Generally speaking, humans are living longer and preserving their youthful physical attributes better than ever. Yay us! Many of us are excelling at prioritizing exercise and focusing on good nutrition. Well done! So how are we doing on prioritizing our sleep and recovery? Hmm. That might be another story, unfortunately. Could hardworking everyday athletes be improving themselves in spite of (and not because of) their recovery habits? Recent studies seem to show that this might actually be the case. Yikes! We might train like heroes… but our recovery is getting sabotaged by super villains!
Before we go any further, let’s review why sleep is so important and how it puts the super in our super-hero, especially for all of us “active lifestyle” types.
- Growth hormone spikes during sleep to promote tissue growth, muscle repair, and cellular reproduction
- The glymphatic system activates to remove harmful proteins in the brain (we must do our part to deter Alzheimer’s and dementia!)
- Immune activity ramps up to reduce inflammation and repair cellular damage
Research has shown that modern humans under-prioritize sleep and recovery to an alarming extent and we’re pretty sure that we know why. Stress and worry often lead to alcohol or drug use to help wind us down but they actually impair our deep sleep recovery mechanics. Then caffeine is used to mask daytime tiredness and wind us back up and since lack of sleep is such a subtle and slow destroyer of our health, we just don’t really even take notice.
It feels like our society treats sleep deprivation like something to brag about. We work and stress so much that we often have to trade sleep for social or leisure time. With the irresistible lure of late night distraction from our glowing devices, our addled brains are tricked into staying awake even longer, while alerts and notifications ping and vibrate at all hours to remind us of ever-present professional and personal obligations. Today’s nonstop digital connectivity and “hustle culture” has made it such that 40% of adults are getting less than six hours of sleep per night, and an estimated 13% or less of us are actually consistently able to hit what we’d consider our healthy recovery targets.
It’s unlikely that any of this comes as a surprise. We’ve been staying awake reading articles on our anti-sleep devices about how we just can’t seem to get a good night’s sleep for long enough that it’s old news now. But these obvious snares might not be the hardest hitters in the sleep super villain army. Sleep injury might be the real underlying deterrent that makes us fall prey to all the predators described above.
Do you sleep on your side? The answer is most likely “yes.” It’s estimated that over 60% of us prefer sleeping on one side or the other. It has its benefits; easing sleep apnea and “night breathing” (aka snoring) and even helping with digestion (mostly if you sleep on your left side). Unfortunately it also has its drawbacks; compression of the shoulder and hip joint which can result in muscle cramps, strains, nerve damage and even tendon inflammation! If you sleep on your back, which is almost everyone not sleeping on their side, you do have unrestricted arm positioning but a greater likelihood of exacerbating lower back stiffness or disc issues, and respiratory problems caused by gravity’s pressure on your airway. And if you are in the tiny percentage that sleeps on your stomach, good luck to you; neutral spine alignment is virtually impossible, breathing is compromised and nerves are compressed in the neck and arms.
So it would seem that we have to choose between risking back pain and asphyxiating ourselves while sleeping on our backs, or suffering shoulder and hip pain, limb numbness and muscle strain while sleeping on our sides. These factors conspire against us as much as the lifestyle ones, but hit even harder. Pain and suffering can be a great motivator to avoid something, and it would seem that we somehow find ourselves in a place where our greatest source or recovery (sleep) is also a persistent source of harm?! How can we defeat this evil nemesis and heal like the heroes that we are?
Let’s start with the obvious stuff that we probably already know.
- Shoot for 7-9 hours of sleep regularly.
- A quiet, cool, dark sleep environment usually helps.
- Stop the screen use, caffeine, eating and alcohol early enough that it won’t prevent our deep sleep.
Now onto the the advanced sleep posture stuff to take the pain and numbness out of sleeping and defeat the “big bad guy.” This will take some trial and error, but don’t give up!
- Consider your head support.
- Back sleepers can use a contoured pillow that takes into account the curve of the neck.
- Side sleepers need a pillow of the appropriate size to fill the space between the ear and the mattress to maintain neutral alignment of the cervical spine.
- Consider your knee support.
- Back sleepers can use a small pillow under the the knees to relieve pressure on the spine and avoid excessive curvature.
- Side sleepers can use a firm pillow between the knees to reduce twisting in the pelvis and lumbar area.
- Consider your arm position.
- Back sleepers might choose small supports for the arms to stay relaxed at the sides of the body (I call them “wee pillows” because they’re tiny and I’ve got Scottish ancestry)
- Side sleepers must avoid tucking up either arm under the head! The bent elbow and wrist position compressed by the head causes nerve and circulatory problems galore. Hugging a pillow in front of the chest and keeping the arms in front of the torso is a good solution. (On a personal note, I’ve recently acquired a special “shoulder relief pillow system” to help with this and it has been a total game-changer for my recovery.)
With two absolute blockbuster Marvel movies releasing this year (Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday), our love of super-heroes would appear to be as strong as ever. So if you happen to catch up on what these heroes are up to, in addition to offering hope, empowerment and a sense of justice during our uncertain times, be sure to notice how they convalesce. Our beloved canon of caped crusaders provides a modern day pantheon of god-like characters to fulfill a similar cultural role in our society to that of the deities worshipped by our ancestors. These champions of yesteryear and today all exhibit strength, courage, and resilience; qualities we constantly seek to develop in ourselves and a big reason that we show up for ourselves several times a week to train and improve. But are these action-takers also a source of inspiration to find better inaction-taking and down regulation?
For many of us fans of myths and comics, although we love to see our heroes in their moments of triumph, our favorite part of any story is often “the comeback trail.” Whether it’s Superman recuperating in his Fortress of Solitude from exposure to Kryptonite or Odin sacrificing an eye and hanging on the World Tree to transform physical trauma into cosmic wisdom, recovery from a physical ordeal is major plot point in the hero’s journey. In fact, healing and recovery is such a prominent feature that when Marvel created The Wolverine, they made it his most powerful ability; a healing factor that regenerates damaged tissues at an extremely rapid rate!
Even if we don’t possess an X-factor mutation that accelerates healing, humans do still possess remarkable regenerative capabilities. We all have the catalyst for promoting tissue repair, cellular regeneration and metabolic regulation. We can actually voluntarily trigger massive biologically restorative processes, a lot like Wolverine, but just a bit slower. We’re more like Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, who uses a special isolation/floatation tank for his recovery. All that we have to do is get some sleep! Some deep sleep, and plenty of it.
We prioritize training like gods and heroes in the gym, and admire their methods and abilities to outwit, overcome and bounce back. So we must apply the same enthusiasm that we have for active physical improvement to glorious inactivity. We can stop ignoring the super-devious villains thwarting us every night at bedtime and reclaim the growth hormone spikes, cellular reproduction, metabolic waste clearance and immune response we expect to have at night so that we non-mutant heroes can also win the day.