Sleep: The Secret Weapon for Runners Lindsey Hanna interview part 2

I could be wrong , but it's not something that's covered on other running podcasts is to get a better understanding on how sleep can improve your performance . I could be wrong , but it's not something that's covered on other running podcasts . I might be wrong there , but anyway it's not something I've come across .

Anyway , I started off by asking Lindsay if athletes need more advice about their sleeping habits compared to those who are not . I really do , and hope you enjoy my chat as much as I did , and if you haven't listened to the first part of my chat with Lindsay , then please do go back to the previous week or the previous episode in our catalogue .

So , without further ado , over to Lindsay .

You know , regenerating tissues that are damaged during runs or training sessions , yeah , um , you know , runners and anyone into their physical fitness and performance will push their limits , so they're they're regularly um .

You know , the whole purpose even of building muscle is that you , you damage muscle and then you repair it and that's what , um , you know , builds it up . Um , you know we've already talked on as well the the really close relationship between um sleep and the endocrine system . And you know cortisol , which is the stress hormone .

Um , you've got leptin and you've got krelin and they are , um , the hunger hormones . So they tell you when you're full and they tell you um when you're hungry . Yeah , and if you're not getting enough sleep , then you have a lower level of the hormone that tells you that you're full and you have a higher level of the hormone that tells you when you're hungry .

So if somebody's physical fitness and their actual physical performance is dependent on weight management , yes , well , you can see that then if they're not getting the , the sleep that they need to balance out those hormones and that endocrine system , you can really run into a problem there , where you know you're tired so you're going to take that quick fix and you

know your diet's going to suffer as a result . As well as that , in terms of performance , you know getting really regular , high quality sleep . It helps with endurance , quicker reaction times , um , you know , better overall performance on training days or or race days , um , and you know that , would you know it .

We move in then to the cognitive um impact of sleep . So not just their physical strength , but their , their mental um sharpness and their ability to concentrate and concentrate on um . You know the the guy in front or the lady in front and um , where do I need to go here now if it's , if it's running ?

Um , how much is left of the course , what you know , where's the finish line , what's my time ? And now , yeah , um , how do I focus on my breathing ? Um and decision making . So you know it can impact the decision making and your mood as well , um , and your motivation .

Yes , so if you're not well rested , you're gonna have those days or training days where you're just gonna be like , oh can't be bothered , I'm too tired

, I can't go to train tonight . I just don't have it there . I'm not motivated to go . Actually , you probably do have it there physically , but your motivation's gone because you haven't the right amount of sleep .

So , um , you know they , they should be going in a pattern that , when you really are hungry , um , you know your , your hunger hormone should spike and then , shortly after that , once you've eaten your , your , your hormone that tells you you're full it should spike , but that doesn't happen when you're you're losing sleep .

More likely , why you're hungry when you wake up is because , um , your digestive system is really closely linked to your sleep system yeah so it's going to say to you we've just had a good lie down there .

It's probably time we filled up now , because um yeah I , I'm , I'm worried now that we've we slept , so we should take something when we wake up , and it's it's the association more with the fact that you usually eat in the morning after your long spell of sleep overnight yeah , um , now is .

?

I would make sure I have that nap earlier on in the day , sort of pre two o'clock , so that I still have enough sleep pressure built up by bedtime that I'm going to be able to get over to sleep quickly enough .

If she were to take a nap during the day she has lower sleep needs than me and she would never get to sleep then it would take her a lot longer to fall asleep then that night , even if she had a very short nap and we don't want the nap to be long enough .

That , um , you know you're you ideally want it to sort of be , um , a very quick , um 20 , 30 minute nap . You don't really want it to be any longer than that .

Yeah , um , if it is , you're going into your sort of your sleep cycles and you're getting down in there and you're really going into restorative sleep yeah and when we get into that restorative sleep , you're really eating into that sleep pressure and the way that sleep works .

For nighttime sleep is um , nighttime sleep is driven by um , your , your endocrine system , and your , your circadian rhythm . So your , your , um , your body clock works on sort of light and dark . So , you know , these evenings it's telling us that we can stay awake a wee bit longer because it's lighter .

But usually when dusk comes we start to get tired and we , we follow that pattern and our bodies follow that pattern .

Our body clock , um , our endocrine system is um , the one where we make the , the hormones like melatonin , um , but nighttime sleep is driven by our bodies , um , producing these peaks and troughs in , um , you know , sleepiness and also the , the hormones , so melatonin , for to help us get over to sleep and stay asleep , um , and then , as well as that , homeostatic

sleep pressure .

So when we wake in the morning , our bodies begin to create homeostatic sleep pressure and throughout the day that keeps building and building and building until eventually we get to a stage where we have so much sleep pressure that we have to lay down and go to sleep Right , and we've normally , you know , know , like a newborn baby can only stay awake for about

30 minutes at a time before it's sleep pressure cup is really full and it's like , oh , I don't mind if it's not night time , I need to go to sleep now . And then they take a wee short 20 minute nap and they're waking in for another 30 minutes , right um ?

And then as they grow they can hold more sleep pressure and when you know , we're all adults and we can sort of be awake from half six , seven o'clock in the morning till you know , whatever time we go to bed at night and we can hold that sleep pressure .

But if we use up some of that sleep pressure by taking a nap during the day , we don't have enough of it then to carry us through until morning time . So you then get those early wakes where you're awake , sort of half four or five o'clock going . Hmm well , I'm sort of awake . Now I can't get back to sleep again .

My body clock hasn't told my endocrine system yet to produce cortisol , enough cortisol to wake me up and leave me alert and ready for the day . So I'm just sort of in no man's land here . I don't have enough sleep pressure to sleep . But my other system hasn't kicked in and told me that it's really time to get up now and be ready for the day .

So you're sort of in that kind of stage in in the early hours yeah , so there's no right or wrong really to it .

What time is bed time , brian ?

I mean , you kind of have touched on a few , maybe a few , of the things and given us a few of the science behind it , but is there any sort of generic things that we can at least help us on our way to getting a much more , a better night's sleep ?

Our , our body clock relies on that darkness for the retina to trigger the part of our brain that produces the melatonin to say look , it's time for sleep . So we want it to be nice and dark , we want it to be comfortable , not too hot , not too cold .

Our body temperatures drop anyway from about four o'clock in the afternoon to prepare us for sleep and it starts to rise again from about 4 am um to prepare us for daytime . But um . So , yes , we want the sleep environment to be really good , nice and dark , no external things that could interfere with our sleep .

So that you know we really don't want a radio going or a television going um , we want to um avoid things like um caffeine , and caffeine is a really strange one because in some people it's known to have , you know , like a half-life um in your body of about five hours , and for other people it can be as as much as seven to twelve hours .

So you know there , like a half-life in your body of about five hours , and for other people it can be as much as seven to 12 hours .

So the brain gets really confused and says , oh , hold on a second . It might be half ten at night and Brian's in bed , but it's not time to go to sleep yet because we've got all this natural light coming across the retina . That says no , no , it's not time for sleep yet , so you confuse your brain that way .

So you know , you go on and you promise yourself I'm only going to go on for five minutes and then like an hour later , 55 minutes later you're still , because it's something new every 30 , 40 seconds or you know a minute , and then your brains go oh , yeah , okay .

So each time the video changes , your brain is renewed and refreshed again , so it's very , very stimulating for the brain yeah whereas if you're reading your book , you know you're you're looking at the words and you're processing them through your brain , one at a time , and that's okay , it's quite , you know , it's quite relaxed and it doesn't really stimulate the

brain in the same way as all of this light , all of this sound all of this fast moving things . You know a song that maybe triggers a memory or an emotion . So , yeah , reading is a lot healthier for sleep than screen time . And back to the sleep hygiene , one big tip I would say is to anchor your day , you know , so maintaining a regular sleep schedule .

Our bodies love consistency . Our body clocks are about 24, .

Well , they're 24 and a quarter hours long , give or take each sort of body clock cycle , so each 24-hour period yeah chunks on a graph of 24 hour body clocks and we can only do , you know , we have to go through all of the stages in a day for our body clock to think okay , this is regular and healthy , if one day we only allow ourselves , you know , 20

hours for that to happen . So say , for example for example , you got up this morning at seven and you wait tomorrow morning for the day at four .

Well , you've cut three hours off your body clock and you've made the next day , so you've started your body clock for the following day at four o'clock in the morning and your body then has 27 hours to try to to fill and it gets to the end of 24 and it's like hang on a second , I'm , yeah , we're not done this cycle .

Yeah , so we want to maintain a really regular sleep schedule . So getting up at around the same time , going to bed at around the same time , even on weekends , really helps to , um , you know , help your body , clock along and set that . We've talked about stimulants .

We consider the daytime to be 7am to 7pm , so if you work past 7pm or you start your day before 7am , well then you're a shift worker , because that interferes with your circadian rhythm and lots of times we see that um , you know , we've got people who , maybe for child care reasons , go on to nights um , consistently .

When children are young , um , it's something I see . A lot of . The children are young , so it makes sense they go to school and I'll sleep when they're in school and I need less child care for them is

great . And you work your week in a shorter period of time , because you maybe do three nights or four nights and you've worked your full week in that period of time . The difference , um , you know there's no good way to do night shift or shift work um the the impact it has on your health and well-being . If you can avoid it , don't do it .

Um the better option is do it in short bursts .

So , um you know , I I've known plenty of people who have gone into these cycles and they've gone to their employer and said I'll do two weeks of nights and then two weeks of days and vice versa , because your body clock really needs , um , it will adjust and it will flip over to , um you know , a nighttime rhythm , but it needs time to do that .

And we want to stop that from happening because , um , you know , socially and everything else , we , those people have days off and they don't want to spend their days off in bed sleeping and then be awake when everybody else is asleep those nights .

So we want it to be in short bursts so that the circadian rhythm doesn't get a chance to catch up and flip into a nighttime rhythm basically it's spring outside and they know the sun's shining and getting that vitamin D .

Obviously , your serotonin is your happy hormone and um makes you , you know , feel good about yourself and feel good about life , um , and then it's your precursor to melatonin , which is great because that's your sleep . If you're working those night shifts and you're , you're spending your daytime in bed .

Um , yes , you're not getting um , you know , out and getting that vitamin c , so of course , that will have a negative impact , um , on your , your , your health .

In the same way as shift workers don't tend to sleep very well during the day , um , and some of them delay their sleep , um , and you know , come home and do something and don't go to bed until the afternoon . Yeah , okay , and you know that has a bigger impact then on their sleep completely as well . So yeah , if you can avoid shift work , avoid it .

If you can't avoid it , and it's you know . That's your job and your role and it is what it is . Um , try always to be in a rotation and keep the rotations quite quick . It might seem quite disruptive and you think , no , I'm better off doing a longer . Um , you know stint of night shifts , but not for your , your body right is have you come across ?

So I'm going to see somebody about my sleep and I'm going to get that sorted out , and I need

to do that because I'm in work and I'm making all these decisions and I'm , you know , making a lot of money or things like that , so I need to . To be on point . And beginning there , there was a lot of that , because those were the types of people who were aware , um , that they needed sleep .

I think there's been a bit of a revolution in terms of women , um , going through um perimenopause and , um , you know the day they hit their menopause and postmenmenopause , yeah , where the world has suddenly woke up and said , wow , that's huge . You know , you're not just demented crazy old women . Now they're sitting there following yourselves .

There's a lot going on . Yeah , um , you know so I think from uh , if you ever um , you know , look into it um , whenever a woman starts to go through the menopause , um , it is basically it's horrendous , and the impact on their whole entire lives . They're affected every way .

So I think now there's been this bit of a revolution in and around um women going through perimenopause . They're much more aware of the impact that it's having . They're much more aware they always knew that it meant that they had hot flashes and they couldn't sleep at night .

Um , and they only blamed it on the fact that they woke up sweating and they didn't understand the link between their hormones and sleep and the fact that actually it didn't matter if they didn't have the hot flashes through the night . They still were going to have trouble sleeping because of the changes in their hormones . Um . So I think now we see a lot .

I see a lot of women who are concerned that they want to get the right amount of sleep and they want to get better sleep . And also I see a lot more people come through the doors that just want to be healthier .

You know , they maybe don't have a perpetuating condition like insomnia that's going on for years and years , but they know that they've started to get into a bit of a cycle and they're like oh , I want to act on this now . I want to know how to address this . I want to know how to make this better .

You know university students as well , teenagers , teenagers' body clocks change , you know , and go all out of sync . And it's not just because they become lazy teenagers that they want to sleep on in the morning and stay awake later at night . Their whole body clock shifts by a couple of hours .

Um , in those teenage years it does shift back again in their early 20s , but , uh , for them . There's a lot of parents that would come with their teens , really concerned that their teen now doesn't want to go to bed before midnight and wants to stay asleep until you know 10 or 11 o'clock the next day , and they want to fix what's going on .

And it's just an understanding of well , we can actually we can adjust the circadian rhythm and help them get to sleep at a healthier time , because obviously school starts . They can't , we can't , delay them going to school , so we have to fit into the norm of what time school starts at .

So there's there's an increase in that as well , um , and a huge amount of babies and children um and parents coming with babies and children who who want better sleep for their child because they understand the importance of it , but they also understand the impact of poor sleep on on the outcomes of um postnatal depression and postnatal anxiety right , okay , but is

that a separate part of your business , or is it ? just a separate part of your business , or is it just that's a separate part of ? The business , I keep the babies all separate , they're all in the corner .

university to women going through , uh , menopause , and then you know , just generally , people who are just having , uh just want to get to , you know , have a good general general fitness , because they see that as as integral to having a healthier lifestyle yeah yeah and I see a lot of um .

I want to um do a module on sleep , or I want to do a week where we focus on sleep because they understand the importance of it from the training that they have received and they want to pass on that knowledge to their clients .

Um , so you see it coming through a lot in the health and and you know fitness world um a huge importance in the , in the well-being world , in the mental health um industry as well . So sleep is just , it's totally , it's being thrust into the , the foreground , where before it was always in the background .

You know it was like oh , you want to be thinner or you want to lose weight ? Well , let's focus on your diet and exercise . That's great . But if you're not sleeping right at night , well , as we said , you're going to feel hungry when you're not and you're not going to feel full when you should . So actually , you're on the back foot .

You need to prioritize sleep as well . So I think , um , social media has been huge in in bringing sleep into the , the foreground , where it should be oh , so social media does have its benefits , then it's not all , it's only bad

Sleep is is , like I said , I really agree with you is so integral to as part of your kind of overall , especially if you're , you know , a runner and and whatever , and if you're looking to have all these different elements , you know , whether it be strength training , nutrition or whatever .

But , like you said , to a certain extent , sleep is very much the cornerstone , because for all these things to work , you know you need to have , you know , sleep to repair and also to help your recovery . Would you agree with that ?

It can be something really , really small , like you know that you're maybe worried about a child who's ill and you sit up with them for a couple of nights in a row , or they've been in hospital for a few nights and suddenly you're in this cycle of staying awake and everything then , you know , starts to go by the wayside .

But , to be to be clear , an odd night of and I hate scaremongering , I hate scaremongering in the sleep industry .

You know , um , we've got a really prominent um person within the sleep industry that talks about sleep and will happily tell men that you know they're and it's not untrue but will happily tell men that their testicles shrink when they're sleep deprived . Oh , really . Yeah , yeah .

So you know there's nothing more motivating to get sleep than the thought that your testicles are going to shrink , but also there's nothing more , you know , that's going to send you into a spiral of stress , than I must go to bed or else I'm going to get to sleep , or else I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm going to you know lose some of my

manhood . You know there is absolutely nothing that's going to try to motivate a man more to sleep than that yeah on the flip side , there's nothing that's going to panic them and worry them more than yes , exactly they're looking at their tracker and they're thinking . I didn't spend that much time in sleep last night , goodness , and you know so .

I hate scaremongering within the sleep industry . You know whether the information is true or false . Look , it takes a fair time to get into , you know , a stage where you have insomnia . It takes a fair while to get into a really sleep deprived state where anything like that would happen to you .

Overall , it's healthier to have really good sleep foundations and practice your sleep hygiene . Um , it's . It's better , especially if you're into um your performance and your physical performance and your physical fitness . It's paramount to to help in there . Is it going to , you know , 10 minutes off your uh , you know your marathon time or half marathon time ?

Unlikely ? Will it help with your decision making on the day ? Will it , you know , help you recover after your race ? Absolutely , um , you know so everything in context and you know keep perspective on everything as well .

Yes absolutely Like you said in terms of moods and everything else . Well , you've been a fountain of knowledge and I was really excited that you agreed to come on to the podcast .

And what I usually do with my interviews is I usually split them into two , so we'll get two bites of the cherry of lindsey , so , um , but um , I don't know if you , I just usually ask sort of a one quickfire question or a couple of quickfire questions . Um , but do you have a particular sporting hero before we go ?

You're going to have to come back to me on this one because right now the name is eluding me , on this one , because right now the name is eluding me . But I really have to say , even in terms of the sporting world , I'm not a sports person . You know , jurgen Klopp , in terms of oh , okay . And I'm not . I don't support any football team whatsoever .

I'm not a big Liverpool supporter .

Yeah , um , and I felt like he really was part of their team .

And when you , you know , you catch , um , you know football matches and I'm not , as I said , I'm not into football , yeah , and when you catch football matches and you've got your you and your coach , just on the sidelines , it's all , whereas he's very into it and he's you know he's on the field with every single player , so I suppose he's quite inspirational to

me . I really enjoyed watching him on the sidelines . I think the thing .

And it wasn't rudeness , it was like , well , I have more important places to be , like with my team and my players , and in here getting things sorted out . So I like that about him . He was just about the players and the game and you could tell he loved it and that was it . So I suppose for me , you know , I enjoy watching him yeah .

So I'd love to just question stalin on how did you think that was going to look in 10 , 15 , 20 years time brilliant , brilliant .

It's your Sleep Clinic , and if there's anybody out there with any little ones , the baby element of it or the children's element , is your Sleep Support Not very imaginative , right ? And I have

a website where you can find all of the information about my courses and how to get in touch with me , and that is just wwwyoursleepcliniccom .