If you want to lose weight or grow muscle mass, it is very important that you get your sleep in order. Do you know what that means?
In total, we sleep about a third of our lives. You do it again every night. It is an important process for your body. Moreover, there is also something strange about it. You close your eyes and go to sleep. When you open them again, about 8 hours have passed.
If you sleep poorly or if your sleep is often disturbed, this has a negative impact on your health in both the short and long term. Of course, a night in itself can do little harm. However, it can cause problems if you consistently sleep poorly.
As you probably experience after a night of poor sleep, you are less able to concentrate or remember things. So you suffer from concentration and memory problems. Your appetite increases and your willpower and impulse control decrease. Which means you're more likely to eat more. Unfortunately, due to reduced impulse control, we often see that the choice is unhealthier, because more fat and sugar-rich food is eaten. And if you want to lose weight, this is of course undesirable. Furthermore, more of the stress hormone is produced, which means that a poor night's sleep makes you less able to deal with stress. Furthermore, this lowers your resistance and general well-being. Your body may also produce less testosterone, which leads to reduced muscle mass. If you want to grow muscle mass, a poor night's sleep has an undesirable effect on your gains.
In the long term, poor or disturbed sleep can lead to serious physical or mental problems, such as depression, psychosis, increased anxiety, obesity, cardiovascular disease and dementia. Reduced testosterone production in the long term can cause you to suffer from hair loss, infertility and other unpleasant things. In short, sleep well to avoid physical and mental problems.
So what does a good night's sleep consist of? When you fall asleep, your brain waves make a self-repeating cycle. This cycle lasts about an hour and a half and consists of four phases: REM sleep, N1 (the non-REM stage 1), N2 (the non-REM stage 2) and N3 (the non-REM stage 3). You often go through a sleep cycle four to six times on an average night.
As you may have noticed above, you see two types of sleep. There is a difference between REM sleep and non-REM sleep. REM is an abbreviation for Rapid Eye Movement. During REM sleep we make a lot of eye movements, which is accompanied by a higher heart rate, higher blood pressure and faster breathing. Colloquially, this is also called light sleep. In this phase of your sleep you dream. There is therefore a lot of brain activity. REM sleep supports the formation of memories in which emotions are disconnected from events. So you process your day here. Furthermore, REM sleep returns in every sleep cycle, just like the other three phases. What you can see in the accompanying graph is that we sleep deeply for longer at the beginning of the night and have more REM sleep at the end of the night.
During non-REM sleep (N1, N2 and N3), memories and brain connections are removed. During our REM sleep, new connections are made and memories of that day are stored and linked to other memories. During our REM sleep there is a complete loss of muscle tone, during which we cannot move, which means you can dream safely.
How can you read the attached graph? When you lie down in bed, you are of course still awake. Then you go one step down in the graph, to the N1 phase. This is the indoel phase. This is a short period during which the transition from wakefulness to light sleep takes place. This happens on average when you have been in bed for fifteen minutes. In this phase, your eye movements slow down, your brain activity changes and muscle tension decreases. In this phase you are still easy to wake up. For example, if you heard a loud noise, you would be aware of it and immediately alert. Then you walk down one step in the graph. You enter the N2 phase. You still sleep lightly, but waking up is a bit more difficult here. Your brain activity slows down a little more. The N2 phase is responsible for learning and memory. You sleep through sounds here. Then you go down another step and end up in a transition phase to deep sleep. Your body relaxes more here. Then you go to the N3 phase. This is deep sleep. In deep sleep, breathing, heart rhythm and brain activity are at their lowest levels. Waking up is difficult here. When you wake up disoriented, you are coming out of your deep sleep. Moreover, in this phase you rest the most and your body recovers. After deep sleep you go back up the stairs towards the transition phase, through to N2, to N1 and you arrive at the REM phase. During this phase, physical recovery of the body (and therefore building of your muscle mass) takes place.
After REM sleep, you even unconsciously wake up for a few short seconds. Here our body checks whether everything is in order. For example, think of your nighttime trip to the toilet because your bladder is full. So when something is different, you wake up and take action. When everything runs smoothly and the environment is safe, you fall back asleep and return to the N1 phase.
So do you want to lose weight or build muscle mass optimally? Then make sure that your physical needs are also met during sleep. The recovery of your body and the rest your body needs also take place during your sleep. From the age of 18, it is recommended to sleep 7-9 hours per night. If you are 65+, it is best to sleep 7-8 hours per night.
Would you like to know exactly how you can improve your sleep quality? Many things play a role here. Consider, for example, the effect of sound, light, social interactions and exercise on your sleep. For this I refer you to the blogs of my colleagues. This explains in detail how you can get the most out of your sleep.
Tamara van Driest
Enforce Master Trainer
tamara@enforce.nl
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