazy statistic to think that there's 50 to 70 million people in our country, if you're here in the States that are affected by a sleep disorder. Additionally, a study published in 2021 reported that 28.3% of men and 27.2% of women aged 18 and older slept less than seven hours on average within a 24-hour period. So that was 2021. I would bet you it's probably worse now, but still that's. You know well over a quarter of males and females in our nation are getting less than seven hours on average.
Speaker 1:So definitely a negative thing, guys, and we're going to look at some of the negative health consequences of inadequate sleep. So if you're watching the video version of the podcast on YouTube, you're going to see me again looking at my computer screen a lot, which is right here to the left of me because that's where I've got all my notes and everything, and it's a huge screen because I'm like getting old and stuff and I swear print is getting smaller and smaller. It's not my eyes, so I like my big screen here where I can see. So anyways, like I said, we're going to discuss some negative health consequences of inadequate sleep. A lot of these you probably maybe have not heard and a lot of people don't consider why they're going through these different negative health consequences, that it's actually tied to their sleep quality more than probably anything else.
Speaker 1:All right, so number one is impaired cognitive function. So lack of sleep can affect your ability to concentrate, remember things and make decisions. It can also decrease reaction times and impair learning and problem solving skills. So this is a big guys, because a lot of what we do today, like I said, a lot of us don't have super high physically demanding jobs, but we tend to have very high mentally demanding jobs. And so if our cognitive function is thrown off because our lack of sleep and we're not able to concentrate or remember things or make good decisions, you can just imagine the cascade effect in our life that's going to happen if we stay in that state all the time. So that comes down to, you know, food cravings, making good decisions with your diet, making good decisions about being active, you know, and making big decisions. A lot of people make a lot of really big bad decisions when they're sleep deprived. And then you know decreasing reaction times. That's a big thing because you know how many people are in traffic every day, how many wrecks do we see on a regular basis that may be due to someone being sleep deprived. We've all heard of stories of people falling asleep at the wheel and terrible things happening from that. And you know we, we see, we not. It shouldn't be surprising that that's happening when cognitive function is so highly affected by our lack of quality sleep.
Speaker 1:Number two is increased risk of chronic conditions. So ongoing sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased risk of several chronic health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes, guys. So a lot of these metabolic diseases that people are facing today, a lot of them are being, you know, um, a lot of them are being exacerbated oh, I totally slaughtered that word, so excuse me there A lot of them are being made worse due to a lack of quality sleep, guys. So this is super important because heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes we know that millions and millions of people are being affected by these diseases in our nation, and that ties in with that 50 to 70 million people per you know, of Americans that are getting inadequate sleep. Number three weakened immune system. So sleep is crucial for maintaining a strong immune system. Inadequate rest can make you more vulnerable to infections and illnesses, and this is big when you live somewhere like Oklahoma, oklahoma city metro area, where we're rated number one in flu cases right now. Um, you know, we our immune system takes a big hit when we're not getting adequate sleep, and that's a terrible thing, especially when there is sicknesses all around us.
Speaker 1:Number four is weight gain. Sleep deprivation disrupts hormones that control hunger, such as leptin and ghrelin. So those are two hormones that are released in the stomach that affect our satiety levels and it affects our hunger levels. They kind of work, you know, hand in hand to help us control our appetite and to help us know when we need to eat, and that can lead to increased appetite, particularly for unhealthy, high-calorie foods. So you may have noticed this before, if you've ever had a really bad night's sleep, or several nights where you're just not getting good sleep for whatever reason, and all of a sudden especially if you're dieting through that time, dieting through that time and all of a sudden that next day it's super hard to stick to your diet and all you want to do is go grab for all those quick energy source foods, you know, those highly processed foods, high sugar foods. And part of that is because it's the brain's way of trying to protect you, because it's like, hey, we're super sleep deprived, we did not get our recovery time, we did not get time to reboot, so we need as much quick energy coming into the body as possible to keep us awake and somewhat alert. So now you have all of these food cravings for junk food and it makes it a lot harder to say no because again those problem solving skills, to say no, because again those problem solving skills, reaction time, concentrate, making decisions are all affected. Aka cognitive function is affected by a lack of quality sleep and that also plays into our diet. Which is where most people fail their diets and end up backsliding or binging is when they're lacking adequate sleep.
Speaker 1:Number five mood disturbances. So chronic sleep deprivation can contribute to mood disorders like depression and anxiety. It can also lead to irritability, stress and reduced emotional regulation. So this is huge too because, again, a lot of us, our lifestyle, is very mentally stressing and mentally taxing. So if we add in sleep deprivation on top of that, it makes it a lot harder to control these emotions and this is why a lot of people, when they have bad sleep, they wake up super anxious and then that anxiety is high throughout the rest of the day because cortisol levels are super high. The body hasn't had time to regulate hormones, to recover from the day before, the stresses from the day before, and so we're just still carrying all that mental weight if we didn't get adequate sleep.
Speaker 1:Number six increase accident risk. So lack of sleep significantly increases the likelihood of accidents such as car crashes or workplace injuries due to impaired judgment, reaction times and motor coordination. So that ties into that cognitive function and this is where, like I said, a lot of bad things happen. You hear of those cases of people falling asleep behind the wheel, or they're so tired they're just kind of daydreaming almost as they're driving. Or you know, I'm sure some of you guys can relate to this I know I definitely can how you're so tired that you're driving and then you get to where you're going and then you realize, man, I don't remember any of that car ride. Like I don't even remember getting off the highway, I don't remember turning in, I'm just here and I know I drove, because obviously I'm here, but I don't remember that drive at all. Like that's, that's what is happening with um, that lack of sleep is, you know that that risk for increased accidents, or just, you know, impaired judgment, lack of concentration abilities, you know motor coordination, things like that. So big deal, guys.
Speaker 1:Number seven reduce sexual health. This is one that definitely doesn't really get considered and it can definitely have a high impact on males and females. So sleep deprivation can lead to a reduced libido and may affect overall sexual function, especially in men, where it can lower testosterone levels. Uh so, fellas, if you're having some trouble there, um, one place that you may want to look is your sleep duration and your sleep quality. Okay, because that will definitely affect how your members function. Okay, let's just keep it. Keep it honest, guys. Cover your kids ears, but you know I'm not going to be vulgar or anything that's. I'm going to leave it at that, that you can explain that to your kids. If you want to number eight, shortened lifespan so big one, guys.
Speaker 1:Chronic poor sleep has been associated with an increased risk of premature death. Studies show that people who consistently get less than six to seven hours of sleep per night tend to have shorter lifespans, and that's legit. Guys Like you can look up the studies on it. A lot of it's probably going to be epidemiology, which isn't the best, but I totally agree with this, just for the simple fact of how much healing happens when we're sleeping, and you can literally shave off years of your life by inadequate sleep.
Speaker 1:And again, this isn't all of this. I'm going to just preface with this. All of this is not like, hey, you had one night or two nights of poor sleep. Because that's life, guys. Like we're adults, like that's going to happen. You're going to have nights where you stay up too late. You're going to have nights where the kids are up sick. You're going to have nights where you're just tossing and turning because you're stressed or whatever and you just don't get a good night's sleep. Your stomach hurts, whatever it may be. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about consistent poor sleep.
Speaker 1:Like I said, people who consistently get less than six to seven hours of sleep per night. So don't kill your. Why is this the second podcast episode that this phone goes off? That's crazy. Um, just a second, guys, sorry. And and I say that because this phone literally like does not go off all day long that I'm here, except for when I'm recording a podcast episode or when I'm gone Crazy thing, um, anyways, where was I? Let's see.
Speaker 1:So, the shortened lifespan I don't remember what I was saying last, but this is a real thing, guys, and it can definitely shave off years of your life. Because we're not going through those healing processes. Our brain doesn't have time to, you know, re-regulate hormones. It doesn't have time to heal the damage that's been done to our brain, our organs go through a lot of recovery. There's so many things that happen while we're sleeping, guys, that is not happening if we're not getting the adequate sleep. That's what I was talking about. So, again, this is based on people who are consistently not getting good sleep. So you can't help the fact. If you get a bad night's sleep, stuff happens, but we can try to control that to where it's isolated incidences and not just our lifestyle of poor sleep. All right.
Speaker 1:Number nine this is another one that people don't consider Poor skin health. So, over time, inadequate sleep can contribute to skin aging, including wrinkles, fine lines and dark circles. It also hampers the skin's ability to repair itself because, again, all the repairing, all the healing that happens in our body happens while we're sleeping. It's like our time where we reboot the system and it has time to clean out all the junk and all that. So if that's not happening, then what do you think is going to be the result? And then you know, like dark circles, puffy eyes I mean mine are usually like that.
Speaker 1:My sleep quality is not the greatest. I'm going to be honest. A lot of it's out of my control since I injured my spine in 2020. My sleep has been off. It's just hard to stay comfortable in one position very long, so at least a lot of tossing and turning and pain and stuff like that. And then also I have kids that have struggles sleeping and stuff as well. So that's just life. I can't control that. But I can control the nights where I know I'm staying up too late and I know I need to be going to bed and I decide to watch TV or catch the game or whatever. Again, there's always areas that all of us can improve, improve, but we can only control what we can. So we just have to do the best with what we can. Guys, you can't necessarily control your work schedule, you can't necessarily control what's going on with your kids, you can't necessarily control shutting off your brain all the time, but there are some things that we can do to increase our sleep quality and we're going to cover that here at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1:So next we're going to look at benefits of sleep. So, yes, these are kind of the the opposite side of the coin compared to the negative effects, but some of these aren't really covered in what I uh typed up as negative effects, so we're going to go over it anyways. So number one again, these are benefits of adequate sleep muscle and tissue recovery. So all of the rebuilding of muscle tissue that happens, the extra growth of muscle tissue that happens, all of that happens while we're sleeping. Again, you know, and same thing with connective tissue, with our joints, our tendons, our ligaments, our bones all of this regrowth and restructuring happens while we're sleeping. So we definitely want to make sure we're taking advantage of that, especially if you're listening to this podcast, because, if you are, you probably care about your health and your fitness and your performance. So that's going to be a big part of it, guys.
Speaker 1:Number two boost immune system, because we know that a lack of adequate sleep can hinder our immune system. So we have the opposite effect when we get good sleep. Number three improves brain function. So it helps us think better. Again, that cognitive function helps us think better, more alert, more effective.
Speaker 1:One thing I always tell people is think of your sleep as like a budget, okay, like if you well scratch that, think of your sleep like this okay, we think that we're going to be more productive if we get less sleep and therefore we have more time to work. But the truth is, once we do go to sleep and wake up, our chances of being effective that next day go down tremendously to where it's a lot harder to concentrate all those things. So if we could go to sleep an extra hour early, save that work for the next day. Yes, we're going to have one hour less to work, but if we're way more efficient at the hours that we do have to work, that's a better deal, because we're going to feel better while we're doing it, we're going to be happier while we're doing it and we're going to we're going to think better and all that and get way more done. Because you guys know what it's like when you get a terrible night's sleep and the next day you're just trying to like, keep your head on your shoulders. You're not really being effective and efficient at anything, you're just basically trying to make it until you can go back to bed. So a lot of time ends up getting wasted instead of being more efficient with the time that you have, because you feel your best and you could think your best, that's worth giving up that hour or two that you would have spent working on other stuff. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Number four improves mood and focus. So we know the effect it has on mood, on our ability to concentrate. Number five heart health. So this gives time to help regulate blood pressure and if we're lacking sleep, we know that is a high contributor to high blood pressure. The heart never has time to regulate and rest, it's just constantly go, go, go, pump as much blood as possible. Number six reduces inflammation and cortisol buildup. So again, it affects our hormones, it affects our inflammation. That's when we do a lot of inflammation flushing while we're sleeping. This is a big part of why a lot of people lose weight. From the time they go to sleep until they wake up, their body's flushing out water and sodium and inflammation.
Speaker 1:Number seven improves memory, again cognitive function. Number eight helps burn body fat. So if we get less than adequate sleep, our body is much higher, has a much higher possibility of breaking down muscle tissue for energy rather than body fat. Some studies show up to like 80% of the weight lost when people are getting an active sleep actually comes from muscle tissue and not body fat, which means you are overall getting poorer health, thinking that you're getting better health because you're losing weight.
Speaker 1:Number nine improved athletic performance. We know that sleep has a huge impact on gym performance or athletic performance. So if you get a poor night's sleep and you try to go lift and beat your numbers from the week before you try to hit a new PR, good luck, because it's probably not going to happen unless you get good enough sleep. Number 10 helps with body weight maintenance. So again, that controlling body fat and then appetite is a big part of that body weight maintenance, because if our hunger hormones are all thrown off, we're going to be eating that junk food, grabbing quick stuff. But if we got adequate sleep it's easier to make better choices, it's easier to reach for that healthier food and actually fuel our bodies properly. All right, so we went through the negative effects and we went through the positive effects of sleep quality and sleep duration. So now, as always, I'd love to give you guys some tips and leave you with something that you can do practically, that you can apply to your life and try to improve your sleep duration and your sleep quality. Okay, so I got nine points actually 10 points on this and we're going to wrap it up All right.
Speaker 1:So, number one stay off electronics one to two hours before bed. So we know that blue lights, which is what most electronics you know, put out. It basically tricks our brain into thinking that it's still daytime because it it, it emulates daylight. So it kind of tricks our brain and thinking it's still daytime and a lot of people are on screens up until they go to bed or they fall asleep watching screens and then you think, oh well, I get tired enough to fall asleep, so it can't be affecting me that bad. Well, true, you could fall asleep, but your sleep quality is going to be terrible because your brain is still thinking that it's daytime. Your body's still releasing, you know, the wake-up hormones like cortisol, rather than the go-to-sleep hormones like melatonin. So that's a big thing. Trying to eliminate the screens before bed, give yourself like an hour or two, would be most ideal. Read a book, meditate, stretch, have a peaceful, non-stressful conversation with somebody you know, do some crocheting, whatever, some puzzles, anything that just kind of helps you wind down and relax, that takes you away from those blue lights including, like your, your, your house lights. So make sure that you don't have bright lights on everywhere.
Speaker 1:Number eat a protein or slash fat snack before bed. So this can help with some people sleep easier. You know some people when they're hungry they get really bad sleep because they're hungry. So having a high protein meal or snack before bed can help with satiation. Keep you full throughout the night as you're sleeping. Some people, they operate better when they have higher carbs before bed. So you got to kind of play with that one with your nutrition, to figure out what combination of macronutrients helps you get better sleep. Some people there sleep better when they don't eat anything.
Speaker 1:Number three keep your bedroom as dark as possible. That ties into that blue light guys. So the weird thing about the way that our brain operates our brain never shuts off, even when you're sleeping. Obviously that's why you can dream, that's why you stay alive and all these processes are happening. Your brain's still controlling all that subconsciously. And so if you have any type of lights on, like you know, an alarm light that you can see within your peripherals, or like the bathroom lights left on, or you have a night light or whatever, or you're trying to sleep during the day because maybe you work graveyard shifts, you have to sleep during the day and you can't block out all the light of the room your brain will still recognize that light. It still catches that light and can affect your hormone release and your ability to go into a deep sleep. So try to keep it as dark as possible.
Speaker 1:Number four keep your room temperature cool. Okay, a lot of people are sweating throughout the night, which makes it very hard for our body to go into deep sleep. So basically, our body temperature drops at nighttime and this is why a lot of people get cold at night. But this is a good thing. We want our body temperature to come down because that allows our body to go into that relaxed state. So keeping your bedroom maybe a little bit cooler than you're comfortable with and just using blankets, this is a really good idea, and you'll notice how much better sleep you get when you're not burning up at night. So how I tell people? A good way to gauge this is if you get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom. You should be ready to get back under those covers because you're cold by the time you're done going to the bathroom. That's a good indication that your room is cool enough.
Speaker 1:Number five avoid strenuous exercise or stimulus before bed. So this releases hormones that wake us up, gives us energy, so I would try not to work out before bed unless you have no other time to fit it in. Then you got to do what you got to do, especially when it comes to taking, like pre-workouts with caffeine and stuff. Um, also, you know that's. This one can be a little bit tricky because you know if you're a married individual or a married couple, you know typically that's marriage time before bed. So, without going any deeper into that, that can be a little touchy. But just kind of keep in mind that, hey, you don't want to be trying to go hit a PR in the gym and then go home and go to bed. It's probably not going to get very good sleep.
Speaker 1:Number six avoid caffeine five to six hours before bed. Caffeine can have a long lasting effect in a lot of people and can really throw off your sleep. Even if you're sleepy enough to fall asleep, your sleep quality probably won't be that great, and actually there's some new studies that have came out showing that for some people that are more sensitive to caffeine, even like 12 to 15 hours before bed, they need to cut caffeine off in order for it not to affect their sleep. So that's pretty crazy because most people drink caffeine all throughout the day or some people are like you know what I cut it off at two or three in the afternoon, I should be good. Well, for some people, they need to stop drinking it, like in the morning, in order for their body to work through all that caffeine and get it out of their system.
Speaker 1:Number seven listen to calming music. So we want things that calm you. We don't want things that are causing that fight or flight response and getting our adrenaline up. So you know, um, watching. That also applies to what you watch before bed. So you don't want to watch like horror movies or super suspenseful, on the edge of your seat type movies, because this gets your adrenaline running and get your blood pressure up, get you excited and then you try to lay down and go to bed usually a bad combination. So listen to things that are calming, watch things that are calming. This is going to help put you in that parasympathetic state maybe sympathetic state I always get those mixed up guys Forgive me, I don't know everything to a T. It's going to put you in the fight or flight response instead of the relaxation go to sleep response. Okay, let's put it that way, all right.
Speaker 1:Number eight strength train during the day. So this helps regulate our energy. Um, and then again, that's pushing your training away from before bed, stay active during the day. So a lot of people can relate to this that if you're just kind of lounging around all day, it's really hard to actually go to sleep. We want to expend some of the energy that's in our body from the food that we're eating, things like that. So try to be active during the day and basically give your body a reason to have to shut down and recover.
Speaker 1:And number 10, too much sleep can be a negative. So aim for that. Seven to eight, seven to nine hours, depending on schedule and your body's circadian rhythm. So people, you know people are like, hey, man, I got 12 hours of sleep last night and I feel like I got no sleep. Well, we can actually get too much sleep and that could be a negative thing too. So there's 10 points, guys, that you can focus on, start implementing today to increase your quality of sleep, to help you sleep deeper, to help you sleep longer with less wake-ups.
Speaker 1:Another one I would throw in there as well is try not to hydrate too much before bed. So if you're drinking plenty of fluids, like you should be, try to start tapering it down as you get closer and closer to bed, because one of the most disruptive things for sleep are people that you know they drink so much fluids before bed that they have to get up multiple times and go to the bathroom, which can make it very hard to fall back asleep. So try to avoid that by just tapering back your fluid some, if that's an issue that you have. That way, when you go to bed, you're not going to bed with an almost full bladder and then have to get up multiple times. So, outside of that, guys, that's really all I have for you as far as tips. I promise you, if you implement these 10 tips or 11 with that extra that your quality of sleep and your sleep duration are both going to go up and improve dramatically.
Speaker 1:All right, so I hope this information is helpful for you, guys. Make sure you get good sleep, make sure you're focusing on this, because it is a complete game changer and will change everything about how you feel, how you look and how you perform. All right. So, whatever you do with this information, make sure you do something good for yourself, something good for your health, something good for those you care about and, whatever you do, make sure you get good sleep and win on purpose. Talk at you next time.