The Benefits of Sleep
You might have wondered why it is that Jim and Gee often ask you how you're sleeping at your appointment (hint, its not us looking at bags under your eyes!)
The real reason: sleep is one of the most important recovery processes your body goes through.
Sleep medicine is a whole science in its own right, so I am not going to go into all of it, but focus on one specific part – Deep Sleep:
Deep Sleep is where Human beings produce up to 75% of the Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
Why is that important? Well, HGH is one of the major hormone contributors for the body's repair processes; hence, if you aren’t sleeping well and entering into Deep Sleep for long enough – you wont recover and repair the strain on your body as well as you might!
Lets look at some examples from Jim’s Whoop Strap...
(If you haven’t heard of Whoop – check it out at https://www.whoop.com/en-gb/)
This is an example of when Jim has practised good sleep hygiene and has achieved a good proportion of Deep Sleep, allowing his body to recover well.
Here is an example of when Jim had one or two many glasses of wine before bed. That was the only change in his routine, but look at the difference in Deep Sleep and his Recovery factors.
So how do we sleep better?
This isn’t difficult, but to summarise it all well in a few short sentences is hard, so I'm going to recommend three core things:
Read or Listen to “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker. Matthew is a Phd Neuroscientist who has spent 30+ years researching sleep medicine. His book is written for everyone to understand.
If reading isn’t your thing, but you like a good podcast, Matthew was recently interviewed by Stephen Bartlett on “Diary of a CEO, Episode 228” on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6F3dV8BzpJyHR61hDnrdxS?si=4a5f28d8c7f04501
If you want to get really deep into it (because some of us love this science stuff!) I'd recommend checking out Matthew being interviewed by Dr Andrew Hubermann, who is one of the best neuroscientists out there and runs a fascinating YouTube channel and podcast. The episode where he interviews Matthew is 3 hours+, but it’s a fascinating 3 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbQFSMayJxk
I highly recommend listening, watching or reading the above – we are seeing more and more research come out linking serious disease to lack of sleep. Invest this time in yourself. It's worth it.
At Osteopath in Suffolk, we always strive to provide guidance and help for our patients to enable them to maintain optimum health. Alongside our physical treatment we often recommend complementary therapies withy approved therapists whom we trust implicitly as well as recommending stretches, exercises and lifestyle tweaks to help you move freely and comfortably, now and well into the future.
If you’d like to book an appointment with our team, please do take a look at our booking page and book your appointment - all availability is live and accurate.
