Dr Amy Bender is a sleep scientist on a mission to promote sleep for well-being & better performance. She is the perfect guest to have on the podcast to discuss it's importance for your running performance, recovery and efficiency. We discuss: Link between sleep and running injuries What you need to know about the different sleep stages Signs & symptoms of poor sleep habits Importance of both sleep quality and quantity Common sleeping disorders for runners Can I sleep too much? Practical tips for sleep hygiene Right sleep position and pillow Here are the links for: Amy's twitter account https://twitter.com/Sleep4Sport Amy's insta account https://www.instagram.com/sleep4sport/ Here is a link for the sleep questionnaire: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1186%2Fs40798-018-0140-5/MediaObjects/40798_2018_140_MOESM1_ESM.pdf To follow the podcast joint the facebook group Becoming a smarter runner click on the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/833137020455347/?ref=group_header To find Brodie on instagram head to: https://www.instagram.com/brodie.sharpe/ To work with Brodie Sharpe at The Running Breakthrough Clinic visit: https://breakthroughrunning.physio/
Expand your running knowledge, identify running misconceptions and become a faster, healthier, SMARTER runner. Let Brodie Sharpe become your new running guide as he teaches you powerful injury insights from his many years as a physiotherapist while also interviewing the best running gurus in the world. This is ideal for injured runners & runners looking for injury prevention and elevated performance. So, take full advantage by starting at season 1 where Brodie teaches you THE TOP PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME ANY RUNNING INJURY and let’s begin your run smarter journey.
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On today's episode, Sleep Science for Runners with Dr. Amy Bender. Welcome to the Run Smarter podcast, the podcast helping you overcome your current and future running injuries by educating and transforming you into a healthier, stronger, and smarter runner. My name is Brodie Sharp. I am the guy to reach out to when you finally decided enough is enough with your persistent running injuries. physiotherapist, the owner of the Breakthrough Running Clinic and your podcast host. I'm excited to bring you today's lesson and to add to your ever-growing running knowledge. Let's work together to overcome your running injuries, getting you to that starting line and finishing strong. So let's take it away. pushing through with another episode this week. I think this is taking us to episode number four in about five days. And this one is extremely important. It benefits all runners. And it's an extremely interesting topic that I could just talk about for days. We had Dr. Amy Bender. She is a sleep scientist. She has on her Twitter, she is a scientist on a mission to promote sleep for wellbeing and better performance. She does talk about the work that she has done in the past and the work she's doing now at the start of the interview. In this episode, we talk about the different stages of sleep and what you need to know as a runner. What are some signs of poor sleep habits? We learn about the quality of sleep and the quantity of sleep along with the timing of your sleep patterns. what it means if you're falling asleep really quickly, what are some common sleep disorders, and we answer a lot of your social media questions. I forgot to thank you guys on the actual recording. So I'll say now thank you for submitting your questions. We did get through all of them. We were pressed for time a little bit at the end. Amy did have her kids due home at a certain period of time, so it might seem a little bit rushed towards the end. I think it was about two minutes after we finished recording that they burst in the door and made a charge towards her. It was quite cute and we did manage to get the interview done and dusted just in time. Amy's very passionate about the science of sleep for athletes and she's very well versed in the current research and is still active in her research herself. So she's the perfect guest to have on to talk about these sort of things. And I hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here is Dr. Amy Bender. Amy, thanks again for the time to come on to the podcast. I think we might wanna start with just a brief glimpse into your career to date and how it's developed to your current position and the roles you're working on at the moment. So would you like to share a bit of that? Sure, yeah, thanks for having me on. So I... Well, I'm an athlete myself, so I played free sports in high school. I played college basketball, and then after that I got a taste of some mountaineering and just been kind of an athlete all my life. And so that was definitely one of my passions. But then I kind of jumped into the sleep career. My aunt was a sleep tech and so she was a sleep technician in Portland, Oregon, and had me come out to her lab and kind of see what she did. And so she hooked up a patient with a bunch of electrodes and then we were able to look at the screen to see how these physiological signals kind of translated to what we were seeing on the screen. So I was definitely fascinated by that. And as soon as I got home, I pretty much called every sleep lab in my area to see if I could kind of volunteer. Ended up volunteering a few nights per week. Well, maybe one night per week and then landed a job luckily pretty much by luck because the person I was volunteering for. He was on the hiring committee of Greg Boleynke who was opening up this new lab at Washington State University in Spokane and ended up landing a job as the primary sleep technician at the lab that was just opening and so started off as a sleep technologist there where I would hook up participants myself with the wires also train research assistants to do the same thing and then score the sleep studies for the stages of sleep. And so I did that for a few years, four years, and then I transitioned into graduate school because I felt that I was kind of at a ceiling and I wanted to go much deeper into exploring the world of sleep. And so I got my master's and PhD at that lab. And then I really wanted to combine combine my passion for sport. So I ended up doing a postdoc at the University of Calgary focusing on sleep interventions in Canadian Olympic team athletes. So I was able to do a two year postdoc there and then I worked for Center for Sleep and Human Performance afterwards. And now I'm currently the senior research scientist at Calgary Counseling Center. where I'm looking at sleep interventions for better mental health, as well as working with athletes along the side as well. So if you're, um, if you have an athlete or you have someone with poor mental health, you're observing their sleep throughout the night and seeing if there's anything that you guys can implement to help. Well, um, so my current role is primarily working with the general population and them coming in with mental health problems. And then we're looking at incorporating sleep interventions to help mental health. But then I'm also doing research with researchers, collaborators around the world, doing the athlete and sleep intervention. research protocols as well. So they're kind of two separate things, but my current role, I really wanted to not necessarily specifically work just with athletes, but I also wanted to apply what I learned to the general population. Cool. I like hearing your career and what sort of work you've been doing because it sounds like you're just what we need for this interview and interviewing athletes. looking at interventions for Olympic athletes is very, very elite and I'm excited to delve into what you've found there. I thought for a kind of foundation initial question, I thought we might just want to start with the different types of stages of sleep and is it important for us to know the different stages just if we are a runner, what we need to know about those stages? I would say a short answer to your question is no. A lot of people worry about the different percentages of the stages that they're getting and oh no, my watch is telling me I'm not getting enough REM sleep. Well number one, the watch, how accurate is it, is kind of a major question. They are getting better, I will say, so I don't want to completely write them off. But in order to really look at the different stages of sleep, you need to use electrodes and measure the electrical activity of the brain using EEG, or elec So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about those distributions. I can talk briefly about the different stages, if you want me to. Yeah, that'd be great. OK. So. There are two main divisions of sleep. So there's non REM sleep, which is non rapid eye movement sleep. And then there's REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement sleep. So non REM sleep is composed of three different stages. So you have stage one, which is the lightest stage of sleep. And we're only in stage one about 5% of the time throughout the night. And then we go into stage two sleep. which takes up about 50% of our sleep time across the night. So this is a really prevalent stage occurring during the night. And this is where breathing and heart rate become regular, our body temperature starts to drop, we see different brainwave activities going on. And then we'll get into the stage three sleep, which is the deepest stage of sleep, and it takes up about 20% of our sleep time. So most of this is occurring during the first half of the night. And what we see in the brain waves is that the waves start to get very large and slow. And it's very difficult to wake someone up during this stage. And what's going on during this stage is we see tissues are being repaired, growth hormone is being released. And it's also highly involved in memory consolidation. So it's a place where new facts and skills are stored and strengthened. And then after stage three, we'll probably go back to stage two. We may have an awakening, and then we'll get into rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep. And so this is where we're actively dreaming, although we can dream in any stage of sleep. This stage takes up about 25% of your sleep time across the night. And it takes about 90 minutes or so to get into this stage once you fall asleep. And the first half of the night, we're seeing shorter dreaming periods, shorter REM periods, whereas when we get later on in the night, we start to see bigger chunks of REM sleep occurring. And then your body, your breathing and heart rate become irregular, your muscles are paralyzed so that you don't knock out your dream. And then this stage is also heavily involved in memory and it's known to kind of integrate new information with past experiences to solve problems and gain insights. Is there any stage, uh, that is contributing to recovery or, um, just like rebuilding muscle tissue or anything like that. Uh, if we are an athlete or we are a runner who is like just finished, like a hard workout the day before. Um, is there any one stage that sort of is predominant in that? Yeah, so that would be the stage three. So the deepest stage of sleep. Um, and with exercise in general, we see more stage three occurring in the general population. So that's why we will always recommend, um, exercise as a way to boost sleep quality because as it turns out we end up getting more of that deeper stages of sleep after exercise. Very cool. Is there, thanks for that, is there any signs of someone who might be having like poor sleeping patterns or poor habits that might contribute to being tired the next day and they might not be directly correlating it to their sleep? Yeah. So we can talk about quality of sleep, which is important. Let me just mention, though, the quantity of sleep as well. So there's kind of three key main factors for optimal sleep. The first one is the quantity of sleep. So someone who's not getting seven to nine hours of sleep per night is not really meeting that recommendation. So adults need between seven and nine hours. So. If someone's really tired and they're not meeting that mark, a lot of times if they just get more sleep, they may feel a lot better. But then there's other situations where people are getting plenty of sleep in bed, but they're not necessarily, they're tired during the day, they're really groggy in the morning, and they just don't feel like the quality of that sleep is important. So... Signs that you're getting good quality sleep is that you're falling asleep in less than 30 minutes, you're waking up no more than once per night, and then during that awakening you're able to get back to sleep within about 20 minutes, and also that you're sleeping about 85% of the time that you're in bed, so you don't want to be awake for long periods during the middle of the night. That can be a sign of poor sleep. quality. So I guess that's kind of a general rule for people to kind of realize am I getting good quality sleep or not. But then I will also add that the third factor has to do with timing of sleep. So ideally we want to sleep within our natural preference for being a night owl or an early bird and about 15% of us are night owls or we want to go to bed you know. midnight or later, wake up after 8 a.m. Whereas an early bird would be someone that would want to go to bed before 10 p.m. and wake up before 6 a.m. So about 15% of us are night owls, 15% of us are early birds, and the rest of us, 70% are intermediate types where we kind of fall in between that. So ideally with the timing, we want to time our sleep in relationship to our chronotype, our preference to be a night owl or an early bird. And that becomes a problem with our society for our night owls who have to be to work on time, have to be up for society when things are running normally. So there are a few things that night owls can do help in that situation and one of those would be to block light at night so really try and dim the lights potentially wear blue light blocking glasses and then get lots of light in the morning to help set their circadian rhythm to that time of day. So it's not just about quality it's also about quantity of sleep as well as timing of sleep in order to have optimal sleep. Very cool. You mentioned that the sleep stages might not be as accurate when it comes to watches, just those measuring devices. Would you say that the quality and quantity and timing of sleep, those three points that you mentioned, are a little bit more accurate with devices? Can they look at the quality and the efficiency of your sleeping in a bit more detail? They're getting, they're definitely getting better. So the devices that are using heart rate variability, that are using temperature, that are using light. So the more channels that they can measure, the more accurate they're going to be at distinguishing the sleep stages, as well as an overall sleep quality score. But the ones that are just using more movement-based accelerometry aren't quite as accurate at being able to pinpoint when you're asleep and when you're awake and then the awakenings that are occurring during the night as well. Okay. I'm assuming they just use like an accelerometer, like if you're moving it might be more indicative that you're awake? Yes, exactly. And they struggle sometimes with... the sleep latency. So the time it takes you to fall asleep because you can be laying there and not moving, but still be awake. So that's kind of where it struggles a little bit. I, um, I've mentioned on the podcast a couple of times, I have an aura ring that I wear and I sometimes question like, how does it know when I fall asleep? Cause I'm laying in there in bed, it might take me about 15 minutes to fall asleep, but I'm just perfectly still. And then I nod off. I'm like, how does it know? Like the minutes when I start to, drift off but I could imagine that one looks at heart rate variability and temperature as well but for just a watch, you wouldn't have any clue. I wanted to jump into another question related to that. Some people say that they fall asleep really quickly and they kind of say they're kind of proud of it because they say, oh, I'm actually a really good sleeper because I fall asleep really, really My question is, is that like a good sign of, um, like a good sleep habit or is it actually a bad sign that they're not getting enough sleep, which is why they're falling asleep really quickly? That is, that is a great question. And, um, it depends on how quickly they are falling asleep. So if it's, if it's less than five minutes, that's probably a sign that there may be some sleep deprivation going on. but if it's more, you know, 10 to 20 or even up to 30, then it's still defined as being normal. Okay. I guess their partners can tell if they're snoring within five minutes, then it might be a bad sign. Cause I know like with my sleep score, there was a one night in particular, I fell asleep really quickly. I'm like, Oh great. But actually, um, scored me poorly. on latency because I did fall asleep way too quickly. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Oh, interesting. That's great. Yeah. I would say in general, I do like the aura ring with its ability to track temperature. So our body temperature drops when we fall asleep to track heart rate variability. I think it captures light as well. So it is one of the more accurate. devices out there. And that is very interesting that they have that in there. If you fall asleep too quickly, it could be a problem. Yeah, I think it was about three minutes. That's in line with my thinking too. Yeah. Cool. And how about any like common sleeping disorders that runners should be aware of? Is there any characteristics for certain disorders? Anything to add about that? Well, I actually did a study in London Marathon Runners. So we're working on publishing it right now, but we did a survey using the Athlete Sleep Screening Questionnaire, which is a tool for anyone working with athletes out there, or even if you're an athlete yourself. This is a free tool that you can find online. Maybe we can put a link in the show notes. Absolutely. That I helped develop and looking at screening athletes for sleep problems. And so in this London Marathon study, we were studying over a thousand London Marathon participants, and we found that actually about 15% of them had a clinically significant sleep problem, which is actually a lot lower than what we found in the Canadian national team athletes that I was working with. That was more around 25%. So in general, in runners, we don't see as high of a prevalence for sleep problems as we would with maybe a football player or a hockey player who has a bigger neck circumference. They may be more, the higher volume, higher weight. They may be more prone to sleep apnea in that situation. And generally with runners, you know, they have more of a lean body type, although sleep apnea can happen in anyone. Um, there's not a high, as high of a prevalence in runners as there would be in a different type of athlete. Okay. Um, sleep apnea is a key one because it can be a disorder that not a lot of people know that they have, if they do have it, um, are there, is there anything that you can say? Are there any signs someone might have if they do have such a disorder? Um, yeah. Anything to add there? Definitely. So if, if your, um, bed partner notices that you're snoring heavily and you're stopping breathing, that is kind of number, the number one sign that there's probably sleep apnea going on in that situation. I would say also if you're extremely sleepy during the day, if you're needing a lot of caffeine to get you through the day, if you're feeling tired a few hours after you've woken up, those can all be signs of a potential underlying sleep disorder and potentially sleep apnea. lacking good quality sleep? Mm-hmm. So, um, definitely what we see is that there is a higher for those that aren't getting enough sleep or maybe lacking in quality, we see a higher risk for diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, even there's some reports on Alzheimer's disease, that you're at higher risk in those situations. But I would say that that's pretty extreme. This would be continually not getting enough sleep for years on end or having an underlying sleep disorder for years and years and years. And the reason I say that is that When we look at parents in general, so I have three kids, my youngest is two, and what we see is that it takes about six years to get back to your pre-pregnancy levels when it comes to sleep, yeah. But we don't see a higher rate of parents dying earlier compared to non-parents. You know, so I think when we look at the literature, a lot of sleep scientists really point out the fact that there's a huge problem and that you'll die sooner and you'll have cardiovascular disease if you're not getting enough sleep and you'll have obesity. I mean, sure, you're at a higher risk, but I don't think... if we look at the parents and if we look at people suffering from insomnia, we don't see a higher mortality rate or a quicker mortality rate in those groups. I think there's a lot to be explored when it comes to the effects of sleep deprivation and how that impacts your body. relationship with poor sleep or poor quality of sleep and injury risk. I've actually looked at a couple of papers that have mainly looked at the adolescent population in regards to if they get less than I think it was seven hour sleep or more than seven hour sleep, the likelihood of them getting injured within the next one or two weeks. That just might be me cherry picking a couple of articles, but Is there any like overarching conclusion when it comes to the relationship between poor sleep and injury risk? Yes, that's a good point. So there was a study, there were a couple study in adolescents in particular and one of them was looking at those who got less than eight hours of sleep compared to those who got more. So for an adolescent, the recommendation is between eight and 10 hours of sleep. So more than what an adult would need. And they found that those who were getting less than eight hours per night had a 1.7 times greater risk for being injured than those who slept more equal to or greater than eight hours of sleep. And there was a different study in adolescents who also looked at nutrition. And they found that Just looking at sleep, sleeping more than eight hours of sleep during weekdays reduced the odds of injury by 61%. But when they also looked at nutrition intake, that they were getting their recommended fruits, vegetables, and fish, the study was in Sweden. They found that those who reached the recommended nutrition intake reduced the odds of injury by 64%. So, and there was a recent study in military personnel and they found a similar result with regard to the amount of sleep that they were getting. They found that they're more at risk for injury when they weren't getting enough sleep. But there's other studies that find no relationship. And so I think this is kind of a mixed bag when it comes to injury risk and the amount of sleep that you're getting. Those studies that found no relationship, were they in the adult population? I believe so, yes. They weren't in the adolescent. That could be a reason, although the one in the military that did find a relationship found, did find a relationship with injury risk and sleep, were adults. Okay. Interesting point. Sort of solidifies the importance of nutrition as well. Should we be worried if we have say one poor night sleep? I know if I have not necessarily running race, but sometimes with triathlons I'll be quite nervous the night before and just really struggle with sleep and Should I be worried with injury risk or impacting performance? When I have the next day to perform Typically, typically one night of last sleep is, I mean, it's normal in athletes with regard to performance anxiety and doesn't necessarily impact the performance that much. But I would say a strategy that we recommend for athletes is to bank sleep leading into that competition in order to mitigate some of the impacts of that poor night's sleep prior to the competition. So what that means is you want to extend sleep. You want to get more, you want to maybe supplement with a nap in that week or two before that important competition. Some studies have shown even just a week of, you know, an hour or so more sleep per night has shown good results when it comes to performance during that sleep deprivation period. And so for example, there was a study in basketball players. Now this was more of a long term six to eight week sleep extension, but they found improvements in free throw shooting, reaction time, sprint times were reduced. Overall mood was improved when they extended their sleep an hour. an hour or so for that long period of time. But there's been other studies, one particular in rugby players, where it was just a one to two week period of sleep extension, and they found improvements in reaction time and reductions in cortisol with getting more sleep. And there was another study in tennis players that showed similar results with that one to two week period. So I think, um, banking sleep leading into that really important competition can be a good strategy to reduce some of that anxiety related to a poor night sleep prior to the competition. I think that that's a really cool thing to implement cause I've never thought of that. And I think if you know that you have banked sleep, that might actually be a strategy for you to calm yourself down and be like, okay, it almost gives you reassurance. that it's okay to have poor quality sleep the night before and therefore you're less stressed and maybe get better sleep. Absolutely, absolutely. I think it plays a role on the calming you down, not a big deal. I mean, if you're in a triathlon, so I did Ironman about 10 years ago. Oh, cool, congrats. Oh, thank you. And I had to wake up. something like 4.30 in the morning. So of course I'm not gonna be able to get to sleep on time in order to get that full amount. So absolutely having that confidence that I have good sleep leading into this, there's not gonna be a problem. Yeah, really cool. Being conscious of time, I might move on to some social media questions that we have come in. Which is good because we've got four questions here and I don't think we've covered any of them yet. So Dana asks, are there any tips for staying asleep? She is a light sleeper and when she wakes up in the middle of the night and has trouble getting back to sleep and she'd like to sleep deeper. Any tips for Dana? So there's a couple of techniques that I really like. Number one is the four, seven, eight breathing technique. So this is where you, Breathe in for four seconds. You hold your breath for seven and then you breathe out for eight and You repeat that four times four to five times And it's just a way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system Kind of calm you down. And so I really when I wake up during the middle of the night I'll start by doing that technique first to just kind of calm me down And then I follow that up with the cognitive shuffle So you think of a word such as bedtime, and you imagine all the objects that you can that start with B, so ball, banana, bus, bag. When you can't imagine any more objects, you move on to E, so eagle, egg, ear, eye, and then you move on to D. And by the time you get to the end of the word, you'll be sound asleep. So that method works really well for myself and others. And I will also add that if you're like, let's say you've tried those techniques and you're still not falling asleep and it's been at least probably around 20 minutes or so, the best strategy for you is to get up out of bed because you don't wanna start associating your bed with being awake. So you wanna get up out of bed, do a calming activity in low light and then only return back to bed when you're sleepy. Any common low physical activity things that you suggest if someone were to get up? So stretching might be an idea. So some different stretches that you could do. Reading a paper book in low light can be a strategy. Maybe taking a warm bath or shower. Anything that would be not very stimulating. You don't want to go to your phone and start being exposed to that bright light and social media feeds and stuff like that. Want to do more calming activities. Okay, cool. We'll move on. That was really cool. I really liked the practical tips. So that's why I was sort of pumping a couple more things there. Janine asks, is waking up and jumping out of bed a real thing? And there, is it a sign of good sleep or is it a myth? Um, so it's a bit of a myth. So there's a lot of individual variability in what's called sleep inertia. So when we wake up, sometimes it can take us up to 90 minutes to feel alert. And so for some people it may be, you know, 10 minutes versus someone else, maybe an hour. And all of that, that entire range is perfectly normal. So it is, I would say it is a myth for you to feel, let's say you feel like you're not alert when you wake up. So I must be getting terrible sleep, but that's actually a myth. It could just take you a little bit longer, depending on what stage of sleep you're waking up in. So if you're in more of a lighter stage of sleep, there's gonna be less sleep inertia. versus someone who's waking up in the deepest stage of sleep, which is a very low likelihood if we're talking about nighttime sleep, but potentially a high likelihood if we're talking about a nap. Cool. Janine also asked another question. So we might, uh, maybe answer this one a bit more briefly. Can overtraining impact your sleep? Definitely. Yeah. So it can, um, It can impact your quality of sleep. It can impact the amount of sleep that you're getting. So what we'll see is in athletes who have overtraining syndrome that their sleep is impacted in one way or another, and it could be the opposite as well that they're maybe sleeping too much. But definitely, yes, sleep can be impacted with overtraining. Okay. And Daniel asks the optimal sleep position is back or side. Um, and also thoughts on napping during the day, if so, how long? So we might just start with the sleeping position. Okay. So the best sleeping position I would say is on your side with a pillow in between your legs to support your back and neck. Um, so that's that position. is supportive for your back, but it's also a key position for to help mitigate against sleep apnea. So a lot of times, you know, for example, a chiropractor might say the best position would be to sleep on your back. But in my opinion, there's more risk for sleep apnea because of the gravity of your tissues being pushed down. So in my opinion, we can still get good support on the side, but reduce the risk of sleep apnea that's occurring. Cool. And how about a pillow for your neck? Any advice you could give out? Just something that's comfortable. I mean, there's not any, it's all, it's kind of an individual preference. So there's not really a certain pillow that I recommend. It would just be, kind of testing out what's comfortable for you. Good one. And I know a lot of people have about seven different types of pillows on their beds. So I think just trying one and seeing which one is the most comfortable is a good way to go. How about, um, napping as a strategy for, um, accumulating more sleep. Yes. Snapping. I love napping. Yes. So napping is great. And it's a, an area where athletes, don't necessarily take advantage of. So in our study, we found that about, only about, or it was 80% of Canadian national team athletes nap less than two times per week. And so this is really an area where people can make up for some of that lost sleep. Or for example, one of the key sleep hygiene strategies is to keep a consistent sleep wake schedule. But there's times where you might wake up, let's say at four in the morning, you can't get back to sleep, and then people will be tempted to sleep in later. But really the best thing to do would be to, you know, get up at that regular time, but then supplement in the afternoon with a nap so that it's not impacting your circadian rhythms as much. And I would say that the timing of the nap, you wanna keep that between in the afternoon between 1 and 4 p.m. We don't want that too late, because then it could impact your ability to fall asleep. And then as far as the duration goes, less than 30 minutes, so about a 20 minute nap, is key so that you're not getting into those deeper stages of sleep, where you have that sleep inertia and you're waking up feeling groggy. However, if you do have a longer opportunity, You could try and aim for about a 90 minutes so that you're getting all the stages of sleep. And then try and wake up naturally out of that 90 minute nap. Maybe set an emergency alarm of two hours, but really try and wake up naturally so that you don't have a lot of that sleep inertia occurring. And then... Keep the environment cool, dark, and quiet if you can. So you might need an eye mask, you might need headphones with white noise, or you might need earplugs. And then try and incorporate some of those techniques to help you fall asleep that I mentioned earlier with the 478 breathing and the cognitive shuffle. And I will add one more, which is writing a to-do list. So that has been shown to. help people fall asleep quicker at night if they write a to-do list right before they go to bed. And so that could be another useful strategy in a nap. You have all of these thoughts on your mind, you know, write that to-do list and then hopefully it'll help you fall asleep quicker. Fantastic. One more question and it's from Emily and it's a bit of a backstory involved as well. How much is too much sleep? Even before I was a distance runner, I was constantly tired. My husband says I sleep too much. I can sleep 12 hours and still need a nap. I am always tired. I can function on four hours a night. I wonder how much varies from person to person, or if I have an underlying issue. I have worked hard to get my nutrition on point and still chronically tired. Mm-hmm. So in this instance, if someone can sleep 12 hours and then still not feel rested and still need a nap, and this is occurring multiple times per week, I would say there's probably an underlying issue going on and you definitely wanna get that checked out from a sleep professional. The normal healthy range of sleep is between seven and nine hours per night. So anything above that, of course there is variability and the younger you are, so if you're an adolescent, you need more of that eight to 10. But if we're talking about an adult who's continually getting 11 hours of sleep per night and still not waking up feeling refreshed, or sorry, cancel that because you don't have to wake up feeling refreshed, but feel tired during the day. sleepy, I would say definitely get that checked out because there might be an underlying sleep disorder. Okay, and so their first move would be to go to or find a sleep specialist. Yes, I mean they any athletes out there you can first try the athlete sleep screening questionnaire, kind of see what that says and then maybe go to your general family practitioner and then they can help navigate you towards a sleep specialist, depending on what country you're in. Um, you may have to go to the family doc first and then get referred. I'm very curious about this questionnaire. I'd love for you to send it across and, um, so I can give it to my athletes if they have any questions. Um, while we're on that, I'll leave a link to that, um, study that you mentioned before in the show notes. And while we're on the topic, are there any other social media? platforms or handles someone can go to if they want to continue following you or learn more about you? Sure. So I'm on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at sleep for sports and I'm working on building a website sleep well to win so sleep well to win.com. So stay tuned for that as well. Awesome. Is there any other key messages that we haven't got across on today's interview that you want to get across to those runners who want to know more about sleep? Sure. So I guess two main things that I would recommend when I'm talking to athletes and coaches, one thing is the pre-sleep routine. So you can't just flip a switch and expect to fall asleep instantly. You have to prepare your mind and your body for sleep. And so for me, my kind of ideal time is I'll set a bedtime alarm about an hour and a half before my desired bedtime. So setting that bedtime alarm will help signify to you that you need to put away the electronic devices, you need to start dimming the light, you can potentially prepare for the next day, packing your gym bag or setting out your clothes for the next day. and then just doing maybe a warm bath or shower, which has been shown to make it faster for you to fall asleep, and then do some of those to-do lists, breathing exercises, reading a paper book. And so people, yeah, people need to realize that this is gonna benefit both their sleep quantity as well as their sleep quality by incorporating that pre-sleep routine. And then the second thing I think that we didn't really touch upon was caffeine. So I think I come across maybe sometimes as being anti-caffeine in general because I know the impacts on sleep quality. But I try and live by drink caffeine strategically, not automatically. And so, for example, I just came back from Europe. and I was wanting to prepare myself for when I arrived in Calgary. And so I had a little bit of caffeine in the evening, which I would never ever do, but I knew that would help me go to bed later, as well as shift my circadian rhythm to a later time. So in that instance, I was using caffeine strategically. So I think for people out there to not be reliant on caffeine each and every day, but to realize to use it when you really need it and to maybe every few days not have caffeine or maybe have a black tea instead of a full double espresso to really not make you automatically going for that caffeine. And there has been research to show that the way you metabolize caffeine impacts how caffeine affects your performance. So one particular study by Dr. Guest in 2018 found that caffeine actually impaired performance in those who were slow metabolizer on a cycling time trial. So I think people out there automatically think, oh, caffeine is good for me, it's gonna help me improve my performance. But I think we need to kind of take a step back and really understand, is it benefiting your performance? And maybe trying to understand how you metabolize caffeine could be a way to know whether or not it's helping me or not. Super interesting. So you're pretty much using like caffeine can be a powerful tool if you use it appropriately and know how you process it within your body. Absolutely. Yes. Awesome. I think that's a good way to finish up. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your wisdom. The topic of sleep just applies to everyone. It's not just athletes. It's not just the elites. And everyone can benefit just from daily performance and physical performance and improve cognitive function and memory and all that sort of aspect. So. especially in this day and age when people are working from home and people are overworked and all these devices and blue light and social media and all these sort of things that can start to impact your sleep. It's really good that someone like you is out there doing the research and bringing that awareness to the general public. So thank you very much for sharing all these really cool practical tips and thanks for coming onto the podcast. Thanks for having me. It was my pleasure. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Running Smarter Podcast. I hope you can see the impact this content will have on your future running. If you want to continue expanding your knowledge, please subscribe to the podcast and keep listening. If you want to learn quicker, jump into the Facebook group titled Become a Smarter Runner. If you want tailored education and physio rehab, you can personally work with me at brea Thank you so much once again, and remember, knowledge is power.