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Lifestyle:
The Power of Sleep
By Dr. Bob Irwin
Sleep is one thing that many people take for granted, and many more people lack. A restful night in bed will do wonders for your health and performance. But are you really sleeping as well as you could be?
Many individuals, especially athletes, do not get enough quality sleep. I say quality, because quantity is not always a good predictor to justify if you are getting the benefit of sleep. Some people sleep six hours a night and feel great, while others feel the need to sleep ten hours and still wake up tired.
The quality of sleep has a lot to do with the adrenal glands. The major stress hormone secreted by the adrenal gland is cortisol. Cortisol is normally high in the morning (7-8 am) and slowly lowers itself throughout the day until around midnight, ensuring a restful nights sleep. Fluctuations in this cycle can understandably reap havoc on sleep cycles.
Overtrained athletes have a tendency to output high levels of cortisol throughout the entire day. Many times these individuals feel as though they do not "need" more sleep because they have so much energy. They usually feel jittery and always on the go. Depending on how this is handled, the roof can cave in and their highs will soon drop to lows.
Other individuals may suffer from too much or prolonged stress, resulting in low cortisol levels throughout the day. They go to bed exhausted and wake up tired. Exercise usually gives them a jump-start to get them through the day.
There are individuals whose cortisol levels are out of rhythm with their internal clock, this is very common, especially among athletes. The cortisol profile may be fine all day long until the night, when it jumps up instead of down for some unknown reason to them. This usually makes these people either lie in bed counting sheep, or falling right to sleep waking up in the middle of the night. They might lie there for 10 minutes and fall back to sleep or it may be two hours until they fall back asleep. Something is tripping the sleep-wake cycle that needs to be corrected. Many times this is the cortisol, or cortisol affect on the internal body clock hormone, melatonin, secreted by the pineal gland.
Another common sleep problem experienced by athletes is waking up in the middle of the night to urinate. Normal? Well that depends. Waking up once in the middle of the night to make a bathroom run is normal if you consumed lots of water before bed and you're not dehydrated. Waking up more than once, or having to go once with no success, indicates that something is up.
Aldosterone, another adrenal hormone responsible for mineral balance in the body (sodium-potassium) is high at night, the opposite of cortisol. High aldosterone means sodium is retained, which means that fluid is retained. This means that you will sleep better and won't have to urinate in the middle of the night. A low aldosterone level means many trips to the can during the night.
Another reason for frequent nighttime urination is from lactic acid, usually from a hard (anaerobic) workout, irritating the wall of the bladder. This irritation will cause you to wake up and go, but only a little bit. Then a few hours later the same thing happens all over again. That's why after a hard workout, it's very important to rehydrate yourself and cool down properly to get the lactic acid out of your system.
So what can be done about all this? Proper treatment and lifestyle changes will make a difference. Cortisol levels can be measured with an inexpensive yet highly accurate saliva test, and aldosterone can be evaluated through other simple tests that a health professional can perform. Another thing, limit your intake of caffeine, especially late in the day. It stresses your adrenal glands and can actually cause some of these symptoms when used in excess.
It's important to remember that when you experience some of these symptoms it's your body's way of saying "hey stupid; if you keep working out too much and not resting enough, I'm not going to be nice anymore."
Dr. Bob Irwin practices at Capital Chiropractic in Albany. He believes
in keeping the body balanced and practicing a healthy lifestyle. He can
be reached at bobdc99@yahoo.com.
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