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SLEEP AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS (27 Sleep Pressure and Circadian Rhythms Now that you have a better understanding of how decreased sleep time, poorer sleep quality, and even a single night of bad sleep can hamper per- formance, le’ circle back to sleep physiology and discuss the two driving factors that trigger sleep onset: circadian rhythm and sleep pressure. Sleep pressure is a simple phenomenon — the longer you've been awake, the sleepier you feel and the greater your drive to seek sleep. Sleep pressure helps to promote sleepiness in preparation for sleep and recovery via the buildup of a compound called adenosine in your brain. The longer you've been awake, the more buildup of adenosine and the sleepier you feel. Have you ever wondered exactly why coffee keeps you awake? It produces its stimulant effect via caffeine, which inhibits the binding of adenosine to receptors in the brain, delaying how sleepy you feel. This is important to consider because caffeine can clearly support superiorathletic performance, but it might also come ata cost (depending on timing, dose, and your indi- vidual genetic response to caffeine). Ifyou don’tuse caffeine judiciously and personalize the frequency and dose, it can quickly compromise your sleep quality, health, recovery, and ultimately performance. Ik’s mot just sleep pressure that influences wakefulness; circadian rhythms —your internal body clock that runs on an approximate 24-hour cycle —also play a fundamental role. After billions of years of evolution, the only predictable cue for our brains has been the rising and setting sun, which happens every day without fail. The light and dark eycles are hardwired into the deepest parts of our brain. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), located at the intersection of your optic nerves behind your eyes, samples the incoming light from each eye as it travels to the back of your brain for interpretation. The SCN in your brain is like the offensive coordinator on 4 football team, relaying information from one input to another. The SCN relays the incoming information from the light and dark cycles of the day to your brain using melatonin as its key messenger. Not long after the sun goes down, the SCN programs the release of melatonin from the pineal gland deep in your brain, signaling that it’s time to wind down and prepare {or sleep. Melatonin helps to regulate the timing of your sleep, telling your brain thae darkness is coming. Throughout the night, your melatonin levels gradually decline. As the first morning light hits your eyelids, production of melatonin is blunted, and your pineal gland effectively turns off the mela tonin tap. This gives the signals to your brain that it's time to start the day. 28) PEAK Daylight isa primary cue to keep your body clock running on time, but it isn't the only external circadian cue. Your brain’s SCN is a major mulki- tasker, also coordinating your daily body temperature, which fluctuates throughout the day as well. Your body temperature drops in the evening, reaches low point few hours afer you fall asleep, rises again in the morn: ing, and peaks during the day. This occurs in syne, which changes in light and darkness and would still happen even if you pulled an all-nighter and didn’t sleep a wink. In fact, in a recent interview with sleep expert Dr. Dan Pardi, PhD, he explained that researchers believe temperature changes in cour fingertips might be the first external trigger to the brain to set waking patterns. Other external cues include your first meal of the day, caffeine intake, movement, and even socializing with friends. These are called zeit- _gebers, from the German word for “synchronizing.” While daylight is the ‘most powerful of these external cues, these other variables can be manipu- lated and timed to support healthy circadian chythms or when adjusting to Finally, each person also has a degree of variability in their individual chronotype, which isthe time of day they naturally prefer to wake and sleep. Thave many clients who love to get up as carly as 4:30 a.m. to exercise or get started on work, long before most people even get out of bed. These uber- achievers, oftentimes CEOs and high-level executives, aren't staying up ‘until last call at the bar but rather tuck into bed early around 9 oF 10 p.m. In the research, morning people are referred to as morning lark chronotypes, and they make up about 40 percent of the population. But not everyone rruns on this pattern. Teens and adolescents are more genetically hardwired to stay up later and sleep in longer; this chronotype is called a night owl, making up approximately 30 percent of the population (the remaining 30 percent are intermediates, somewhere in between). In fact, the night owls can often suffer from social jetlag, which occurs when their late night preferred pattern doesn't fit in with society's typical 9 to 5 workday. This can be a major problem for cognition. The prefrontal cortex area of your brain sits directly above your eyes and acts a little bit like the quarterback of the brain, coordinating high-level thought, reasoning, and emotional control. If you regularly go to bed Tate and wake up early, your prefrontal cortexis slow to get up to the line of scrimmage and call the plays, and itcan take some time before it hits its stride. This makes sleep debta bigger prob: lem for late sleepers than early risers, with research showing higher rates of SLEEP AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS (29 anxiety, depression, diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.” Thankfully, while your chronotype appears to be strongly genetically linked, the zeitgeber strategies previously discussed can help to shift your patterns. Circadian Timing and Athletic Performance Circadian rhythms are interesting from a science perspective, but as an athlete you might be wondering how it impacts your ability to perform, ‘Actually, circadian rhythms ean play a major role in athletic performance, as the time of day seems to have a big influence on your ability to achieve success, Research on Olympic athletes has uncovered that the chance of breaking an Olympic record is highest in the early afternoon, the natural peak ofthe human circadian rhythm.” Not convinced? In the NFL over the last 40 years, researchers have analyzed the impact of circadian rhythm on performance for the West Coast teams traveling to the East Coast to play night games. The sport scientists included 106 games played at 8 p.m. East- cern Time (by West Coast teams traveling east) in order to assess the impact ofan earlier circadian “home body clock” on performance. The results were staggering, During the evening games, the West Coast teams beat the point spread in 66 percent of those games!*! The experts believe it’s because West Coast teams are operating on a3-hour time difference, and their body clock istunedin toalate afternoon West Coast time, which tends to be correlated to superior performance. So what about day games? Interestingly, visiting ‘West Coast teams experienced no such advantage in daytime games played con the East Coast. These results highlight che dramatic effects late afer- noon and early evening circadian rhythms have on physical performance. Sleep expert Michele Lastella, PhD, provides more evidence of a cit cadian performance effect. He highlights some of the earliest research in athlete chronotypes, noting that morning larks have significantly higher batting averages in day versus night games.** The time of day professional dart players compete also has a significant impact on their performance, as throwing accuracy is strongly associated with time of competition. Researchers believe there is an opportunity in circadian timing, and that playing close to the circadian peak in performance might demonstrate a palpable athletic advantage over those who are playing at other times. In fact, if you compare aerobic and anaerobic fitness on a cycle ergometer between morning and afternoon training sessions, both men and women perform better in the afternoon, improving by 5.1 percent and 5.6 percent

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