Nutrition Strategies That Support Sleep And Mental Health For Endurance Athletes Ep 144

Sleep is one of the most important recovery tools athletes have—but many endurance athletes are not getting enough.

In this episode of Find Your Edge, Coach Chris Newport talks with dietetic intern Emily Qiu about how sleep and nutrition affect athlete mental health, recovery, anxiety, depression, insomnia, inflammation, and performance.

We cover:

• why endurance athletes may need 8–10 hours of sleep
• how poor sleep affects recovery and inflammation
• the link between sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression
• how a Mediterranean-style diet supports mental health
• nutrients and supplements that may support sleep
• caffeine, alcohol, circadian rhythm, and bedtime routines
• when to get personalized nutrition support

If you are struggling with sleep, mood, fatigue, or recovery, this episode will help you understand where to start.

Ready for personalized support? Book a 30-minute Quick Start Nutrition Consult or learn more about the Longevity Lab at The Endurance Edge (where you get genetic testing to learn more about how to optimize your sleep for performance and mental health). 

Ready to make a season's worth of progress in just one day? 

Join us for an Ultimate Training Day and receive personalized coaching, hands-on swim, bike, and run instruction, and actionable feedback you can use immediately. 

Plus, connect with an incredible community of athletes and coaches. Space is intentionally limited to ensure personalized attention, so register early at TheEnduranceEdge.com/camps 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Sleep Matters

Coach Carlie 0:00

All right, friends, welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am here with my dietetic intern. She is amazing. Her name is Emily Q, and she is literally drinking from the fire hose right now. I'm having her do so many different things. So today is all about, and you guys are going to learn a lot from her, as I am as well. We are talking all about nutrition for managing mental health and sleep. So, oh boy, what a fantastic topic. Emily, I'm so excited for you to teach us all the things and give us your experience and all the goodness. So thanks for uh being part of this. Thanks for having me, Chris. I'm super excited to jump in. You should get extra credit for this. That's just what you know.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I should send it to my professors later.

Coach Carlie 0:51

That's right. That's right. All right. So if you guys are watching this on YouTube, so great little slideshow here. But jump right in, Emily. This is your first slide here. It's all about the basics of sleep for athletes. So tell us all the things. Jump in. All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

So as athletes, no matter what sport you do, I know we're mostly about the endurance sports here, but no matter what sport you do, you're putting your body through a lot of stress in your training.

How Much Sleep Athletes Need

SPEAKER_01 1:18

So it's extra important that we do everything we can to recover and just kind of redo all that muscle rebuilding from our hard training. So sleep is a major factor of that, probably one of the most important things, because that's when your body kind of does like all of its resetting and everything for from the day. So we I know that you might have heard that like the general recommendation is like seven, at least seven hours of sleep, maybe seven to nine. But actually, endurance athletes probably need more like eight to ten. So probably more than you might think, especially in those more intense training blocks.

Coach Carlie 1:59

I'm pretty sure somebody just fell off the treadmill.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah.

Coach Carlie 2:04

Hearing that, like, wait, eight to ten. There's no way I'm gonna have time for that. So uh yeah, eight to ten, which is which is crazy. Yeah, and this is not like you're not pulling this out of your rear end. Like this is this is well referenced for athletes and uh recovery.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

So a lot of important things are happening when we're asleep, um, like the muscle repair, like I was talking about, but also strengthening immune functions so we don't get sick and catch infections when we're in a state our bodies are in a state of stress, and also for our neurocognitive performance, too. Um, as endurance athletes, we know that our sports are probably 90% mental, honestly. And just the snap decision making and just like your mental state while you're in training can really make a difference in how your workout goes, how your race goes, all that stuff.

Coach Carlie 3:01

Yeah, totally. And um, while I'm slip switching over to the next slide, Emily, what's your background in sport?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Yeah, so I have always done endurance sports. I think I my first sport was swimming. I started that when I was really young, but pretty soon after that, I picked up running when I was in elementary school, late elementary school, and I did, you know, classic track in middle school, cross country and track in high school. And I actually had a brief stint on the UNC rowing team when I was in college. I was uh rowing, I was a walk-on to the team and I rode for about a year and a half, which was super cool. And now um now that I've been out of college for a few years, it's just been back to running for me. That's probably my my first love and will always be.

Coach Carlie 3:51

Yeah, very cool. We're um, y'all do don't don't think that I haven't tried to get her to do a traffon. So um it might happen on her. It still might happen, yeah. Cool. So yeah, now our next slide. The IOC. IOC, sleep and mental health. Oh, do tell us the things, and you're gonna have to give some context of what IOC is.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Of course. So the IOC it stands for the International Olympic Committee. They've released a statement that acknowledges sleep as a major contributor to athletic performance and a key element of athlete mental health. So in order to maximize

What The IOC Says About Sleep

SPEAKER_01 4:30

all the benefits of sleep, they consider this like optimal sleep health to include sufficient sleep length, so that eight to ten hours we just mentioned, proper circadian alignment, so pretty much a regulated like sleep-wake cycle that your body, like if you've ever heard of the circadian rhythm, which is like your 24-hour kind of cycle, that's what it is, good sleep quality, and the absence of conditions like insomnia or sleep apnea. So basically just undisturbed sleep, undisturbed deep sleep.

Coach Carlie 5:03

And then there's reality, what's actually happening in our house. All right, so dig more into this current research.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Well, lots of there have been many studies on sleep and athletes, whether it's elite athletes or recreational athletes, but many studies and elite athletes have found that as many as 39% report insufficient sleep like length and 20 to 38 percent poor sleep quality. So large percentage of athletes here out here are not getting enough sleep.

Coach Carlie 5:36

And lots of-I know you didn't say less than seven hours. So I know a lot of you out there are getting less than seven hours because you think productivity is the best thing and you're gonna be such a great athlete. Well.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah, bad news for you, I guess.

Coach Carlie 5:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Included in this like bad sleep quality business, we've also there's a large percentage of athletes with insomnia symptoms and general like sleep disturbance. And some of these consequences of not enough sleep, you can affect your uh cortisol secretion, which is the the known as the stress hormone, and increase some pro-inflammatory cytokines and which can like hinder your recovery from training. We're all about the probably like inflammation can be good, but chronic inflammation is not. It's not, yep, yes.

Coach Carlie 6:25

And CRP is something that you can test. We like to test high sensitivity CRP. You can test interleukin 6, it's a little bit more pricey. But we also see in our genetic testing certain um genetic propensities for this being higher. So if you are somebody who is going to be has a larger propensity for releasing interleukin 6, you really have to hammer down on your recovery and on your sleep. So yeah, go go ahead, Emily.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah, well, probably uh getting to the heart of the issue here that we wanted to talk about. Sleep disorders are positively correlated with depression, anxiety, and perceived psychological stress among athletes. So not only is your body not getting all the physical uh benefits of adequate sleep, your mental health is likely suffering because of it also. We see that athletes who don't get enough sleep have higher rates of anxiety, which can cause this vicious cycle that kind of causes them to wake up frequently in the night or have terrible falling asleep because of that anxiety. So negative outcomes all around.

Coach Carlie 7:36

Yes, not good. And that's so frustrating when you are waking up in the middle of the night and then you know, and then the mind just goes crazy and then you're like, I know I need to be sleeping right now. So oof, it's hard. But now we're gonna talk about the fun stuff. Let's go. Nutrition. Nutrition, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

We know that nutrition, not really meant to replace conventional meds or therapy. Those really have their place as well in mental health and sleep, but nutrition can definitely support the management of any mental health disorders and optimize, help basically help the medicine or therapy do its job.

Coach Carlie 8:12

I'm I'm glad you said that because so many folks come to us saying,

Food As Support For Mental Health

Coach Carlie 8:16

I don't want to take any medication, I just want it all to be nutrition. And I'm at listen, I'm I'm praising all the things nutrition, but like it really has to be a holistic role with like all the different team members coming in, right? With if you're working with a psychologist, if you're working with a psychiatrist or a sports psychologist or your coach, and like, I mean, these these are this is like your crew, your people, and part of that might be pharmacological interventions, at least perhaps temporarily. So there are people out there who want to help and help you perform as best as you can and nutrition, obviously, is part of that. So, you know. Don't let me go on too many soapboxes, Emily. No, I love I love the soapboxes. I I'm fully as prone to them. Antioxidants. I know you have that highlighted. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Yeah. So it's been proven that a foundational diet for optimal mental health primarily consists of whole foods and with that have all high nutrient density. Um, if you've ever heard of the Mediterranean diet, like if if you eat similarly, like it doesn't have to be exactly the same foods that are generally documented in the Mediterranean diet, but if you eat a pat a

Antioxidants And Whole Food Synergy

SPEAKER_01 9:29

dietary pattern that's like similar to it, you usually have lots of fruits and vegetables and those contain a lot of antioxidants, which really help to eliminate oxidative stress and inflammation in the body. So if you eat a lot of antioxidants, it's usually associated with better mental health outcomes.

Coach Carlie 9:50

But what about a pill? Can I just eat all my vitamin C and vitamin E as a pill?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Oh, you know, you can you can take pills for vitamin C and vitamin E, but we also know that in a lot of fruits, like you know, your berries and things with those nutrients when you kind when you eat it as like a whole fruit, the all the nutrients in the fruit kind of like have synergistic effects on each other and they help each other work better. So they like supplementation can help, but often eating the whole foods kind of helps you maximize those nutrients, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally.

Coach Carlie 10:31

Yeah. Again, then you get all the polyphenols that go with it. And those, of course, have been isolated and studied for athletic performance. And anybody who is on excess doses of antioxidants can actually be pro-oxidant. Isn't that wild to think about? Wow. Yeah. So, all right, let's get into circadian rhythm. Tell us more things.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, so I think I touched on this a little earlier, but the circadian rhythm is kind of the body's natural sleep and wake cycle over 24 hours. It's kind of based on light and dark exposure. Like think about how you wake up and you feel like awake when the sun's out versus when you wake up and it's dark out in the winter and like you it you're it doesn't, you probably don't feel as awake. It's harder. Yeah,

Circadian Rhythm Basics For Athletes

SPEAKER_01 11:16

your body's expressing that light when you wake up. And it's like we turn out all the lights when we go to sleep because it's hard to sleep when it's when when you're in a lit room. That's kind of yeah, what what the circadian rhythm is about. It affects your uh and you also your body also has a natural like cortisol secretion pattern that that like kind of repeats daily, and that's kind of part of the circadian rhythm as well. Yep. Cool.

Coach Carlie 11:40

And then of course we were just talking about supplements. So I see a few listed here. Yep. Yeah, tell us about them.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So we know that the any disruption in the circadian rhythm can contribute to just lots of mental health conditions and just chronic disorders. So if you're having trouble regulating your circadian rhythm, you don't you find that you're not really able to fall asleep or wake up when you want to. Maybe vitamin B12 is a is a good one. It really

Melatonin And Cortisol Support Supplements

SPEAKER_01 12:10

enhances your light sensitivity and regulates your cortisol secretion and melatonin production. And speaking of melatonin, this is produced by your body naturally that kind of tells you when it's like time to go to sleep. And some people have who have a disrupted circadian rhythm, they find that if they take a little bit of melatonin to like kind of help prompt their body to and tell that their body that it's time to go to sleep, that can be really helpful. But we don't want to take too much because then our body will stop producing melatonin on its own. Yeah.

Coach Carlie 12:43

So, and noting here that you've got 0.5 to three grams. And of course, and this is a more uh heavily body of research that's coming out that shows that these low-dose melatonin are more effective than high dose. And if you go to the store, I can tell you right now, if you go to the drugstore, you go to the grocery store, you're gonna find five grams, you're gonna find 10 grams, you're gonna find 20 grams, and people don't know. And I I don't blame you, like, you know, why should you know? But they're just like, I just need to get some sleep. I'm just gonna grab this high dose melatonin. And then there's so many things that we can do prior to melatonin or in conjunction with melatonin. There's precursors to melatonin too. So I in our practice, I like different lines of defenses prior to going to melatonin. There are also some genetic links that melatonin hangs around a little bit too long in the morning, so they feel super groggy. So that's an interesting one. So um I'm not saying melatonin is bad. I just think it's uh there's other things that we can do first, you know, like adjusting caffeine, and maybe we're gonna get into that. But but first phosphatol serine, because I love this one, this is a cool one.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, um, phosphatidyl serine, it's uh it's a phospholipid that uh helps kind of prevent high cortisol levels at nighttime because if you if you've got higher cortisol levels at nighttime, your body's a little bit more in that like stressful state, and you'll probably have a harder time falling asleep. Yeah, so it just helps you with that.

Coach Carlie 14:10

And that rhythm, that um that cortisol rhythm that Emily's been talking about. So you want cortisol to actually be high in the morning and then it gradually drops off. It's called a diurnal curve diurnal curve. And another cool thing about phosphodyl serine, this is actually a really well-researched study for ADHD. So speaking of mental health, right? Especially in kids, but can be beneficial for other um brain health uh taken at the right time. So cool. All right. Uh, let's see. Anything else you want to pop in on that? Otherwise, let's get into insomnia. Yeah, and I mean ready for this one.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

The circadian rhythm kind of comes back in all of this too. So be thinking about that natural sleep-wake cycle as we talk about these other little disorders. So if you've if if you've experienced insomnia, you know how much it sucks. Just having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or just like finding that you're waking up way earlier than you want to and can't go back to sleep. Yep. Um, it really is associated with depression, PTSD, and it can even be a risk factor for dementia later on. So things that might help with insomnia if you're eating a

Insomnia Tools From Magnesium To Herbs

SPEAKER_01 15:22

that Mediterranean like diet pattern and you're still struggling with this. There's a few options. Magnesium is a big one that we like to talk about that can kind of help relax your muscles and lower your cortisol levels, like we were talking about earlier. And then this one I hadn't heard of until I started doing research for this podcast, which was uh the valerian root and the hops and the passion flower supplement that goes together. It's uh it's usually abbreviated VHP, and it's an herbal supplement, and it can boost the GABA, the neurotransmitter, to improve your sleep length and quality.

Coach Carlie 15:58

Yes. Oh, GABA is so wonderful. Uh, you can do GABA alone, but you can also do uh there are some great like valerian root teas, too, passion flower teas that especially if you're like, oh, I don't know about all these different supplements. Um that those are good places to kind of start to.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah. Speaking of tea, lavender is also proven to be really helpful in the relaxation department. Like you can drink lavender tea, or even like if you have an essential oil diffuser, use that and it could help, yeah, add it in flavor to your cooking.

Coach Carlie 16:36

Well, dab on the on the on the wrist or on the back of your ears. Yes, good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah. And then the one last one that I researched for insomnia specifically is lactium, which is a it's a milk biopeptide that again acts on GABA and has that sedative, like help you fall asleep effect as a result.

Coach Carlie 16:58

Very cool. And tying this back into again genetics, there are some folks who need a little extra support in the GABA department. You know, some of these things that are specifically acting on GABA receptors, those are good places to start if you know that that's there, or you can go straight to GABA. And I know you were mentioning magnesium too. There are several different types of magnesium. I like to think of magnesium L3N8, which is great for anxiety, higher anxiety. But some people, the the cheaper version, the cheapest version, but it's not as well absorbed magnesium oxide. And then you have citrate, which tends to help loosen stools for anybody who tends to be a little bit more constipated. And then there's glycinate and glycine. Honestly, you can uh also supplement with glycine, but magnesium glycinate is a nice sort of gentler on the stools, helps people often fall asleep, and then there's three and eight. So now that we're heading into the hotter times of the month, another thing to think about is it's lost in your sweat and we can't make it ourselves. You know? So, and if you ain't eating a lot of leafy greens, you're probably not getting a lot of magnesium. So just like Emily said, that Mediterranean style diet is really good. Cool. Okay. Depression. I mean, depression's not cool, but tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah, we we know how d common depression is. It's also like, especially, you might not think this at first because as athletes, we're constantly producing dopamine with all the um exercise and training that we're doing, but it's actually pretty depression's pretty common in athletes because of a lot of internal or external pressures to perform, especially if you're competing actively and like

Depression Risk In Athletes And Key Nutrients

SPEAKER_01 18:40

it's just part of over-training syndrome. You can get that kind of chemical imbalance in your brain because of that. The mechanism behind it is that like when you're training really intensely or extensively, you can initiate a stress response in the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal or HPA axis, which is just a set of glands in your body that produce a lot of hormones. And speaking of pituitary, that's where melatonin comes from. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, cool. So all this relates. So a little few other supplement options to talk about that can help with depression. We see that vitamin D and B12 are often really low or deficient in people with depression. So if you're deficient in those, if you get lab stun and find that, like, okay, this might be contributing to your depression, a lot of the times you'll be prescribed vitamin D or B12 supplementation.

Coach Carlie 19:36

Yes. Okay. And um, seeing that real real food is great, and also I find this hilarious that we're talking about sleep right now. And I don't know if you can hear them or not, but my dog is snoring. I love you. So yeah. Um, but Emily, remind us of good food sources, not necessarily of lavender, because you know, uh, but D, B12, and omega-3s.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yes. So vitamin D, you'll find that in your milk products, your dairy, like milk's got a lot of vitamin D, yogurt, B12. I think you find that a lot in animal products. So meats, uh, I think eggs, fish.

Coach Carlie 20:16

Yep. So any vegan or vegetarian, just make sure you're getting your B12 tested. The range is very broad. Um, so we have slightly tighter functional ranges, especially relating to athletic populations. So I like to see at least 500. Uh, but again, all that you know, we're not necessarily just picking and choosing one thing, but it's all goes together. And then omega-3 fatty acids, where do those come from? Oh, our fatty fish. Love our fatty fish and some nuts as well. Yeah. Are you are you a sardine person? I can't do sardines. That's like a hard pass for me.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Um, salmon is good. I love salmon. Sardines are like, ah, I don't know.

Coach Carlie 21:01

If you want, okay, you're braver than I am.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

In my food science class, my professor, who's awesome, she's a huge fan of canned fish because of like the affordability and like the protein content. And she had us all try some sardines just like on a cracker. And I was kind of scared. I've never had sardines before. And I remember trying it, and my first thought was this wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. But it's also like I don't like actively like it that much. So I it's just so-so for me. But yes, yeah.

Coach Carlie 21:33

I I wish I could get into it more. I do like anchovies, but they're super salty. I mean, you can you can rinse them. I'll put them on things sometimes, but you're right, like it's so much cheaper than buying uh like, I mean, fish oils are not they're they're they're not cheap. They're great, and especially if you have those high uh propensity for like inflammatory genes or you know, mental health, massive, and also great for managing triglycerides. There's just so many different things that they're fantastic for. But yeah, if you can canned salmon, another one, then you get extra calcium because little bones in them too. So canned salmon's wonderful. Think outside the can, think outside the box, you guys.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Forgot to mention vitamin D from sun exposure, of course. So yeah. Yes.

Coach Carlie 22:16

Although the dermatologists would all be mad at us, but maybe for a short period of time, yeah, uh, we can get our vitamin, because you can't overdose from vitamin D from the sun, but you can obviously do not great things for your skin. But yeah, that's a little bit more specific to it's easy to supplement and it's generally cheaper. It's a little harder to get from the diet, like you had said, milk. Plant-based milks usually have it fortified. But yeah, if it's not yogurt or milk or plant-based milks, or you could get it. I think fish has some too. So you could get a double whammy of the mushrooms, the only vegan source of vitamin D. So eat your mushrooms, people. And I know mushrooms are now like the thing to put in your coffee and all the other things. So I mean, I'm not sad about that. So it's all right. So tell us about anxiety. And then we just said depression and insomnia. Now we're on to anxiety. What do we got here?

SPEAKER_01 23:07

This is also well, anxiety is also very common in athletes for all the same reasons that depression is really common in athletes. You just have this pressure to perform and to do well in your competitions and races or whatever you have going on. So it's actually well documented that like performance anxiety can like cause physical symptoms

Anxiety Gut Health And Probiotics

SPEAKER_01 23:27

to occur while you're competing or racing, like cramping, diarrhea, nausea. It's a ton of GI symptoms, really. And that's also a negative cycle that we're perpetuating. And like you might be anxious because you your race didn't go well because of GI symptoms, and now you're just kind of stuck.

Coach Carlie 23:48

So um it also Or you just generally give up, like, and not necessarily like in the event, perhaps during in the event, but like afterwards, you're like, oh, this is just too hard. I'm not dealing with this anymore. And then and that makes me very sad. Like we need to stay active and healthy. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

So again, with along with that Mediterranean like diet, if you need a little, a little boost in the in the calming of your anxiety, we know that your gut microbiome really plays a part in your overall mental health because of the the gut brain axis. And pre- and probiotics go a long way in making sure you have a diverse and healthy gut microbiome.

Coach Carlie 24:33

Yeah, love it. Prebiotics, especially Mediterranean diet, um, artichyps, you guys, like okay, throw them on a salad, good form of not having to buy another supplement. Exactly. Just eat your food. Uh probiotics, we got more yogurt, kimchi.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Do you have any favorite probiotic foods? Fermented foods um and cultured foods. I I like yogurt. I do fine with yogurt. Yeah, yeah.

Coach Carlie 24:59

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I'm not as big of a fan of kimchi, but I had an old roommate who loved sauerkraut. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Was she German? Because she was, uh I think her back her family background was Czech actually. Oh, okay.

Coach Carlie 25:13

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I kimchi is fun, but if I open it in the house, it smells like something died. And it's and then my kids come home and they're like, what is happening in this house? So it has to be like a very has to be consumed outdoors.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

It takes them getting used to, yeah. I think my dad, my dad is the only person in my family that liked kimchi. And my mom was like, whenever she bought it, she was like, This is just for you. Yep, yep.

Coach Carlie 25:43

It's a little too funky for the rest of us.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Um, yeah, and our old friend Gabba is made in the gut, actually.

Coach Carlie 25:51

So yes, yes, keep that gut happy, you guys. Love it. All right, cool. And then we got B complex vitamins again.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yes, so that that includes your B12, I guess, but also all the other B vitamins are super important in supporting your nervous system, in producing other important neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, and also in just energy production in general. So they're pretty um good workhorses. Uh, this one is a newer one that I didn't know about, but lithium can also help balance neurotransmitters and stabilize your mood. Yeah.

Coach Carlie 26:29

Yeah. And if you get high enough dose, that's basically like we're talking pharmacological. Uh so that's not my personal like go-to. That's like, I think that lithium should be taken in conjunction with a functionally informed psychiatrist who can make sure that you're supported all around. Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

If you don't want to go the that the pharmacological route and want to stay a little more, I guess, quote unquote, natural, yeah. Also, chamomile extract and passion flower extract can also calm anxiety and things like that.

Coach Carlie 27:05

Yeah. Um, chamomile is so great. Speaking of like, you know, teas. I knew we were talking about like lavender teas. I like to get, especially in the summertime, a chamomile lavender tea. So like two in one. Um, and then I'll brew it and then I'll ice it. Ooh, that sounds cool. Yes. And then have that with like a little, maybe if I'm feeling fancy, I'll put it in a wine glass and then add maybe a little bit of seltzer. It makes me feel real fancy on like a Tuesday night when I know that I need to get up in the morning on Wednesday. And uh, you know, wouldn't it be nice if I could have a glass of wine? But like my sleep will hate me in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Of another, like really good just nutritional strategy for sleep is to reduce or eliminate alcohol and limit your caffeine intake, especially later in the day, because that can really keep you up. Yeah.

Coach Carlie 28:01

Yeah, for sure. So, but chamomile is chamomile is fun. Like at, you know, sometimes you gotta go basic, y'all. Just some good chamomile tea. Um, maybe at the end if you're like, eh, I don't love tea again, try it iced or try it in conjunction with something else, like a chamomile passion flour combo, or you know, squeeze some lemon into it, maybe steep it with a little bit of ginger, like you know, that's yeah, you know, explore. All the combinations. Yeah, definitely. Cool. All right, so I guess we're wrapping it all up.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, so to if if you want like some good, like basic take-home points from this podcast episode, I guess it's just that if you're an endurance athlete, you need more sleep than the general population in order to maximize that recovery. If you don't get good sleep, it could really take a toll on your mental health

Practical Sleep Fixes Caffeine And Alcohol

SPEAKER_01 28:56

and just, and even if you're not like officially diagnosed with any of these things, that conditions that we talked about, like it could definitely affect your training and just your general quality of life day to day. And we know that nutrition in the forms of both whole foods and supplements can be used together with conventional meds and therapies to help treat these mental health conditions if you eat.

Coach Carlie 29:22

Yeah, definitely. I mean, usually some of the lowest hanging fruit that I've had in my practice is moving the caffeine up. Like, you know, again, we see that in genetics. Some people process it really quickly and some people don't. And the people who don't, you know, you could be having your coffee or uh your energy drink or your espresso or you know, or your tea, whatever it is, earlier in the day. And it could take 10 to 12 hours for that to be fully out of you. That's a long time. Right. Um you know, if you have anything that says pre-workout in it, some people are sensitive to even like a dark chocolate right before they go to bed, which you know sounds delightful, but might be just that little tiny bit of caffeine that's gonna set them off. So usually that's a good place to start. And then again, are you eating mostly whole foods? What's your stress look like? Do we need some like nervous system settling strategies to get you to sleep a little bit better? So, you know, there's there's some or what you know, when is your meal time? All various things that we look at as nutritionists and trying to help you optimize your sleep so that you can just generally be a better athlete.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

So with all that said, even it is so hard. It is it is so hard to at baseline to get the amount of sleep you need. Like I I know at least when I was um competing in in rowing, like with the just the rough training schedule and the the hard classes and like trying to balance a social life with all of that, I was not getting enough sleep. And I remember how my mental health suffered for it during that time. Yeah. Did you see that amongst your teammates at all? Oh, absolutely. I had some, I'm really lucky. I think I don't like coffee and I don't really like alcohol. So I've never really touched either of those. But I had some teammates that were drinking like two Celsius like a day because they were just so tired. So they needed the energy drink, but then all that caffeine was probably keeping them up and they probably couldn't sleep. So yeah.

Coach Carlie 31:31

And well, like you had mentioned chronic inflammation, it's the same kind of thing with uh your adrenal glands. They gotta put out adrenaline, like they uh very serve a wonderful purpose in our bodies. But if we keep hammering them with all this caffeine, they just get so tired. Yeah. So then we dig ourselves into this deeper hole that's just so much harder to get out of uh with all this um caffeine. It's you know, but there's a lot of messages around like all the different things that we have to do to like be an awesome human. But at the end of the day, like, you know, if you're eating the Whole Foods, if you're um getting some exercise, but not too much, and you know, being around your social support support crew, supplementing wisely, so strategically, based on you know, your health metrics, uh, understanding your body and what it needs, then it can be hopefully ironed out and simpler than it seems. And sometimes you gotta pull in, you gotta pull in some other team members for your care team to to help you in this process. So uh you're not alone, right? Exactly. If you're struggling with sleep, or if you're struggling with mental health. So you we see you out there.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Yeah, your providers all just wanna wanna work together and help you.

Coach Carlie 32:50

Yeah, for sure. Um, all right, Emily, this was super helpful and I'm excited to learn more from you and have everybody else learn from you as well. So, everybody out there, if you have any questions, any comments, uh send us a DM on Instagram at the Endurance Edge, however you want to you wanna get it to us, because if there's any specific topic that you want to hear about, I totally want to hopefully have Emily learn and then also you guys learn in the process. So we're all learning here. Absolutely. I a hundred percent do not know it all. I am constantly learning.

Wrap Up And How To Reach Us

Coach Carlie 33:25

This is just such a fascinating journey, all to help you guys make life easier. So thanks again for listening to the Find Your Edge podcast, and we will catch you next time.