Are You Getting Enough?

Is there a connection between body “building” and sleep?  New research says there is.

It’s commonly known that getting adequate sleep is an important part of the recuperation process, but getting adequate sleep is becoming more of a problem in many countries.  In America, 40% of the population receive less than seven hours of sleep per night during the week.  I tell all my clients to take seriously the importance of sleep, or more specifically, to not compromise muscle growth and fat loss by not getting enough of it.  Sleep is essential if you want to perform at your very best.
The fact is that bodybuilding and sleep go hand in hand.  In the first few hours of deep sleep the repair process operates at full speed and the greatest amount of growth hormone (GH) is secreted.  Unfortunately, with less sleep we have lower GH and testosterone secretion and a reduced ability to burn body fat.  Not getting enough sleep actually reduces levels of leptin, a hormone that is responsible for telling the body when it is full.  With lower levels of leptin, the body will naturally crave more calories, particularly sweet, high glycemic carbohydrates, even though adequate food requirements have been met. The reason for the strong pull towards sugary, high glycemic carbohydrates is because inadequate sleep triggers a decrease in insulin sensitivity.  Over time, this can put a person at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes. 
Not getting adequate sleep also increases levels of ghrelin, a hormone that makes a person feel hungry.  Michael Breus PhD, points out in his book, Good Night: The Sleep Doctor’s 4 Week Program to Better Sleep and Better Health, “With sleep deprivation, we see a reduction in metabolism and an increase in appetite”.  By allowing the release of these hormones to be downgraded we make it considerably easier for the body to gain fat while at the same time making it harder for the body to hold on to lean muscle mass.
Beyond the connection between lack of sleep, weight gain and an increased risk of diabetes, not getting enough sleep has also been associated with reduced immune system function, higher blood pressure and heart disease (sleep deprivation has been linked to a hardening of the arteries).  Phyllis Zee MD, from North Western University points out, “When people are sleep deprived, there are higher levels of stress hormones in their bodies and an increase in inflammation, both of which can decrease immune function”.  Simply put, people who get adequate levels of quality sleep nightly are able to build muscle and burn fat faster.  They also experience faster recuperation from exercise, look better and feel better overall.  “Growth hormones are rejuvenating”, says Dr. Mehmet C. Oz MD, co-author of the “YOU” health books.  In the books, he says, “When you have high levels of the hormone, you have muscle mass, better skin – you look sexy.  You want to keep your growth hormones as high as possible, and the number one best way to do that is sleep”.
The take home point here is: don’t train hard and eat well only to end up with slow gains due to inadequate sleep.  The body needs deep sleep to effectively recuperate between workouts and its best when sleep takes place at roughly the same time each night.  The body truly thrives with continuity.  As to exactly how much sleep is needed, this will vary from person to person.  The old belief was that every person requires a full eight hours per night.  However, a recent study out of Washington State University tells us that genetics may be the real determining factor.  I have friends that train at five a.m. with all out intensity and then head out to work a full active eight hours and seem to thrive on less sleep.  IFBB Pro John Simmons is a perfect example of this.  He would train early in the morning with incredible intensity, then go to his job as a police officer and come home, have dinner and train clients in the evening.  The point is that people like John may have inherited more efficient sleep genes.  In contrast to this, I have clients that clearly need more sleep, and respond best when they build it into their daily schedule. 
In some cases people suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea, which affects their quality of sleep.  Overtraining also reduce the quality of a persons sleep.  It can actually cause a person to awaken a number of times throughout the night with higher than normal levels of muscle soreness.  For anyone that experiences interrupted deep sleep, I recommend that they try to fit in a short 20-25 minute power nap after their midday meal.  This can help make up the difference. A short power nap can fully rejuvenate the body and mind and maximize post-workout recuperation.  It also improves muscle memory and clears the brain of useless built-up information.  This helps improve long-term memory like recalling facts, events, and names.
Napping in general benefits heart functioning, hormonal maintenance and cell repair, says Dr. Sara Mednick, a scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies who is at the forefront of napping research. A power nap, says Mednick, simply maximizes these benefits by getting the sleeper into and out of rejuvenative sleep as fast as possible.  Many bodybuilders make power napping a regular part of their daily routine.  No surprise that Lance Armstrong’s coach Chris Carmichael says, “Naps were critical in his overall training plan”.
If you experiment with power naps, just be sure not to make it excessively long as this could take you too far into the sleep cycle, making you overly groggy when you first awake and could further compromise your night time rest.  Again, 20-25 minutes seems to be ideal.
So, if you are hitting the gym consistently, avoiding over training with brief but intense workouts, and are getting adequate nutrition but are still not reaching your bodybuilding goals, take a closer look at your sleeping habits.  More than half of the adults in a survey by the National Sleep Foundation in 2005 reported that they experienced insomnia a few times a week.  Not getting adequate, quality sleep over time will lead to sleep depravation.  This most assuredly will result in lower energy levels in the gym and a sharp rise of stress hormones according to new research.  Specifically, it promotes a hormonal environment that boosts the muscle destroying and fat depositing hormone cortisol.  In addition to the breaking down of hard earned muscle, elevated cortisol blocks protein synthesis while slowing glucose utilization. This is clearly not something a peak performance athlete wants to be dealing with.
Increased cortisol levels can be causing you to waste muscle tissue at every turn.  For clients that are coming up short on their sleep quota (and for my dieting, pre-contest bodybuilding clients), I put them on a good absorption enhanced cortisol blocker supplement and it makes a real difference.  Research shows that as little as one hour of lost sleep can increase cortisol levels by a full 50%!  Just this one step of taking a cortisol antagonist supplement has triggered new levels of fat loss and muscle growth in clients.  I have them take in the evening to help ensure maximum levels of growth hormone are being released the first few hours into the sleep cycle.  They also take a serving just before a MET workout session.
There are a number of good cortisol blockers on the market these days.  Check out ASN or Colossus.  The products are of high quality and widely available. The absorption enhanced cortisol blocker I use here in America is ADL3 by Venice Beach Nutritional/Muscle Research and it is very effective.  I find ADL3 not only does a great job at getting rid of the cortisol problem, but it also does an amazing job at helping clients lose those last few inches of body fat around the waist.  The reason for this added fat loss feature is that returning cortisol levels to normal with ADL3 balances blood sugar levels, improves insulin sensitivity and it greatly reduces cravings for carbohydrates (increased cortisol levels triggers a signal to the brain to increase appetite for sugary carbs).
Increased cortisol levels also signals fat cells to hold on to as much fat as it can and to release as little as is possible.  This can make getting rid of the last few inches around the waist to show off a well-defined six-pack quite difficult.  To make matters worse, increased cortisol levels actually slow down the body’s metabolic rate.  It does this by limiting the positive effects of many very important metabolic hormones.  Hormones that are negatively impacted or blunted by increased cortisol levels include: 

-       Growth Hormone (so fat is stored more easily and muscle mass is lost)
-       Serotonin (so we feel more tired and lethargic)
-       Insulin (so blood sugar levels are less stable and food cravings are heightened)
-       Testosterone (so our physical drive is reduced and overall sex drive falls)

Now you can see why managing cortisol with proper rest and supplements like ADL3 can have such a powerful impact on successfully getting down to the lowest possible levels of body fat.  Without it, these clients would crave to eat more food, burn less calories and store more fat around the hips and waist.