Andy Galpin explains how to optimize your sleep to maximize performance

Andy Galpin explains how to optimize your sleep to maximize performance

The renowned sports physiologist Dr. Andy Galpin has been working with professional athletes and Olympians for years to help them perform at their best when it matters most. While most of these athletes had nutritionists, fitness trainers and other health and wellness experts in tow, Galpin noticed that none of them had anyone who could address sleep performance. Considering how important sleep is for recovery and performance, he wondered why nothing was being done to achieve high-performance sleep. That's why Galpin launched Absolute Rest, which offers comprehensive sleep assessment, analysis and coaching to optimize sleep.

Sleep is a topic Galpin has studied, and he sees far too many general recommendations about how many are affected when they don't get enough rest. It is estimated that 50 to 70 million people in the United States alone suffer from persistent sleep disorders. Getting to the root of the problem varies from person to person. But Galpin believes there are some physiological tricks you can implement to ensure your next night's sleep is good.

According to Dr. Andy Galpin a pattern

I am a physiologist and therefore biased. I don't believe in bad sleepers. There is always a physiological reason, and the problem is that people's assessment or interpretation of why they sleep poorly is too rudimentary, which leads to problems. You haven't paid attention to what is disturbing your sleep. You simply looked at things that are not relevant to you in your environment. As we delve into some of these solutions that are still ubiquitous in the population, you need to expand your scope.

I'll tell you some things you've probably heard.

Make sure it is quiet and dark. This is in thousands of articles. What you want to look for are things like: Is there something in your practice that is causing a pattern? Humans are extremely good at recognizing patterns and developing anticipatory reactions. With a new process it is very difficult to correct this pattern. If you want to change a pattern that has been ingrained for six years, one night of supplementation or taking your phone out of the room will not change that physiological pattern.

This is one of the reasons why they say only two things should happen in your bed, and they both start with “s.” The reason for this is that as soon as you enter the bedroom, you trigger a cascade of physiological reactions that alert you to something. If they alert you to excitement, arousal, and stimulation, then it doesn't matter what you do with your blue light glasses, because you've set off a whole physiological cascade that tells you: stay awake. When the opposite happens, the opposite reaction occurs.

If your bedroom is quiet and calm and you cross the threshold, you will get a corresponding reaction. You can learn that. It won't happen acutely. Taking a supplement will have an impact on your body, but changing your behavior is a long-term measure. You want to think about things that will give you immediate relief, but also things that will take time but are more comprehensive and longer lasting. That's why it's incredibly important to establish these habits and routines.

Everything you do in your life is a pattern and your physiology is always paying attention and constantly adapting. This is why everything is pattern recognition when we make dietary changes, breathing exercises, and technique changes. As you create a pattern of calm and calm, your body will begin to learn this. People talk a lot about the sleep environment, but they don't provide people with such resources unless it is cold, quiet and dark. Establishing a pattern will apply to everyone. It is crucial for everyone that their body has a mechanism that knows when to shut down.

Eating a small meal before bed is not harmful

If you eat an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse like I did a few weeks ago and try to go to bed, most people will experience an incredibly poor night's sleep. If you look at this heart rate, this pattern will be higher because you are expending a lot of energy to digest 600g of protein. Heart rate depends heavily on whether you switch from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. In a compassionate state you cannot digest. If your heart rate is elevated, you will be more alert and will have a harder time getting into a truly restful state. You don't want to stuff a huge meal into your stomach right before bed, otherwise you'll have a hard time resting and digesting because your heart rate will be so high because you have so much work to do.

Sometimes you can get away with having small meals and snacks before bed so you don't wake up feeling so groggy. A very slow-release carbohydrate meal will do this. Additionally, there is very clear evidence that eating before bed does not promote fat mass gain. It will likely help you gain muscle mass and lose fat. That means if you have to eat late at night, a lean protein and carbohydrate meal is not only fine, but as long as it doesn't interfere with sleep, it's likely to be beneficial for your overall muscle mass and fat tissue. If you can eat something three hours before bed, this is probably the best place. If not, try to keep your meals small, with lean protein and some carbohydrates and starches. You want to choose foods that are easy to digest and things that won't land in your stomach like a sledgehammer.

Create your sleep environment while traveling

One of the things people don't realize is that often when you have trouble sleeping on the go you think it's the bed, and that may be the case, but it's probably mostly the environment. Your environment is sending you a tremendous amount of clues about what is happening. If you can control the environment, you have a much greater chance of success. You can trim the curtains to ensure the room is nice and dark. People don't realize how important your other senses are. If you can make the environment smell like your bedroom at home, you will be far more successful and able to recover because you are initiating the entire shutdown sequence.

How do you make your hotel smell like your bedroom? Consciously design the smell of your bedroom at home so that you can replicate it when you're out and about. If you like a particularly pleasant scent, spray just a small amount on the corner of the mattress or pillow that you are not using - something where the smell is in the air. You do this a few days before you leave, take the bottle with you and do exactly the same thing in your hotel room. Your body will recognize it immediately.

Be careful with sleep supplements

Of course, I'm an advocate of supplements, but you should be extremely careful with melatonin. In recent years, several publications have appeared analyzing melatonin, and it can range from 10 to 1,000 times the concentration (either high or low) in the supplement than is reported.

Melatonin has a half-life, meaning it does not completely leave your body. If you take 100 times more than you think, there will still be 50 times more in your system hours later. The next morning you wake up and a lot of it is still inside you, depending on what medication you're taking, and you feel lightheaded because you're sedated. You swallow a lot of caffeine to feel normal, but then night comes and you're wired. How are you? Smash the sleeping pills and end up in this horrible cycle of feeling like death. All we do is take these medications away, give your body a few days to normalize, and everything just goes away.

We just need to approach sleep supplements appropriately. I would generally say to avoid melatonin unless you have a very specific reason. I'm generally not a fan of not taking hormone-based supplements or nutritional supplements until we have extensive blood work done. This is one of the things we did with Absolute Rest and his novel. We often rely on blood tests when identifying sleep problems, and there is a strong connection to a number of physiological markers that you can find in the blood, which can tell you a lot about why you are suffering from sleep problems. From your blood tests you can get very accurate sleep schedules based on your personal physiology. This gives us the opportunity to recommend supplementation or say that you are suffering from micronutrient deficiencies and other problems where you are not producing enough serotonin. If we correct this, these problems will disappear.

Your wearables should teach, not dictate, says Andy Galpin

Six years ago I wrote a book called Unplugged, so I am strongly against technology if it is not used wisely. These technologies lend themselves well to rudimentary calibration for basic accountability and awareness. The vast majority of technology in use today is simply not accurate at all for things like sleep stages. Orthoinsomnia is something scientists are starting to discover when people are causing sleep problems due to excessive use of their wearables.

Let's say you wake up every morning and the first thing you do is turn over and check your score. What happens is your body gets used to this little burst of excitement. This means you wake up a little earlier and your sleep value decreases. So you start developing anxiety about falling asleep earlier because you wake up earlier, and you ruin your own sleep because you're so obsessed with improving your score, even though the score doesn't reflect whether you slept better or not.

We can't say at the moment what's a good or bad night's sleep for you anyway. Right now, when you look at the results on a tracker or wearable, no one has any idea of ​​your physiological need for complete sleep for two reasons. We don't know this data at all worldwide. Second, these trackers are not accurate. I don't know how many minutes of REM you need - we just have a general number. Now you are being judged on that number and the technology is inaccurate.

This number should not be the same every night. You shouldn't have the same amount of deep and REM sleep every night. Your brain is much smarter than this stupid technology. We know that there are differences from person to person. We also know that depending on the physical activity you did that day, your brain changes the duration and way it enters the different stages of sleep.

We need to recognize what is unique to your physiology and how much you need and let your brain tell you when it needs more in one phase or another. It will know this and put you in these phases if you give it the right space. When using a tracker, it is very important that you use it correctly and not get consumed by the stages and not pursue the wrong goals.

Wearables have enormous advantages, but also enormous consequences if they are not used correctly. The end goal should be to make you a more resilient sleeper, meaning you shouldn't have to rely on this particular environment, diet, and one-hour protocol just to get a decent night's sleep. You should respond with a plan. Just like you wouldn't have the same exercise schedule all year round, why would you have the same sleep schedule all year round? Use the wearables for calibration and information, don't act on the recommendations, and create a plan based on what's happening in your life.

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