It’s morning. You can hear the world already buzzing outside and yet there you lie, struggling to throw off the covers and seize the day. Coffee is the first thing you aim for – you need it like you need air! So why are you so tired?

Like millions of other people in the world, you may be wondering: why am I tired when I wake up? This issue has plagued many people for so long, and the answer is far simpler than most people realize.

The answer to most people’s constant exhaustion is their diets. However, not many of us realize that not getting enough protein, vitamins, etc., can lead to decreased energy levels. Excessive amounts of coffee throughout the day could cause sleep issues as well – so by caffeinating to wake up, you’re really just creating a vicious cycle. The answer could even be an underlying medical issue.

In this overview, we’ll cover the multiple reasons you may be feeling tired and what you can do to fix it. We’ll also discuss the effects sleep deprivation can have on your mind and body, as well as natural remedies and supplements you could use to boost your energy levels.

Why Is Sleep So Important?

Most people don’t realize why sleep is so important for their health. You may have difficulty focusing, driving, and working after not getting a good night’s rest. Studies have shown that long-term sleep deprivation could even cause issues such as memory loss, depression, heart attacks, or even strokes. We need sleep not only to survive, but also to live our lives to the fullest.

What Are The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation?

If the main question you ask yourself each day is “Why do I feel tired?”, you may recognize the physical and mental effects of near-constant fatigue. Here are just a few effects sleep deprivation could have on you:

• Mental fatigue
• Increased risk of having a heart attack
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Weakened immune system
• Memory loss

Some Of The Common Reasons You’re Not Resting Properly

There are so many reasons you might be feeling tired despite getting a healthy amount of sleep each night. Figuring out what’s wrong may be as easy as changing what you eat, or could require you to see a doctor for a diagnosis.

Here are five things that could be causing your exhaustion.

1. Poor Diet

By not consuming enough protein, vitamins, minerals, etc., your body won’t have enough resources to produce the energy you need to function properly throughout the day. Simply consuming more green vegetables and lean proteins could boost your energy levels tenfold.

2. Excessive Stress

Most of us have something in our lives that gets us stressed out to the max, but all that stress is bad for our health. Talk therapy has been found to help overly stressed individuals sleep better.

3. Inactive Lifestyle

Not exercising because you’re tired could cause you to be even more tired. To sleep better at night, try adding a small amount of exercise at a time to your daily routine.

4. Excessive Caffeine Consumption

Too much caffeine could lead to interrupted sleep in the evenings. By reducing the amount of caffeine you consume each day, you could see a change in your energy levels. 

5. Health Problems

Certain medical conditions can cause fatigue and will require a medical diagnosis before you can start receiving treatment. These conditions include iron deficiency (anemia), depression, anxiety, and heart disease, to name a few.

Are There Supplements For Energy?

So now that you know the reasons behind your constant fatigue, the next thing you may be asking yourself is how to stop feeling tired all the time. For many people, the answer is energy drinks or coffee, but as we mentioned above, excessive caffeine has been proven to worsen your sleeping problems. However, there are many supplements for energy and peptides for energy you could try to naturally increase your energy levels, such as the sleep box by Vital RX.

Are There Natural Ways To Feel Less Tired?

Now that you have an idea of why you’re constantly exhausted, you may be wondering: is there a natural way to stop waking up tired with no energy? The answer is yes! Here’s a few things you could try to boost your energy levelsnaturally.

1. Cut Out The Caffeine

Most of us start our days with a freshly brewed cup of coffee. If this were the only caffeine you consumed each day, it wouldn’t cause any issues, but most of us continue to drink coffee throughout the day. Whether we have it with lunch or just for the heck of it, an excessive amount of caffeine could lead to poor sleeping habits. Try limiting yourself to just one or two cups of coffee per day.

2. No More Naps

Napping in the middle of the day could result in less sleep in the evenings, leaving you exhausted all day long.

3. Be More Active

If you’re working a sedentary job where you sit most of the day, try taking short walks around the office a few times a day. Even this small bit of added exercise could lead to better sleep.

By altering your diet, setting sleep times, and getting more active, you could enhance your restfulness and put tired days behind you.

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Sleep is essential for our bodies and minds. We can’t operate optimally if we don’t get enough good quality sleep. During sleep, the body repairs itself; cells repair and rebuild, hormones are secreted that promote bone and muscle growth, the immune system is strengthened, and any illnesses are fought against.

Also during sleep, our brain consolidates memories and processes information; new learning occurs when the brain experiments with novel new connections (hence our often bizarre dreams!); and emotions and emotional memories are processed. The power of sleep is pretty clear – but are you aware of how your quality of sleep can influence fitness levels? Read on to learn more.

Sleep Stages

There are four stages of sleep. This includes three stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and one stage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We cycle through these stages several times each night.

• NREM stage 1: Lasts for about 5 to 10 minutes. The body relaxes and the brain, heartbeat, breathing, and eye movements all slow down.
• NREM stage 2: We spend about 20 mins in this stage every cycle. We become less aware of your surroundings, our body temperature drops, our eye movements stop, and our breathing and heart rate become more regular. The brain begins to produce bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity, which are known as sleep spindles and are thought to play a major role in memory consolidation.
• NREM stage 3: Also referred to as delta sleep or deep sleep. During this stage, muscles are completely relaxed, blood pressure drops, breathing slows, and the body starts its physical repairs. The brain consolidates memories about personal experiences, general knowledge, facts or statistics, and things we have learned during the day.
• REM: REM sleep is also known as dream sleep. During REM sleep, the body is paralyzed but the brain is active. The body is relaxed and immobilized, the breathing is fast and irregular, and the eyes move rapidly. Dreaming occurs, emotions and emotional memories are processed and stored, and information is locked into memory.

How Much Sleep Is Enough?

How much sleep we need depends on our age. It is recommended that:

• Infants below age one get 12 to 16 hours’ sleep
• 1–2-year-olds get 11 to 14 hours’ sleep
• 3–5-year-olds get 10 to 13 hours’ sleep
• 6–12-year-olds get 9 to 12 hours’ sleep
• 13–18-year-olds get 8 to 10 hours’ sleep
• People over age 18 get at least 7 hours’ sleep

How Does Sleep Affect Physical Fitness?

How your quality of sleep can influence fitness levels is an important topic to understand. So in what ways does sleep affect physical performance?

Research suggests that sleep deprivation, even for short periods of time, can have a very detrimental effect on physical and mental performance. Essentially, not getting enough quality sleep causes a reduction in the quality of physical performance by impairing cognitive or motor performance.

Further research suggests that with insufficient sleep, accuracy levels decrease. Research also shows that with enough sleep, general athletic performance increases, as do mood and alertness. Research even indicates that poor quality sleep can lead to obesity.

The Relationship Between Sleep And Exercise

Getting enough sleep means that your body and mind will be optimally repaired and rejuvenated, and ready to engage in physical exercise. Research suggests that the more you exercise (as long as it’s not too close to bedtime), the better quality of sleep you will have.

Why Does A Lack Of Sleep Affect Your Body’s Performance?

A lack of sleep affects the body’s performance because it means that the body has not had enough time to repair and rejuvenate itself. It has not had a chance to heal any injuries or general wear and tear. Also, learning has not had a chance to take place, and memories and experiences have not had a chance to be fully consolidated if sufficient sleep has not taken place.

Lifestyle Factors That Prevent Good Quality Sleep

For many people, lifestyle factors prevent them from getting enough good quality sleep. This has a negative impact on their health and fitness. Some lifestyle factors that prevent people from getting enough sleep are:

• Shift work
• Consuming caffeine late in the day
• Lack of a sleep schedule
• Not allowing yourself enough time in bed
• Overwork
• Exercise too close to bedtime
• Alcohol too close to bedtime
• Marijuana and other recreational drug use
• Eating too close to bedtime
• Drinking fluids too late in the day and needing to urinate during the night
• Sharing a bed
• Sleeping with a partner who snores
• Sleeping in a noisy or not sufficiently dark room

How To Improve Your Quality Of Sleep

You can improve your quality of sleep, and with it your fitness levels, by implementing the following guidelines:

• Have a consistent sleep schedule. Studies suggest that an irregular sleep schedule can reduce sleep quality.
• Make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, and cool. Research shows that noise and temperature have a negative effect on sleep quality.
• Don’t eat too close to bedtime. Research shows eating too close to bed spikes insulin and reduces sleep quality.
• Avoid caffeine in the second half of the day. Research shows that caffeine causes sleep disturbance.
• Avoid alcohol before bed. Studies show that alcohol reduces circulating melatonin and reduces sleep quality.
• Increase light exposure during the day. Research suggests this helps to keep your circadian rhythm healthy.
• Decrease light exposure from screens close to bedtime. Research suggests blue light from screens delays sleep onset.
• Avoid long daytime naps. Napping for extended periods during the day has been shown to reduce nighttime sleep quality.
• Unwind before bed with a bath or shower and perhaps some reading.
• Get regular exercise, but not too close to bedtime. Research suggests that regular exercise improves sleep quality and reduces the time it takes to get to sleep.

How To Improve Fitness Levels

Here are our top tips to improve your fitness levels:

• Get copious amounts of good quality sleep!
• Get plenty of cardiovascular exercise – go for runs and cycles; take the stairs where possible.
• Reduce alcohol intake.
• Stretch daily.
• Eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and other wholefoods.
• Do some weight training.
• Sauna bathe regularly.
• Implement an intermittent fasting regime.

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People often fail to recognize just how important sleep is for overall health. In today’s busy world, it can feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, and often sleep falls by the wayside for other things that are seemingly more important. However, sleep is crucial to your health and wellbeing in a variety of ways.

As well as letting the body rest, sleep repairs damage throughout the night, which is helpful for both immune health and cognitive function. Sleep also plays a role in weight management, memory, exercise performance, mood, heart health, and liver health. To put it simply: a person who doesn’t get adequate sleep is not going to stay healthy for very long.

Many people are also hyper-focused on the length of time they spend asleep, completely disregarding the quality of sleep they’re getting. But quality of sleep is far more important than quantity. So what does quality of sleep mean, exactly? And when it comes to things like liver health, what do we know about how your quality of sleep can influence liver function?

What is quality of sleep?

When we lie down for some shuteye, we cycle through various stages of sleep several times per night. These cycles include light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep. Each stage in the cycle is as important as the last and is required for the best quality of sleep to occur.

Light sleep acts as a primer for deep sleep. During this time, the muscles begin to relax, and respiration and heart rate both decrease. Body temperature begins to drop during light sleep as well. All these processes occur so that the body is ready to transition into the next cycle.

Deep sleep is the stage dedicated to restoring the body. Blood flow increases, hormones are released, and the brain gets rid of waste. All of the physiological actions that take place during this phase are designed to repair tissue and cells – a crucial process.

The final stage before cycling back into light sleep is REM (or rapid-eye-movement) sleep. During this stage, heart rate and respiration speed back up, and your body’s temperature may begin to fluctuate as the regulation that occurs in light sleep is turned off.

REM sleep is the type of sleep that dreams occur in, and because of this, the body essentially becomes paralyzed (to stop you moving around according to what you’re doing in your dreams!). REM sleep is designed to help your brain process events and restore itself.

Combined, these sleep stages last roughly 90 minutes, and each person must cycle through them three to four times per night. When the body goes through these cycles adequately and performs all its tasks to prepare the body for another day, sleep is considered “good quality”.

How does sleep affect liver function?

According to research, quality of sleep plays a large role in how well your liver functions. The liver breaks down nutrients and other substances that are in the blood so that they can be either used by the body or excreted as waste. This process is important because without a proper filtering system, toxins can build up within the body, causing health issues. This filtering is referred to as liver metabolism.

Studies have shown that a person’s liver metabolism can be severely affected by losing just six hours of shuteye. One particular study found that one night of sleep loss caused the liver to lose its ability to produce glucose (which the body needs for energy) and process insulin (which helps the body’s cells use that glucose as energy). This can lead to a higher risk of developing diabetes.

Sleep and liver health are also connected in other ways. It’s thought that if a person has difficulties with sleep, their liver health may already be compromised in some way. This is because the liver helps to regulate the circulation of melatonin, a substance designed to help maintain the sleep–wake cycle and thus encourage good-quality sleep. It’s quite common for people with liver disease to experience sleep disturbances as well.

Can lack of sleep cause liver problems?

As mentioned above, sleep and the health of the liver are closely tied together. While sleep has been shown to be affected in people with existing liver issues, the opposite can also be true. People who have poor quality sleep not only increase their risk of diabetes, as mentioned above, but also their risk of developing fatty liver disease.

This is because, much like the glucose/insulin issues, the way the liver metabolizes fat is also compromised in people who do not get enough sleep. Fat can build up within the liver and bring on fatty liver disease. Inadequate sleep can also play a role in the way that liver enzymes, which are proteins that speed up important chemical reactions, do their job. Enzymes in people who are not getting enough sleep are less able to perform, increasing the risk of liver disease significantly.

There are many reasons you should get good-quality of sleep, and liver health is just another to add to the long list to ensure that your body is working as it should. 

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Getting enough sleep in today’s fast-paced world is a challenge. We have to maintain social, professional, and family lives, take care of household duties, make food, exercise… The list goes on. Because of all these factors, many people are unable to get the quality and quantity of sleep that they need to wake up feeling rested, restored, and ready to take on another day.

What many people don’t consider when they think about their personal sleep habits is the detrimental effects that poor sleep can have on overall health. Several health issues can be tied to a lack of good-quality sleep, including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases.

Considering how serious these diseases and conditions can be, it’s important that we think more critically about our sleep. As well as the specific issues mentioned above, sleep can also affect how well your body’s general defense system functions. But how does sleep influence immunity, exactly? Read on for all you need to know about how your quality of sleep can influence immune function.

Sleep quality and immune function

It can be difficult to commit to proper sleep habits if you don’t properly understand how sleep affects your body overall, or how it contributes to keeping you as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

The reason why sleep is so important for immunity is because of the way it ties into the circadian rhythm, which is the body’s internal clock. Also known as the circadian cycle, this function regulates the body’s sleep–wake cycle – the natural cycle that prepares you for sleep and then wakes you back up again. This natural cycle is crucial in giving the body the time it needs to rest and refresh for the upcoming day.

When considering the circadian rhythm to the immune system, studies have found a symbiotic link between the two. The circadian rhythm plays a role in the processes that need to be constantly regulated for immune cells to be properly produced.

For example, the immune system relies heavily on T-cells, which are produced to fight off pathogens and ward off disease and infection. The circadian rhythm’s role to make sure that T-cells are produced and released into the bloodstream in proper amounts and at the right time so that the body can use them effectively.

Other aspects of the immune system known as cytokines are also heavily influenced by sleep. Cytokines are specific proteins released by immune cells that help with proper immune function. They also aid the body in cell signaling processes, which are important for many other systems.

When it comes to the immune system, these proteins can control the deployment of other immune cells that are needed to fight off infection when a pathogen invades the body. Essentially, they are the alarm system that goes off to alert the immune cells to respond to the threat. When someone gets proper sleep, their cytokines work as they should, and the immune system can fight another day. However, when they don’t, this aspect of immunity is compromised.

How are proper sleep and immunity linked?

Proper sleep and immunity are linked because of how sleep affects the action of immune cells and other processes that are required to alert the immune system to take action against pathogens.

T-cells, which we mentioned above, are designed to fight against pathogens that can reproduce inside the cells of the host they have infected. One particular study examined how T-cells were affected by sleep, and found that it is essential for a person to get enough good quality shut-eye in order for these cells to work. This is because of the way T-cells rely on certain molecules known as integrins.

Integrins provide adhesion that allows T-cells that come into contact with a pathogen to target, attach, and obliterate it. Without proper “stickiness”, this task becomes much harder and some pathogens can evade T-cells entirely. So what does this have to do with sleep?

When the body and brain are at rest, the adhesive capabilities of these molecules are much higher than when you’re awake. During sleep, immune cells also peak in specific areas of the body, such as in the lymph nodes. This peak is due to the hormone known as cortisol, otherwise known as the stress hormone. Levels of cortisol go up and down at various points of the day. Right before falling asleep, they are lower, and as soon as a person wakes up, levels peak to their highest of the day.

The reason why this is all tied to immunity and T-cells is because high levels of cortisol make integrins less adhesive. This means that if a person isn’t getting proper sleep and their cortisol cycle is out of tune, integrins may not be able to produce the adhesion that T-cells need to fight off pathogens. 

How many hours of sleep is good for the immune system?

Many studies have examined how much sleep each person needs for optimal health, and the agreed-upon number sits anywhere between seven to nine hours. While all people are different, this is typically the time it takes to go through the proper sleep cycles and receive all the benefits that sleep has on the immune system. However, it isn’t just quantity of sleep that’s necessary. Good quality sleep is far more important than the length of time a person spends asleep.

At the end of the day, sleep is vital to your immunity and your overall health, so getting enough good-quality shut-eye is something that everyone should prioritize.

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Sleep is an unavoidable and crucial part of life. When people think of sleep, they often think of recommended amounts as a kind of suggestion – but what they might not know is that if you want to stay healthy, it’s just as important to get proper sleep as it is to eat the right foods. In fact, sleep is right up there with breathing as a vital basic function!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 30% of adults don’t get the sleep that they need for their bodies and brains to function at their best. The type of sleep also needs to be factored in here – a person can get eight hours of sleep every night and still not have the adequate quality of sleep they need. So, even if you’re sleeping the amount you think is necessary, you could be missing out on the benefits of good-quality sleep and not even realize it.

But what is sleep quality, exactly? And what do we know about how quality of sleep can influence energy levels and general health?

What does sleep quality mean?

While sleeping may seem simple, it can actually be quite complex. During sleep, the body goes through various stages. These patterns of sleep are designed to help you get the most out of your shut-eye.

There are five particular stages through which each person cycles throughout the night:

• Stage 1: Stage 1 is light sleep and is the shortest of all the stages, only lasting up to 10 minutes or less. This stage is marked by a slowdown of the mind and body to help prime you for the rest of the sleep cycle.
• Stage 2: Stage 2 is also considered light sleep, but other areas of the body begin to decrease here to prepare you for the rest of the cycle. These areas include eye movement, brain waves, and muscle activity. Brain waves actually spike during this stage, though – it’s thought that these spikes are involved in long-term memory and sensory processing. This stage is responsible for forming memories. 
• Stages 3 and 4: The next two stages are considered deep sleep and are marked by a fully relaxed body and a decrease in breathing rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. During this time, the body works on a cellular level to release hormones designed to regulate the immune system and develop and repair tissue.
• Stage 5: Stage 5 is REM sleep. The REM phase is the dream phase, and during it, the brain and body actually act similarly to when a person is awake. It is thought that during this stage, the brain reactivates to help process and store information.

Sleep quality revolves around the stages of sleep. When a person gets through the full sleep cycle several times a night and then wakes up in light sleep, they’re likely to have experienced good-quality sleep. However, if the cycles are disrupted, or if a person wakes up without going through enough cycles or from deep or REM sleep, this can lead to inadequate sleep quality.

How does sleep affect energy levels?

Sleep and energy often go hand in hand because without adequate sleep, you’re likely to wake up tired and drained. When looking at the stages of sleep, the time where the body replenishes the energy lost throughout the day is stages three and four – the deep sleep portion of the cycle. During this deep sleep stage, the body’s ability to produce an energy molecule known as ATP is enhanced. As mentioned above, deep sleep is also the time when other areas are repaired for the following day.

When the body cycles through sleep properly, all the repair that needs to take place does so, and enough ATP is produced to help you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. When cycles are disrupted, you will experience groggy wake-ups that make it feel as though you haven’t gotten enough sleep, even if you’ve spent the entire night in a sleep state. In this case, it’s not the amount of sleep that’s the problem – it’s the poor quality, which has resulted in a lack of energy that was supposed to be produced while you slept.

Does more sleep mean more energy?

As mentioned above, the amount of sleep a person gets does not necessarily play a role in how refreshed they are, because there are sleep cycles that need to be experienced in order for energy to be there upon waking. If you sleep too little, you will not have gone through an adequate number of cycles in the night for your body to prepare for the next day.

The same issues can arise when you sleep too much. This is because sleep cycles depend highly on the internal biological clock that every person has. If you sleep for too long, that clock can be thrown off. On a cellular level, the clock is supposed to tell certain cells how to regulate energy levels, and too much sleep gives those cells misinformation that leads to tiredness.

Why am I so tired after sleeping?

Waking up tired can happen for many reasons. The phenomenon is referred to as sleep inertia and is often characterized by grogginess or drowsiness. If you’re waking up tired, it’s likely because you didn’t get good quality sleep; you didn’t cycle through the stages of sleep properly throughout the night and possibly woke up in the middle of a cycle that had not yet finished.

There are many reasons that sleep cycles may be disrupted, including:

• A disorganized sleep schedule
• Drinking too much alcohol or caffeine
• Using cell phones in bed

There are also specific disorders that are defined by disruption to the sleep cycle, such as irregular sleep–wake syndrome. Other conditions that can disrupt your body’s natural sleep stages include:

• Depression
• Cancer
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Schizophrenia
• Stroke
• Head injuries

When you don’t get good quality sleep, regardless of how many hours you spent in a sleep state, you will wake up tired, groggy, and drained of energy. Because of this, focusing on sleep quality over sleep quantity is the best way to reap all the rewards of a good night’s rest.

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A good night’s sleep involves a lot more than just sleeping for a set number of hours. Typically, it’s advised that adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. While the time you spend asleep is a great jumping off-point when you’re looking to get quality sleep, it is nowhere near the entire picture of what is means to have high sleep quality. But what is sleep quality, exactly? And how is it connected to your bodyweight? Read on to learn all you need to know about how quality of sleep can influence weight.

What is sleep quality?

To understand sleep quality, it’s important to first understand what sleep is and everything that goes on within your body when you shut your eyes at night. The process of sleep may seem simple – close your eyes, sleep, wake up! – but it’s much more than that.

Sleep revolves around the body’s circadian rhythm, which is our internal clock. The clock itself follows a 24-hour period and affects the physical and mental changes that go on during that period. Importantly, the circadian rhythm controls your sleep–wake cycle, which determines how you sleep at night and how you awake each morning. It’s tied in with consistent, restorative patterns of sleep, so if your circadian rhythm is off, so is your sleep.

While you’re in the sleep state of the sleep–wake cycle, you go through various stages, each with its own important physiological purpose. The stages are:

• Stage 1: Light Sleep. This stage lasts only five to 10 minutes and primes you to get a good night’s rest by slowing down the body and mind.
• Stage 2: Secondary Light Sleep. This stage causes more changes in the body to prepare you for the next stage. Your eye movements, muscle and brain activity begin to slow. However, brain waves can spike sporadically during this stage, which experts believe helps retain long-term memory.
• Stages 3 and 4: Deep Sleep. These occur when the body is completely relaxed. Your breath rate, blood pressure, and body temperature are all decreased during this stage so that the body can release hormones designed to repair and produce tissue as well as moderate immune function.
• Stage 5: REM Sleep. This is probably one of the most well-known stages because of how often it is talked about. It’s the time in which the body processes and stores information through the act of dreaming.

These stages all have a specific role to play in our quality of sleep, but they are also symbiotic in the sense that a person must go through all the stages three or four times per night to get a good quality sleep.

How are sleep and weight related?

It may seem as though sleep and weight couldn’t possibly be related. After all, you’re not overeating in your sleep or slacking out on that exercise session! However, the two often go hand-in-hand because of the physiological processes that occur within the body during sleep.

The connection between sleep and weight has a lot to do with whether a person gets good quality sleep every night, or whether they continue to burn the midnight oil and avoid the shut-eye their body needs to be rested for the following day.

Recent research has found that sleep can play a role in obesity as well as during weight loss journeys. When looking at this from a sleep quality standpoint, the length of sleep as well as how “good” it is are both factors in weight. 

How does bad sleep affect your metabolism?

Your metabolism is the process that turns the food you eat into energy. It also provides cells with energy they need to complete their basic functions. During sleep, the body’s metabolic rate, or the rate at which it burns calories for energy, is reduced by roughly 15%.

Some may draw the conclusion that because you’re burning fewer calories during sleep, you may be able to mitigate this by sleeping less during the night. However, the opposite can be true.

Even though you burn fewer calories during the night, if you don’t spend enough time in good quality sleep, your metabolism can actually malfunction when you are awake, leading to issues that can either drive weight gain or slow weight loss. This is because of how sleep can affect glucose as well as insulin sensitivity. When people do not get proper sleep on a regular basis, their body’s ability to use glucose stores effectively is hindered, as is their insulin response.

Does quality of sleep affect weight?

When looking at sleep in relation to weight loss programs, research has found that people who get better sleep on a regular basis are more likely to have weight loss success over those who don’t. This is likely because of the aforementioned effects that sleep has on the function of the metabolism.

What’s more is that when people are losing weight, they are often subject to muscle mass loss as well. However, if you incorporate good-quality sleep into your weight loss plan, studies have shown that you are more likely to lose more fat while preserving your muscle mass. 

To sum up: while not getting enough good-quality sleep can be harmful to various areas of your health, it can also be harmful to your waistline.

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Good-quality sleep is crucial for physical and psychological health. Getting enough quality sleep makes us healthier, improves longevity, enables us to be more psychologically robust, and reduces the likelihood that we will experience anxiety and depression.

Getting a good night’s sleep every night should be a priority for anybody who values their own health and emotional wellbeing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over a third of Americans do not get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep they need to live an optimally healthy and happy life.

There are several things you can do to improve the quality of your sleep. You can implement good sleep hygiene practices such as getting regular exercise, avoiding stimulants later in the day, and having a cool and comfortable bedroom. You may also wish to take peptides or supplements that promote healthy sleep.

Keen to learn more? Read on for our round-up of peptides and supplements that promote healthy sleep.

The Importance Of Getting Healthy Sleep

Not getting enough good-quality sleep can have a lot of negative psychological and physical health effects. Research suggests that being underslept can increase feelings of irritability and stress, and that being chronically underslept can increase the risk of developing mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Research also indicates that people who do not get enough quality sleep have an increased risk of several negative health outcomes such as diabetes, hypertension, and mortality.

What Is A Peptide?

A peptide is the same as a protein, but smaller. Peptides and proteins are substances that occur inside the bodies of animals and plants and participate in essential metabolic functions. Peptides, like proteins, are made of amino acid molecules. Generally, peptides contain between two and 50 amino acids and proteins contain 50 or more. Peptides are present in the animal and plant foods we eat.

What Are The Benefits Of Peptides?

Research suggests that peptides may have many potential benefits, including:

• Reduced inflammation
• Slowed aging of the skin
• Improved immune function
• Prevention of the formation of blood clots
• Lowering high blood pressure
• Destruction of harmful microbes
• Antioxidant properties
• Improved memory
• Improved athletic performance
• Increased muscle mass

Where Are Peptides Found?

Peptides are found in food, and can also be created synthetically in a lab. The richest plant and animal food sources of peptides include:

• Eggs
• Milk
• Corn
• Rice
• Meat
• Soybeans
• Wheat
• Fish and shellfish
• Beans and lentils
• Hemp seeds
• Oats
• Flaxseed

What Peptide Is Good For Sleep?

The peptides that appear to be good for sleep are:

• Delta Sleep Inducing peptide
• Circadian Adjustment peptide
• Bioactive milk peptides (lactium)

What Is The Most Effective Natural Sleep Aid?

Some of the most effective natural sleep aids include:

• Melatonin
• Magnesium
• Valerian root
• Chamomile

Can A Vitamin Deficiency Affect Sleep Quality?

Research suggests that people with a vitamin D deficiency have a higher chance of experiencing sleep disorders.

What Are The Best Sleep Supplements?

Here are five peptides and supplements that promote healthy sleep.

1. Delta Sleep Inducing peptide

How does Delta Sleep Inducing peptide work to improve sleep quality? Research suggests that it causes higher sleep efficiency and shorter sleep latency.

2. Melatonin

Research suggests that melatonin may promote healthy sleep in several ways, including promoting the onset of sleep, improving daytime sleepiness, and improving people’s subjective assessment of how well they slept.

3. Bioactive milk peptide (lactium)

Lactium is bioactive peptide derived from cow’s milk. The amino acids in lactium act appear to have the effect of reducing stress and cortisol levels, inducing relaxation, improving mental function, and improving sleep quality.

4. CBD oil

Research has found that taking 160 milligrams of CBD oil can increase sleep duration. This may be caused by the cortisol-lowering properties that research has shown CBD oil to have.

5. Magnesium

Magnesium is a mineral that supports healthy cognitive function and mood and helps relax muscles. Some people take magnesium to improve their sleep and report that it reduces anxiety, increases relaxation, and makes it easier to fall asleep.

What Are Good Sleep Hygiene Practices?

• Stick to a consistent sleep schedule. Try to get to bed and wake up at similar times every day.
• Have a pre-bedtime routine that helps you wind down and get ready for sleep.
• Keep your room cool and comfortable. A temperature of roughly 65 degrees Fahrenheit seems to be most conducive to good sleep. Make sure your room is dark and quiet.
• Dim electronic lights after sunset. Avoid bright screens in the hours before sleep.
• Read a book instead of looking at a screen in the final hour before sleep.
• Exercise regularly.
• Avoid caffeine in the second half of the day. The quarter life of caffeine is twelve hours. This means that if you drink a large coffee at 11am, it is the equivalent of drinking a quarter of a large cup of coffee at 11pm!
• Avoid eating in the two to three hours before bed.
• Avoid alcohol and medical marijuana in the hours before bed. Both may negatively impact sleep quality.
• Use your bed for sleep and sex only.
• Avoid napping during the day.

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Getting enough good-quality sleep is vital for the body to function as it should. During sleep, processes in the body continue to run, repairing muscles, organs, and other cells. Chemicals that help strengthen the immune system are also released into the blood. The brain gets rid of toxic waste that may have accumulated throughout the day and even stores new information. For many people, though, this all-important sleep can be elusive.

From sleep disorders that cause a person to be unable to get a good sleep, to life events that keep people up throughout the night, there are many reasons a person may find it difficult to fall asleep. Some options to help a person sleep include medications, getting on a proper schedule for one’s body, and breathing exercises. But can breathing exercises help sleep, really? And if so, how do you breathe to help you sleep? Read on to find out.

Can breathing exercises help you fall asleep?

Breathing exercises have shown to be highly effective against insomnia. This could be attributed to the fact that they act as aids in reducing the stress and anxiety that may keep people up throughout the night. Insomnia, or the inability to get adequate sleep, is caused mainly by stress. When people are stressed, their ability to relax becomes hindered because of the release of certain hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones elicit a response in the body that makes it believe it needs to be ready for action.

When the body feels as though it needs to be in fight or flight mode, it cannot get to a point of relaxation that will lull a person into sleep. Research has found that by changing breath rhythms, however, you can signal your body that it’s time to relax. This causes your heart rate to slow down. It also stimulates the vagus nerve, which travels through the body from the abdomen up to the brain stem and is responsible for the body’s rest and digest behaviours. This leads you into to a calmer state, and thus encourages sleep.

What exercises can I do to fall asleep faster?

Deep breath for sleep isn’t just a matter of taking a few breaths and waiting for yourself to slip on into dreamland. The exercises that are required to help encourage sleep are unique and deliberate in nature. The following five breathing exercises have been proven to induce sleep.

1. The 4-7-8

This breathing technique was developed by Dr. Andrew Weil, a celebrity doctor who bases his practice on alternative medicine. To perform this exercise, you will haveto sit up with your back straight and place the tip of your tongue behind the upper row of front teeth. While keeping your tongue in place throughout the entire breathing exercise, exhale through your mouth while counting to eight. It’s important to make a sound while exhaling, such as a whoosh noise. Once you have exhaled, you will have to close your mouth and take a deep inhale through your nose while counting to four.

It’s important to inhale for the full count of four. You will then hold your breath there for a count of seven. Once you have gone through these steps, you will repeat the cycle four more times. During the repetition, it’s important to keep the counts at the 4-7-8 mark for each breath for it to be truly effective.

2. Bhramari pranayama breathing

Studies have found that this breathing technique is proven to slow heart rate, which can help aid in relaxation and prepare the body for sleep. To perform this exercise, you will start by closing your eyes and breathing deeply in and out. Then, you will position your index fingers above your eyebrows. Using the rest of your fingers, you will cover both eyes.

While breathing, you will apply a gentle level of pressure to the sides of your nose while focusing on your brow area. With your mouth closed, breathe deeply and slowly through the nose and hum, or make the “Om” sound. Once you have completed one round, repeat the cycle five times.

3. Three-part breathing

Perhaps the simplest breathing technique to induce sleep is the three-part breathing exercise. All you have to do is take a long and deep inhale, then exhale all the air. While you’re exhaling, focus on your body and how it feels. Repeat the cycle three times, and then slow down your exhale and repeat.

4. Diaphragmatic breathing

This technique aims to slow down your breathing to help decrease the amount of oxygen your body needs. To perform this exercise, you will want to start out by lying on your back with your knees bent over a pillow. Put one hand flat on your stomach with the other on your chest and begin taking slow and deep breaths through your nose. Keeping your hands in place, you should be able to feel the breaths rise and fall.

Following a few breaths, begin to breathe slowly with your lips pursed. Continue to do this until you are breathing both in and out without your chest moving. This type of breathing exercise also aims to strengthen the diaphragm.

5. Alternate nasal breathing

Studies have shown that practicing alternate nasal breathing can help to reduce stress immediately following the exercise. To perform this breathing technique, you will start by sitting cross-legged with your left hand on your knee and right thumb against your nose. Then, you will fully exhale and close your right nostril using your thumb. Once the nostril is closed and you have finished exhaling, you will inhale through your open left nostril. To exhale, you will close the left nostril and open the right one. Repeat this cycle for a total of five minutes, finishing with an exhale out of your left nostril.

Not being able to get to sleep can induce stress all on its own, but utilizing one of the above breathing exercises can help you limit stress, control your breathing, and enjoy quality sleep once again.

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Sleep is a vital component of overall health. During the sleep cycle, the body goes through different stages, all of which are designed to keep internal systems functioning as they should.

There are five stages of the sleep cycle and each typically occurs within a 90-minute timeframe.

The first two stages are considered light sleep, the third and fourth are deep sleep, and the fifth is rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the part of the sleep cycle when dreams occur. If the body doesn’t cycle through the sleep stages appropriately, a person can suffer from a variety of different health issues caused by a lack of proper rest.  

Why is quality of sleep important?

When people think about sleep, they often focus on how many hours they get in a night – but how long sleep occurs is arguably less important than the quality of sleep one gets. Sleep quality is the main factor in how tired a person is upon waking. For example, getting nine hours of sleep may sound optimal, but a person will only benefit if they wake during the appropriate time during the sleep cycle.

Waking up at the end of a sleep cycle or during one of the light sleep stages is thought to have the greatest impact on wakefulness throughout the day. If a person wakes during REM sleep, they are more likely to feel groggy and tired throughout the day.

How is quality of sleep calculated?

There are four specific ways to determine the quality of sleep a person gets:

• Amount of time in bed
• Amount of time in deep sleep while in bed
• How often one moves and how intense the movements are throughout the night
• How much time a person spent awake throughout the night

For many people, sleep trackers can be used to determine these four factors. Other ways to measure quality of sleep include determining how alert you are upon waking and examining your overall health. Since sleep plays a key role in the health of the mind and body, it can be helpful to consider certain symptoms and determine if they could be attributed to a sleep disturbance. For example, a continuous lack of quality sleep can lead to medical conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Ways to improve quality of sleep

If you’re wondering how to sleep better at night naturally, the good news is that there are plenty of small steps you can take that are easy and effective. The best home remedies for good sleep include: 

Increase your exposure to light during the day

The body functions using its own clock called the circadian rhythm. It plays a vital role in many things such as brain health and hormone balances. Getting natural daylight throughout the day helps the circadian rhythm function as it should. Studies have shown that people with insomnia saw a reduction in their symptoms after being exposed to bright light during the day.

Avoid blue light exposure at night

At night, and especially before bed, exposure to blue light (such as using your phone or watching TV) can have a negative effect on how much sleep you get as well as the quality of that sleep. This is because blue light can fool the brain into thinking that it’s still daytime, thus upsetting the body’s natural circadian rhythm. This also affects the body’s release of melatonin, a sleep hormone, and thus lessens your chance of having a good night’s sleep.

Avoid caffeine and alcohol

Many people use caffeine to “wake up” in the morning. Some studies have also shown that it can have positive effects on the body, such as enhancing focus. However, if caffeine is ingested too late in the day, the nervous system becomes stimulated and the body has a harder time relaxing.

Alcohol, on the other hand, can contribute to new or worsened sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and disrupted sleep patterns.

Skip the long nap

Some studies suggest that napping can be great for overall health, but the length of the nap is the determining factor on whether it has a positive or negative effect. Daytime sleeping for longer than a quick 20-minute nap can lead to a confused internal clock, which in turn could cause you to struggle to sleep at night time.

Set a sleep schedule

Since the circadian rhythm is on its own sort of loop when it comes to sleep timing, having a consistent sleep schedule will significantly increase your chances of improving your overall quality of sleep. A sleep schedule should be designed to work for you and your lifestyle, and should adhere to the same schedule every night and every morning, even on weekends. 

Try a supplement

At-home remedies for good sleep are all well and good, but they can also benefit from supplementation. Since melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that signals your brain to sleep every night, taking a melatonin supplement can have the same effects.

Other supplements that can be taken to help improve overall sleep quality include:

• Ginkgo biloba. This herbal remedy has been found to encourage relaxation and stress reduction.
• Valerian root. Valerian root has been shown to improve sleep quality and help you fall asleep faster.
• Magnesium. Magnesium is vital chemical element that can induce feelings of relaxation, leading to an improvement in sleep quality.
• Lavender. Lavender acts as a sedative and induces feelings of calmness. It has been shown to help reduce the symptoms of insomnia.

Improving your quality of sleep can make a huge difference in your day-to-day life. Good sleep can also lower the risk of developing a weakened immune function, as well as many chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, mental illness, and obesity.

Sleep quality is one of the most important things that determines your overall health. The good news is that getting a good night’s sleep is just a few simple steps away!

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