Better Sleep | Spokane Personal Trainer

Can the Spokane Personal Trainer help you with sleep quality? Absolutely!

Not the average trainer of course, but I’m actually a certified sleep coach. There are a fascinating amount of things that you can do to assist someone with a sleeping pattern. The first thing that I want to really discuss is really understanding how we fall asleep.

This is something that people don’t really think about very often. But if we look at the mechanisms that our body has that allows us to fall asleep, then we can figure out how to best to facilitate habits that support sleep quality. The reason why we want to talk about sleep quality is because there’s nothing in your life no biological function that is not directly tied to the quality of your sleep.

As a Spokane Personal Trainer I really want to help you live a healthier, happier life. And sleep is absolutely paramount to that to that goal. So we want to look at Sleep, better sleep quality and how to improve it. To do so let’s talk about the three systems that your body uses to determine whether you’re going to fall asleep or not. There are three different systems that your body relies on to help you fall asleep.

The first system you’ve probably heard about is called the circadian rhythm. This is your body’s natural ebb and flow your body’s biological clock you might have heard before. What this refers to is more than just your feelings of tiredness and awakeness when we talk about your circadian rhythm, what we’re talking about as the natural ebb and flow of various different functions and hormonal releases throughout the day, throughout the day, different points of the day, you’re gonna have different bio rhythms.

As a Spokane Personal Trainer, it’s absolutely critical for me to have a deep understanding of someone’s biology. And this understanding can actually impact us a few different things including your performance and workouts. But the thing with the circadian rhythm that we’re most interested in, is going to be the release of serotonin. Sorry, cancel that not serotonin, the release of melatonin and the release of cortisol. We also with circadian rhythm, want to talk about core body temperatures. For sleep habits, the body wants to release more melatonin when it’s getting time to go to sleep. And your body is also going to have lower cortisol when the when the melatonin increases.

This allows you to fall asleep you’ve probably familiar with melatonin, and you might have even heard of cortisol before but your circadian rhythm also can impact your your core body temperature. To fall asleep. We want to gently ease the body into a colder temperature. Those three things are part of the circadian rhythm and the parts that are most important to falling asleep. The second system that the body relies on to fall asleep is called sleep pressure. There is a chemical called adenosine that will build up in the brain throughout the day. When adenosine buildup hits a certain threshold, it’s gonna put more pressure and more signals on the brain to fall asleep.

Adenosine is a chemical that’s part of what we call adenosine triphosphate. Adenosine triphosphate is the body’s energy molecule. It’s often referred to as ATP as you do literally anything throughout the day, everything from eating, digesting, thinking moving and other bodily functions like digestion and reproductive health will consume ATP. As atque P gets used, the phosphates get broken off and the D inosine. will travel up to the brain. The more you do throughout the day, the more adenosine is going to accumulate in the brain and I’ll put pressure on you to fall asleep

the third system that facilitates sleep is the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system or ans for short. has two different modes. There is a mode that is called the parasympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic nervous system is going to be your rest and digest mode. That’s going to be your calm, soothe and relaxed state. The opposite of the parasympathetic nervous system is the sympathetic nervous system. your sympathetic nervous system you’ve probably heard of fight or flight sympathetic nervous system is going to be the really stimulated really awake and really alert state of the autonomic nervous system.

So knowing these three things as a Spokane Personal Trainer, I can talk to clients about habits that that optimize that respect these three systems and facilitate and promote sleep. With the circadian rhythm. There are things that we can do to really manage that biological clock. Your circadian rhythm is mostly influenced by two things, light and habits. The biggest thing that I always recommend for my clients is to have a regular pm routine. having a regular bedtime routine allows your body to receive signals that you’re going into one state from another. It’s a transition signal. And what that allows us to do is kind of hijack the circadian rhythm to start to signal the melatonin release and to inhibit the cortisol release and start to lower the body temperature and facilitate sleep.

Another way that we can influence the circadian rhythm is through lights. We unfortunately live in a modern era with a lot of artificial lights and that can confuse the circadian rhythm in the evening, it’s recommended that you use light or dim lights to prevent that high stimulation of the awake mode of the circadian rhythm. If you use dimmer lights, your body will be less awake when you try to go to sleep. We can also kind of multipurpose the circadian rhythm by trying to lower temperatures in the afternoon before going to sleep in the evening going into a room, particularly your bedroom that may be a lower temperature than the rest of the house will start to trigger the circadian rhythm into that sleep mode. For the sleep pressure talk the adenosine buildup in the brain.

What we can do there is just make sure that we have an active lifestyle. Like I mentioned, the more you do throughout the day the more adenosine is going to build up in the brain and put pressure on us to fall asleep at night. So if you can be regularly active every day, with either the walking or exercise, if you can have regular activity you get more adenosine buildup and more sleep pressure. Finally, with the autonomic nervous system, avoiding screens in the evening can help reduce the stimulation of the fight or flight system. The flashing lights are a lot of signals and stimulation from the environment and it puts us in a lookout mode where we’re watching the environment. We’re hypersensitive to signals and we’re looking for predation or for predators in our in our environment, and that will keep us away from sleep. Instead, I recommend something soothing something possibly like reading a book or knitting or doing puzzles. Something that’s not going to Bard you with symbols or with stimulus to keep you awake. Those three systems are what allow you to sleep and as the Spokane Personal Trainer I always try to make recommendations that will help you maximize the benefits of these three systems so you can get sleep and better health

Transcribed by https://otter.ai