How Does Nutrition and Exercise Affect Sleep? by Jerry Brainum 1/22

 

How does a lack of sleep affect exercise and sports performance? And what is the role of diet and nutrition in promoting sleep? The effect of sleep on exercise and sports is paradoxical in that most studies that have examined the effects of sleep deprivation on exercise performance have shown little or no initial effect. But there is a cumulative effect in that several days of poor sleep can adversely affect focus and concentration. But when it comes to strength, a lack of a night or two of sleep appears to have little or no discernable effects. One way to explain this is the stimulating effect of exercise itself. I recall years ago when a friend talked me into going to the gym at 6 a.m. My normal time to train back then was in the late afternoon. But my friend suggested I would quickly get used to training in the early morning. Since I'm what's known as a "night person" who tends to stay up late, arriving at the gym a 6 a.m meant that I had about 4 hours of sleep. The first few minutes of the early training felt as if I were still asleep. But after about 20 minutes, I felt completely awake and alert. What happened was that the exercise promoted the release of alertness hormones in my brain that served to wake me up. This included the catecholamine hormones, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, both known to provide potent brain stimulation and alertness. But while my brain was alert, my muscles still were asleep and I was never able to experience my usual heavy pump during the workouts. As such, I abandoned the early morning training after 2 weeks and returned to my late afternoon training sessions.

As noted, the existing medical literature on the subject of sleep and exercise shows that endurance training is more likely to be adversely affected after a night of bad sleep compared to resistance training. However, chronic lack of sufficient sleep, defined as at least 7 to 8 hours a night, does appear to adversely affect any type of training progress. One reason for this is that during sleep the functions of the autonomic nervous system are adjusted and balanced. If insufficient sleep occurs, the autonomic nervous system gets out of balance, and that could result in symptoms of overtraining. These symptoms can include a lack of training drive and a lack of progress. Also affected is the immune system. Sleep is necessary for the full immune response, and a lack of sleep promotes an excessive release of inflammatory cytokines, which are immune proteins that promote inflammation in the body. Under controlled conditions, such as when helping to prevent disease onset, the release of inflammatory cytokines is helpful. But an uncontrolled release, such as that which occurs with sleep deprivation, will . . .