The Sleep Science Coach with Dr. Charlotte Edelsten

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding. And I'm laura siddall and this is the tribathlon podcast.

You'll have a better race, you'll have a faster race, you'll have a more pleasant race all round if you just strategize those sleeps.

That was Charlotte Eddleston and this episode is the Sleep Science Coach. Hi, Sid, how are you doing?

I'm good, how are you? How's the body? Let's start with that one because you did a little bit of a long Sunday well. Or Saturday long Saturday run. Wasn't.

Was a little bit. Well, for me it was a very long Saturday run. I, I did my first. Yeah, I did 51 miles. First, first 50 plus mile run. I'd hoped to get 62 miles. That was actually 62.5. I was 100K. Was, was, was my kind of stretch goal. But the absolute minimum was I'd got to do 50 miles because I was supposed to be doing this arc 50 in Cornwall. And yeah, the legs are sore. They're not quite as bad today as they were yesterday, but yeah, yesterday I was definitely walking down the stairs backwards every opportunity. It was, yeah. So interesting. This was the first time I took ibuprofen during a run.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I don't normally like doing that because I want to know if things are hurting. I, I want to know about it because that's kind of when you can kind of avoid injury. But after 35 miles, my quads were just absolutely screaming at me.

Were you on concrete for most of it or were you training? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that's pretty hard.

Yeah, it was. And so what I was thinking when I did my 41 miles, which is my previous longest, I've been mostly on tracks and. But at the moment it's so wet and boggy and I mean, like even trying to pick a fair, pretty much solid trail round, at one stage I was wading through ice cold water up to my ankles, so.

Oh, God.

Kind of off road adventure.

Yeah, off road adventure, but lots of tarmac. So, yeah, my quads were screaming at me. So I thought, well, I know this is not, I'm not doing myself any permanent damage, but if I don't take some ibuprofen, this is going to be very painful.

I mean, I mean that it's super impressive to do that on your own. I mean, hats off. I definitely, I don't think I'd struggle to do it.

How.

Yeah, how did it. Was it all kind of like you were just on that high or did you hit those? At what points those, like, low patches hit? And what did you. What were your strategies? Because I know you listened to audiobooks and then you had some music lined up and stuff, so.

Yeah, yeah.

So I.

So in terms of logistics, what I'd done is I've created these four loops, all of which kind of came back to the house because obviously we've got this staying local rule in the uk. Not supposed to go much more than five miles from the house. So I reckon as the crow fly, I didn't leave more than about five miles from my house, but it meant that I didn't need to take potentially up to 12 hours worth of nutrition and water with me because I couldn't top up any. So that. So home was my fueling station. And that was probably one of the most difficult things because each time. Time I got home, I'm like, so first time I got home, I just done 18 miles. And then it's like, right, go to the toilet, grab your fuel, fill up your water, and you got to leave home again. It's like, oh, that's torture. Second time I. So I did a second lap. The second kind of loop was about another 15 miles. Then you go out again, and then another. You're like, oh. And I was coming in and my speed was just dropping and dropping and dropping. I think somebody handed me a fridge at about mile 35 and. And I was like, do I go out and do another? Well, at that point I thought I'd done. This comes back to my second. The second toughest thing, but I thought I was gonna have to do another 12 and a half miles. And I was like, my pace is. I was ending up walking not as much as I was running, but it was getting bad. So I was like. And I was gonna. That would mean I was gonna be finishing in the dark. It'd been snowing and raining most of the day.

Oh, my God.

And I was like, do you know what? I'll have done my 50. My legs are really, you know, I might do myself some permanent damage or at least kind of semi permanent damage. But the other thing which really has got me thinking, the other thing that was the biggest mental challenge was as I left home after my second fuel fueling stop. So I'd done about 35 miles at this point. And I paused my Garmin when I went into. Into the house. And as I about 100 meters out of the house, I realized I hadn't unpause it. So I quickly, while running, tried to unpause it. But I hit save.

Panic.

Exactly. My Strava fee of saying 50 or 60 miles is gone. And for the next sort of next half an hour I was sort of like the air was blue around me as I was kind of swearing it. And then it was kind of irritating me so much that on my walk sections I had to go on to Strava and put part one brackets still going Garmin Saber just to give me the mental kind of.

It was okay.

It was okay. People were judging me on 35 miles, but I was still in the middle of it.

Isn't it funny? I've done that so many times on like and not doing anything near that sort of challenge, but just on like a training ride and I've been doing intervals and then I've like pressed press the pause or whatever, but press stop and then save by accident rather than that restart and you're just like, oh my God. Such a stress first world problems that we have.

Isn't it interesting?

It made me just think, you know, Strava is brilliant because it gives you motivation, it gives you data and well, not you wouldn't get the data from other sources. But it also made me think that there's a negative side to it as well, isn't it? Because it was, it was really. Until I kind of updated that title, I was beating myself up about it and. But you're absolutely right.

First world problems, it's totally the same. Like you look at things like, you know, Zwift is a same and they have so many positives around it for online platform especially at the moment, like in building that community. But at the same time it draws you in to that kind of like, what are other people seeing? Or did you get that KOM or that Sprint jersey or you know, did you complete.

The.

Complete that route so that you get the extra bonus XP points so you can go up another level. Whereas actually you only were meant to do an hour session, but to finish that route that you selected, you have to do an hour and a half. But it's okay because I've just like cruised it easy. So it's fascinating. But that kind of like brings us around to like, we had some exciting news this week in the triathlon world and it's probably because there's not really much else going on. I know your ultra was the news of the week and the big on the sporting front, but we did have an announcement about a project that's going to happen in 2022, the sub 7, and it's called a Phoenix, Phoenix 8 or something. Phoenix 8 and Phoenix 7. Presumably we've got four athletes going to try and break sub 7 hours for their iron distance race. So, yeah, I don't know how much you've read up or your thoughts about it. It's created quite a stir at the moment.

Well, I would say I'd be really. I was going to ask you about this because, I mean, it sounds really interesting and fascinating, but what's the talk amongst the pros? What do you guys make of it?

I think everyone's, yeah, look, it's created a lot of excitement, but then there isn't much else going on at the moment. I think we all need something exciting to look forward to. I think there's a lot of questions around what is a record? Are records really valid, you know, particularly in our sport? So this, for those people that don't know, we've got two men, two male athletes, which is Kristin Blumenfeld, I think, and Alistair Brownlee and then two female athletes, which is Lucy Charles Barkley and Nicholas Spirit. And they. So the men are attempting to break seven hours for the iron distance event and the women are attempting to break eight hours. But the catch is they're pretty much, they're pretty much throwing the rule book out the window. So they're going to, they've got scientists on board, they're going to collect, they're going to select the terrain or the right course. It will probably be a lapped course, but is it going to, you know, one that's fast for them, giving the best chance to do the times they can? They're probably going to have like thicker, more buoyant wetsuits. At the moment, a lot of the details are still being finalized, but it's talking about they can have, each athlete can have up to five paces per discipline. So let's take Lucy, for example. She effectively could have four or five people pacing her in the swim and then a four or five different people pacing her on the bike and then four or five different people pacing her on the run.

And that's also drafting on the bike as well, isn't it?

It is, yes. So that's likely to be a pace line. Not all five athletes have to do the full distance. And this is where, if it's a lapped course, you could, like, how do you utilize that team to get the most out of it? Do you bring people in for a couple of laps of time? And how many people do you want in that pace? Like, I mean, let's say 180Ks and a baseline going at 40 plus Ks an hour is still flipping hard work kind of thing. Um, I think the exciting thing for me potentially around this is that, yeah, it's. It's not. For me, it's not going to be an iron. An iron. An iron distance world record. And that's a whole nother story because whether they're real or not, because they're done on different courses and other courses standardized. No. And all of that. But I think more if you look at it in the light of like the sub2 Marathon project, it's what is the body humanly capable for? And if we put science at it and we put it on imperfect, ideal conditions, what can we actually achieve? The other thing for me is like, it's kind of publicity and if it gives our sport more visibility and more publicity to the outside world. For instance. So I think they've said at the moment the pacers have to be the same gender. So Nicola and Lucy have to have female pacers. The men have male pacers. But it doesn't have to be triathletes. So, you know, are you going to pick the best swimmers in the world to pace? I mean, Lucy is going to need the best swimmers in the world to pace her because there's not going to be any triathlete swimmers. Maybe Jess Learmouth. But do you get, you know, so you're bringing in a swimming, Swimming aspect. And then on the bike, do you get cyclists to pace you? And then on the run, is it pure runners to pace you? And that gives another element of, yeah, getting triathlon out to the world and getting different audiences. I do think it'll be kind of pretty hyped and pretty well watched. They're talking about selling packages to go and watch the event, you know, because it's going to be. If they do do our lapped course. So, I mean, I haven't talked to many other pros in terms of that. I think there's probably this underlining that, yeah, it's exciting, it'll be interesting to watch, but it's kind of not really. Well, it is real, but it's not a real record as such because we're throwing the rules out the window. But then rules are arbitrary rules that we've put in place for triathlon anyway.

It is.

It does feel like they've gone. They've gone further than Kipchoge did with the sub 2 hour in that obviously there was certain things like the paces and, and, and the shoes and that sort of stuff, but ultimately it didn't feel like a massive stretch but then he'd only got a gain like yeah a minute or two wouldn't he? Whereas to take 35 minutes off they're having to throw a lot more rules out the window aren't they?

Yeah I mean I do think the biggest gain for everyone is on the bike like I think that's where you can take the biggest amount of time off But I mean if you look at it so, so the women's if that if you talk about what the time they have to take off current world records for the iron distance so the women is 8:18 so to go sub 8 it's effectively they're taking 20 minutes but Lucy's fastest I think is 8:30 something so she's got to take sort of half an hour or so off Nicola has, I think she has done a full distance but a few years ago and I'm not sure what time Alistair's done around 7:47:45 I think so he's got a 45 minutes to take off Christian's never done a full distance Bearing in mind the boys will both be focused and Nicola will be both focused on Tokyo at the end of the year we're talking about this happening at the early ish 2022 I think the women have a better chance at breaking 8 than the men have at breaking breaking 7 I think I like roughly broke it down I think for the women it's sort of around a 40 minute swim a 4:30 on the bike which is 40ks an hour and then a 250 run which I don't think I think is achievable for both of those women with the right support, with the right circumstances if you look at the men I mean I kind of said like again a 40 minute swim because I think the swim is relatively the same across the two but you're looking at a sub 350 bike and then a sub a 2:30 run that seems tough yeah that seems super tough but hey you know they've picked athletes who have that air of confidence that they can do this or at least give it a crack and I think they've got to have. You've got to pick athletes that have that kind of belief that it can be achievable and yeah I think it's going to be interesting and exciting to watch and see how it plays out.

But it is interesting from a psychological point of view isn't it? Because I mean obviously it's such a shame that we haven't been able to see a year of racing this year because having now seen a sub 2 with optimal conditions, if we'd had a full year of proper racing, would we have seen a sub 2 competitive world record? And likewise, when Roger Bannister got the four minute mile record that had been talked about for years and years and years that it was impossible for the human body to do it and then within a year of him breaking that record, several other people had done it and now it's just like the norm amongst, you know, good quality runners. So it's just setting that bar at another level altogether and then kind of seeing the spin off from that.

It is, yeah. But I do think if you put it into what we would class as normal triathlon rules and regulations, we're quite a long way off getting to those sub seven and sub eights. But if you take that away and you give those athletes the optimal conditions, the support they need, the best scientists in the world and everything like that, I think that they'll get pretty close, if not break it.

The one bit that kind of I questioned, I suppose when I read it was the wetsuit piece, you know, how much, you know how like I get, you know, drafting, I suppose drafting is the same, isn't it? You're using somebody else to help you. I suppose that's the bit that's kind of difficult to get your head around is, you know, how much help is all of that?

Yeah, well, drafting in the bike, I think, I mean it still will be hard like you look if you look at challenge Daytona and you know, the athletes after riding 60, 70K in aero position on a flat fast course, half of them couldn't run afterwards kind of thing. So if you think about that, but it's 180k regardless of whether you're sitting on someone's wheel or not, you're still having to go 40ks an hour. But drafting does have a bigger effect on the bike. You know, it'd be interesting to see how they play in the water. I think Alistair's sort of spoken about probably only wanting maybe two or three paces in the water, you know, someone in front of him to sit on toes, maybe someone just slightly off to the side to do a little bit of protection from any water coming or currents coming from the side. But then you don't want too many other people because it's. It almost slows you down or you've got just restricted. I mean the wetsuit one is interesting, I guess. Yes, that buoyancy added benefit, but also the swim Is as is with a race, it's getting through it as efficiently as possible and almost conserving as much, going as fast as you can, but conserving that energy. So if that's what a thicker wetsuit would do to help, as well as the speed and the buoyancy, um, and then another. And then you look at the bike and as we said, the drafting effect, but not only that in theory, then they get off the bike with fresher legs to run. And, you know, if you created a. Again, you know, we saw it a little bit in the. The sub two and maybe a little bit at the hoke, but if you create maybe like it's an arrow shape or something with your pacers so that you are completely protected and being protected from any wind, if there is, or things like that. And it will have a. I don't know the exact percentages, but that's why they've got the scientists involved to work out what those advantages are. And the other interesting element will be, well, it will still be a race between the two teams, like between the two male athletes and the two female athletes, because, yes, they're both wanting to break the sub 8 and sub 7, but if one breaks it more by more than the other, they've won sort of thing. And, you know, for the women, you know, Lucy's going to be out the water first and Nicola's. It won't be as quick, but then, you know, the excitement's also going to be, is Nicola going to be able to close Lucy down on the bike and the run and who's going to get to that line first? And with a 7, 50 or 7 number at the front of the time.

Well, I think that as long as the race happens properly, that's going to be brilliant, isn't it? Seeing the two compete against each other. The downside is going to be, of course, if somebody gets a puncture or somebody, you know, like Ali Daytona pulls up injured, well, that race is over, isn't it?

Exactly. And when you think about it, and you think, you know, technically it's sort of 15 people in that team. If you look at athletes and their support, let alone the science, the team, the sponsors and the bigger, you know, you're talking huge number of people involved and over seven, eight hours, a lot can still go wrong, you know, yes, you can get a puncture and I'm sure they'll have mechanical probably. They'll probably have, you know, mechanics on bikes trailing them as well, so they can do a very quick swap. But you Know what if you just get that slight bit of nutrition wrong or you get cramps or. Yeah, Ali is sort of on that verge of susceptibility with calf injuries and things like that, you know. But that's also kind of the beauty of what we do in our sport and the endurance event and that element of human, you know, you're almost taking out. You're putting so much science into this. There's still got to be that human aspect in there and whether the cards fall the right way on the day.

But it's certainly going to be interesting. Another thing that I'm interested to hear about is the other big news is that you've been traveling, you've been through. You've been on a plane.

I know, I went on a plane. That was quite a bizarre experience, I tell me. So, yeah, I'm now in. I made it to the States. They did let me in. I did have to get so the US passport. So there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of more checks than obviously in previous trips, which you'd expect. And I was kind of very happy and grateful for that. They were checking pcr, you know, COVID test results and stuff like that. I got to the border control at America and they did take me off to a separate room after the gate, which I would like to say was like this scary military American, serious border control interrogation. And I'm sure give me a few days, the story will have been embellished into this really hardcore. I survived this, but no, it was actually. They just did some further checks, I think, on passports and paperwork and some questions and then. And then got in. Yeah, it was weird. Like, Barcelona airport was absolutely empty, almost like eerily so just not a soul there. And then the rest of the airports were. Had people, albeit obviously a lot less than normal. I did make the mistake of at Madrid. So I flew Barcelona to Madrid to start with. And at Madrid airport, we had to go through a passport control. And she sort of, you know, the lady said, oh, you know, what passport? And I flashed my passport European. She pointed me off to the automatic passport scanner. And I put my passport in the scanner and got this big like, you're not allowed to enter. Your passport isn't valid. And I was like, okay, that's a bit weird. But, you know, often happens go back and see the officer at the desk. So I walk back and the woman's sort of looking at me, bearing in mind there's no one else here, so it's only the two of us. And then she looks at my passport, she goes, oh, yes, you just tried to go down the European passport aisle. You're not European anymore, you're British. And that was like. It was like a dagger in the heart. I was like, just something that you have. I've taken for granted, like traveling, that you, you just follow the European line. And I mean that again, no one there, but. And then it was like, oh, yeah, I'm in that other passport queue now. Like, I can't go down the.

She's been waiting 31 days for the opportunity to say that.

Somebody know. I'm like, oh, but, yeah, I mean, other than that, it's, it's. Yeah, it's definitely weird. It is weird. But then, you know, it should be. I feel grateful that I've had the opportunity to, to travel and to be out here and be able to train with my coach and hopefully race in a, in a. In a few months time. Um, but I'm definitely very aware of everything going on in the UK and around the world and perceptions of, of everything. But yeah, it was, it was kind of nice to travel again, obviously, but it was also very weird and bizarre as well. It was kind of wasn't. There wasn't as such that I love traveling and that's what I've done and I get excited about travel and I did, but we didn't quite have that buzz that it used to kind of have, just with everything going on.

Well, I think, you know, you're. It's brilliant that you've been able to get over there, get your training camp started, which I think starts tomorrow, doesn't it? And then you've got. And then you've got races to look forward to there as well. So it's just great that there is some sort of normality going on somewhere and hopefully that will. Will be translated across the rest of the world soon. So. Fantastic. So we're now going to dive into the interview with Charlotte Edelston on Sleep. This podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfood. Now, I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass for many years and. But I only in the last year or so switched to having fresh wheatgrass that's then frozen as opposed to the powdered stuff. And I found that to improve my health even more. Now I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass because I know it's kept me fit and healthy because when I've had spells where I've stopped taking it, I've started picking up the bugs and colds and things like that again, which I never seem to get when I'm taking wheatgrass. I know it improves my immune system, my health, but also it gives me more energy and faster recovery. So loads of health benefits of taking wheatgrass. But Brits is field grown, organic, freshly frozen and they also do a load of amazing juices as well so that you can combine the two like the beetroot ones, so you can have your nitrates before or after an event. You can find out more@britsuperfoods.co.uk but at the end of this podcast I'm going to give you a discount code or a referral code that will give you loads of benefits. So a discount, some free products, some free shipping, but they also have, which is worth just mentioning here, 110% 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not feeling better having taken this for 30 days, they'll give you your money back and an extra 10% which is, which is absolutely bonkers. But that's how confident they are on the health benefits that you will see as a result of taking wheatgrass just for 30 days. So anyway, hang on to the end of this podcast and I'll give you a great discount code. In addition to being the sleep science coach working at Geneva University studying impact of altitude on sleep and the effect it has on cognition and performance, Charlotte Edelston is also a keen ultra runner living in Chamonix, Mont Blanc. Not that I'm jealous. So this sort of triumvirate of sleep expertise and the studies she's done on ultra runners as well as being an ultra runner, gives her a wealth of experience and was an amazing person to try and help us understand how we can improve our sleep and how we can use sleep to improve our performance, particularly, you know, in some of these multi day races. So I know you're going to take a lot from this conversation and interview with Charlotte Eddleston. So Charlotte, welcome to the Triadathlon podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to understanding more of about sleep. It's something that I've grown to love more and more, but particularly I think in line with the more I train, the more I love sleep. So I'm really looking forward to understanding how we can improve the quality of our sleep and how we can use sleep to improve the rest of our lives. So thank you for joining us. Why don't we kick things off? Why don't you tell people a bit about your background from a professional point of view, but also what you enjoy from a personal fitness point of view, because I know that's going to tie in really nicely with what we're going to talk about today.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's always lovely to talk to people who are interested in sleep and it seems like it's becoming an ever growing kind of popular topic and people are starting to really realize the importance of sleep. And it's not just kind of a passive process that we undergo every single day. It's really a process of active recovery that's really important and probably one of the most important neurobiological processes that we go through in a 24 hour period. So my background is that I am a human movement scientist and a sleep scientist. I've been working in sleep for the past 15 years. Now. I'm from the UK obviously, but now I'm based in Chamonix in France and I work in Geneva and I work in the UK with several different hospitals and universities. So for the past nine years I've worked in a sleep laboratory. I've worked on various research projects. So I work as my hat, my kind of hat, I wear two hats really. One as a clinician in a sleep laboratory, really working with people who have sleep disorders. So people who have serious sleep disorders that is impacting their ability to sleep at night and be awake and alert in the day. We think of sleep disorders as sleep as a problem of sleep, a problem of kind of getting to sleep. But actually we often think of sleep disorders as problems of wakefulness as well as anything that impairs our ability to stay awake is a sleep disorder. So I would work with people like that. And my other hat is that I'm a researcher. So I've spent the past 15 years in research looking at how a lack of sleep or how disturbed sleep or how compromised sleep will impact our movement, our physical performance, our cognitive performance, and how that really how disturbed sleep for many different, various different reasons will impact our day to day functioning. And more recently probably in the last six years, because of my personal interests, which I'll go into in a minute, and where I'm based really in Chamonix, I've started working with ultra endurance athletes. Athletes, generally athletes, but really ultra endurance athletes. So I'm working with people who are ultra endurance runners, you know, runners, triathletes, all sorts of people who are. So firstly I work with them in a research perspective. So I look at, for example, during the ultra trail to Mont Blanc, which I'm sure many of your listeners will have heard of we look at how does the sleep deprivation during an event impact cognitive and physical performance during the actual event. I also work with athletes looking at how can we plan for an upcoming big event, multi day event, or an event where they know they're going to get a couple of nights out of bed, they're going to be sleep deprived for a couple of nights, how can we plan for that pre event? How can we periodise and strategize sleep during an event and what does recovery look like? So that's kind of a bit of a perspective on what I do and personally why am I interested? Well, living in Chamonix, it's hard not to become an ultra endurance runner. So I have, I'm by no means excelling at this, but I am an ultra runner so I like to do lots of ultra distance marathons. So I've done the CCC and I suppose lots of races between about 80 kilometers is kind of the distance that I quite enjoy doing, but all in the mountains. So I've kind of got this personal experience of sleep deprivation which really fascinates me because I really have experienced these, what it feels like to be the sleep deprived. I've got this kind of personal experience of it and I love running as well. So I know the draw into these events and I know why people want to do it. Why do we want to make ourselves suffer like we do? I know I can fully empathize with that and I can fully empathize with the hallucinations and lack of sleep and how does that impact our bodies for these races? So yeah, I've got a bit of a ulterior motive in researching all of this as well.

Fantastic. So before we get into the actual kind of technicalities of sleep, which has been your favorite race so far, what's been your highlight of your own personal ultra endurance?

I have to say probably, I mean I've done so many races now, but I have to say probably the CCC which is the one of the ultra Trail Mont Blanc races, which is Courmoille, Champeck, Chamonix and that's for those who don't know, it's about 101km with six and a half thousand meters of positive elevation and probably that one because the first time I tried it I wasn't prepared enough and had to drop out 80km into it and so it was my nemesis and then I went back and smashed it and the year later. So that was just satisfying. That was very satisfying moment. So probably that one. But yeah, lots of beautiful. I Think the beauty of the lovely thing about doing races like that is they're just so beautiful and it's just a lovely way to see the area. And I have to say, more and more I'm enjoying the races that are less and less popular. You know, when I started, I started doing all the really big races and now, you know, trail running is fantastic and it's so accessible to people, but it's so popular now that a lot of these races are becoming very busy. And you know, often it takes away the pleasure for me because, you know, being in a train of people trudging up a hill takes away bit of the pleasure. I kind of quite enjoy the solitude and the isolation of being up in the mountains. So I'm starting to look for the quieter, lesser known races now.

Fantastic. Well, I've only ever been to your part of the world when at this.

Time of year when it's more about skiing than running.

But I would, I've got to get.

There at some point to see it because it's. Yeah, it looks absolutely beautiful. So I'm envious of those races.

So let's dive into sleep then.

I suppose what I'd like to start on, to coin a phrase used by somebody else, is why do we sleep? Why is sleep so important?

Well, why do we sleep? The absolute honest answer is we don't know. I'm being brutally honest here. You ask any good sleep scientists, they'll say, well, we don't really know why we sleep. We know the mechanisms that make us sleep. We know what makes us sleep inside our body. We know what happens when we sleep. We know the kind of physical repair, the important, the cognitive restoration, the physical repair, the tissue repair. We know what happens when we sleep and we know what makes us sleep. But actually, truthfully, you know, why do we sleep? Well, we get really sleepy, you know, we don't really know. And then that is absolutely the truth of it. You know, if you or I were to not sleep for eight, nine, ten days, we would die, we would do an autopsy and there would be no cause of death. We wouldn't. We, you know, we wouldn't know. We don't know why we do it, but we know what makes us sleep and we know what happens when we sleep. But why? Who knows? So what? I mean, I can go into what makes us sleep, but. Yeah, so. So what?

Well, I mean, it is quite fascinating, isn't it?

Because I think I read somewhere that.

If sleep isn't important, it's nature's greatest mistake. Because pretty Much every species on the planet sleeps in one form or another.

I mean, if you, if you talk, if you look at, from an evolutionary anthropology anthropological stance, you know, sleep is absurd. You know, it's, you know. Well, it's either absurd or the, or the best thing that was ever developed. Because if you think about it, we were, we're open to predation. I mean, on one hand it was to keep us safe. You know, we were safe in a cave away from predation, but we weren't procreating, we weren't socializing, we weren't eating, we weren't hunting, we weren't doing anything productive. So, you know, if it didn't confer some essential benefits, then it would be the most idiotic thing we'd ever developed to do because we weren't doing anything really seemingly productive. But yeah, I mean even, yeah, we, it's incredibly important, but fundamentally we don't know why we do it. But it's. From an evolutionary perspective we know that it's incredibly important. And I think over the last hundred and twenty five years we absolutely have destroyed the kind of the past 50,000 years of perfect bio timekeeping of perfect kind of sleep structure, you know, and I think with the kind of. The evolutionary anthropologists will say on the invention of the light bulb, when we electrified society, that's when really we systematically destroyed our sleep.

I think maybe Steve Jobs has gone, taken that another step further, but we'll maybe come back to that later on.

Yeah, absolutely.

So why is it, so why is it so important that we get good levels of sleep? And you can answer that both from a general point of view, but also from an athlete's perspective. Why is getting the right, getting enough sleep so important?

Well, I think there's a lot of information and I think there's a lot of miss but not perhaps misinformation. But we are commonly told that we need eight hours sleep and the National Sleep foundation will say that we need eight hours sleep for good cognitive function. And that's absolutely true. But like all these things, sleep is incredibly individual. I think what we do know is that if you're systematically getting seven hours or less sleep per night, you will have a cognitive impairment that we can objectively measure. So we know that really less than seven hours consistently is really, really important. And why is that? So I have a lot of people that will come to me and say I only get four hours sleep a night. But that's okay because it's really good quality. And unfortunately it doesn't work like that. As we can go into later or we can go into now. We know that we sleep in cycles, in sleep cycles, and there's lots of different stages of our sleep. Each cycle has five different stages within that cycle. And all of them are equally as important to see each other. But some are perhaps a little bit better, like our REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep, which is typically at the end of our cycle, is perhaps more, more important, if you like, for good cognition, for feeling a little bit more refreshed when we wake up in the morning. You know that REM sleep is really good for when we feel refreshed in the morning. And if you only have four hours sleep a night, if you have a short amount of sleep per night, you're not allowing your body and your brain to pass through those cycles as it needs to and to pass through the right amount of sleep cycles. And why is it important that we pass through the right amount of amount of sleep cycles, that is, we want four to five cycles per night, is because the amount of time we spend in each stage of our sleep cycle changes proportionately throughout the night. So what we know is during our first sleep cycle, when we go to sleep, our REM sleep and our deep sleep at the end of the cycle will probably only be, let's say, 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes, for example. It's different for everyone, 20, 30 minutes of the 90 to 120 minute sleep cycle by the end of the night. That REM sleep and the deep sleep, the stage four sleep, will make up most of our sleep cycle. So we get a lot more cognitive restoration, we get a lot more of our kind of cerebral flushing mechanism that is really important and we'll come back to that later. But we get a lot more of that really important sleep at the end of the night. So that's why quantity is just as important as quality.

So this is the 90 minute cycle, or is it a 90 minute cycle of sleep, or does that vary?

It absolutely varies. As you say, it's different for everyone. You cannot say that everyone has a 90 minute cycle. It's a very rough guideline. We say 90 to 120 minutes. If you want to know how long your sleep cycle is, the only way to do it is to have a polysomnography or an eeg. None of us are going to go and do that unless we have cause to do that. But we say roughly 90 to 120 minutes is a typical sleep cycle. It can be longer, it can be shorter.

So just taking advices out there and saying, well, you need x number of 90 minute cycles, therefore you're going to have like seven and a half hours is the optimal amount of sleep. That's not going to work.

You know, it's one way of looking at it. No, it's not typically what we would do in our sleep clinic, in our sleep laboratory. It's not how we'd approach it, but it's one way of approaching, approaching it. And you know, if you, if you, if you're really looking for a way to kind of measure how many sleep cycles you're getting yet, you know, yes, you can, you can use that as an arbitrary number. But we would measure sleep cycles in a slightly different way and we would advise end sleep in a different way. But yeah, absolutely, you know, absolutely you can. If you look, I think what you're kind of alluding to is a lot, I've seen a lot people will say work back. If you want to work at, wake up at 7 or 8 o' clock in the morning, work back 90, you know, five sleep cycles from then and go to bed at that point, which is one way of doing it. But you know, be aware that a sleep cycle is probably, your sleep cycle is probably not 90 minutes. But.

Okay, okay, so how would you.

Actually, I'm going to come back to that. So just why in particular for athletes is getting the right amount of sleep? I mean, obviously for everyone it's important. But with athletes and their training and their best performance in mind, why is getting the right amount of sleep so important for them?

I mean, I think sleep has such a profound effect on physical performance. You know, we know there are up to, you know, we know there's over. I don't even want to pick a number, but you know, the last count I saw, a great review recently said there's over 750 scientific peer reviewed papers that conclude that if you're getting less than eight, eight hours a night, and really we're talking, I mean eight hours is that kind of rough kind of gold number. But we know in athletes six hours or less, then your time to physical exhaustion drops by 30%, aerobic output is significantly reduced. You've got marked impairments in cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory capabilities, including faster rates of lactic acid buildup, reductions in blood oxygen saturation, which is critical if you're racing at altitude and converse, increase in blood, increase in blood CO2 due to the reduction in the amount of air that you know, the lungs can expire. But critically, you know, the Abolone, one of the big, the key Things in racing actually the key things for athletes to think about is sleep loss or disturbed sleep or impacted sleep severely disrupts the ability of the body to cool itself during physical exertion. So it really impacts thermoregulation which is really important when, you know, when racing or when performing at a high level. We know that thermoregulatory issues really can impact athletes quite markedly. But for athletes, and again aside of all that, we have all the kind of physical repair, the cognitive repair, the physical, the tissue repair from that intense kind of training that athletes are doing. And there's a lot of, I think it's the cognitive aspect or the kind of, the mental aspect. Recuperation is as almost as equally as important as the physical restoration that they get from good sleep.

Fantastic.

So it sounds like it's really important.

It's really important. But it's really important for all of us. But yeah, specifically for athletes it's also about planning sleep around training. I mean more and more we have people train at late at night which impacts sleep hugely. Very early in the morning. You know, people who are training for multi day events, people who are training for huge, you know, huge events. You know, a row in the Atlantic, an enduro, Ironman, an ultra trail, the Mont Blanc, you know, these big events, people start to train very early in the morning. They want to maybe practice running at night or practice competing at night and all of that is impacting their sleep. You know, it's impacting and you know, I think typically just the way daily life is now. I know that I have so many people who say, well the only time I have to Exercise is at 8 o' clock at night or at 9 o' clock at night. And that then goes on to disrupt that night's sleep quite markedly. You know, we know that the body, when we're going to sleep, the body's desperately trying to cool down, reduce our heart rate, reduce our blood pressure, you know, reduce kind of muscle tension. The body's desperately trying to prepare you for a good night's sleep sleep. But by going to exercise, by going to do a really hard training session at 8 o' clock at night, we're increasing our blood pressure, we're increasing our heart rate, we're increasing our core temperature, we're kind of, we're not helping our body very much get a good night's sleep. But I know daily life dictates that some people can only train at those times and some people want to train at those times I think to prepare.

Interesting, isn't it? Because Fitbit did some research on. They said that there's really two times a day that people train 6am or 6pm that's kind of the big spikes. But the people that train at 6am regularly train twice as often as the people that train at 6pm so it seems to me that if you're going to get the most out of your training, training first thing in the morning is actually a better way of doing it than training in the evening.

But it sounds like you're also.

Would you suggest that that's the best thing to do from a sleep point of view, Train first thing in the morning and don't train in the evening instead?

Well, yes and no. Yeah. I mean, globally, yes. As in, you know, when we wake up in the morning, that's when we have, or we are meant to have, you know, our biggest peak of cortisol, which is our stress hormone. You know, that's when we have a big increase of cortisol in the daytime. It gets us out of bed in the morning, it gets it up, it gets us ready for the day. We've got to make big surge of energy, adrenaline and stress ready to prepare us for the day. And that's. So it's a good use of that kind of cortisol. Let's get up and go and exercise. It's often when we're most motivated. But what we are now seeing is that a lot of people are starting to. And a lot of athletes are starting to plan training and naps and rest and recovery all around their chronotype. So your chronotype is your genetic propensity to sleep. You know, we've all got a master biological clock ticking away inside of us, which, you know, like our circadian rhythm, if you like. But unlike normal clocks, our internal clocks don't always keep to the same time. So, you know, it is really. It's a thing, you know, being a morning. What is it, a morning lark or a night owl? It's, you know, some people are morning people, some people are night people. And there's lots of different genetic phenotypes or genetic chronotypes. There's lots of different genetic propensities to sleep. And so athletes and the general public are now really starting to use that, to use that to your advantage and train at the most appropriate time for you. Train when you're feeling at your most active or your most alert. There are several different genetic propensities to sleep and people are starting to use that. And you can have that at assessed if you really Want to get into it, you can go and have that looked at and people are starting to use that, their advantage. So it's. So yes and no is the answer. But typically training in the morning is always going to be better. Training at lunchtime, training in the evening and training at lunchtime is also a fantastic time. You know, just before we get that kind of postprandial dip, just to wake yourself up a little bit, go and train.

Because I think Dan Pink in his.

Book when talks a lot about this, which is, which is a great book for people that want to understand about.

The, the, the larks and the, and.

The owls and the third birds, as he calls them in between. And I think he said that whilst if you want to exercise, you know, if you want to do you complete your training program, do every, every set in it, first thing in the morning is going to be better than 6pm because by 6pm some got in the way or you're feeling tired or you've had a bad day, whereas at 6am nothing's got in the way. But interestingly in the afternoon you would more likely get your better results. So you would often run faster in the afternoon than you would in the.

Morning, but you might not get out.

So it's a really interesting book actually.

Yeah. And there's quite a few good books about it which I can certainly recommend kind of later on. There's quite a few good books looking into it and there's some good solid science around it. So it's, it's interesting stuff. But it's. Yeah. I mean it doesn't often it doesn't. And the other thing to remember is that, you know, we in a very, I mean there's lots of different kind of genetic propensities to sleep and lots of different chronotypes, but globally we would, we would think about four of them. We would think about your morning owl. Morning lark, sorry, we talk about a bear, which is the other one, which is just being solar driven. It's someone who's neither a morning lark or a night owl. It's just someone who's pretty normal and that's what the majority of the population are. Let's face it, most people aren't a super early morning person or a night, you know, people who are true night owls. It's very, very rare. You find someone who's a true, true night owl. And then the last one we have someone I kind of colleague referred to them as dolphins is our final one and that's very, very rare. And a dolphin who I'm sure if, you know, sleep only sleeps with half of their brain. They're always sleeping with one eye open, so they never go to sleep. So those are people with real sleep disorders. So you know, you're in your true insomniacs, your kind of sleep disorder. So we would categorize them in the kind of four, four different areas. But actually when we really look at it, most people, and there's lots of different questionnaires you can do if you wanted to, interested in looking into your own genetic, your own chronotype and what do you, what category did you move to more fall into? There's lots of questionnaires but actually most people fall and fall into that bear, that very solar driven. You know, we wake up in the morning and we, you know, we're alert in the morning and we're sleepy at night. There's not, there's not really many people who fall into the very, the extreme, the three other extreme categories really.

Okay, okay, brilliant. So how would somebody work out if.

It'S not as straightforward as that 90 minute approach that I talked about?

How do you work out what your.

Optimum amount of sleep is and when to go to bed and when to set the alarm?

You know, it's about being a scientist of yourself, like all these things. It's about working it out. If it's about, you know, it's so important to strip this back and be really sensible about it. And it sounds like, you know, I'm not teaching anyone to suck eggs, but it's, you know, if you're, the minute you're sleepy in the evening, you know, go to listen to your body. There are so many people who say to me, oh my God, I'm just exhausted and I go to bed at midnight and I'm like, in midnight, you know, what does that mean? Midnight should be the middle of the night. You know, so many of us go to bed far too late and we're having to wake up too early. You know, going to bed when you, you're tired and sleepy, how do you feel? Be a bit subjective about this. How do you feel in the morning when you wake up? You know, do you feel, I mean, okay, we all feel a little bit groggy when we wake up in the morning, but are you exhausted when you wake up? Are you exhausted throughout the day? If that's the case, then you're not getting enough sleep. You know, add a little bit more sleep to your time. Try and go to bed a little bit earlier. You know, it's about you know, what you can also doing is keeping a sleep diary is really important. I always, always before I see any patient, I ask them to fill in at least two weeks of a sleep diary before they come to see me. Think about your sleep efficiency. That's another critical thing you can work out for yourselves is think about how much time you're spending in bed. So what I have a. What we consistently see is I have lots of people coming in who will actually, if you think about it like this, what do we do when we're exhausted? When people are exhausted, chronically tired, really tired of time, what the first thing people do is get into bed, probably go to bed and spend far too much time in bed, probably not asleep, because a lot of people get into bed too early, they'll be looking at their iPhone, their laptop, their iPad, they'll be doing all sorts of things in bed that are not related to sleep. And probably for an hour and a half, an hour, a good hour, hour and a half. Most people, before they go to sleep and then they'll wake up in the morning and do the same thing. So what were you. I'm really interested. Increasing sleep efficiency. Get into bed and go to sleep. So the time you spend in bed is. The time is time spent asleep. It's something to really think about and try and treat it a little bit subjectively. Fill in a sleep diary, think about how tired you are, go to bed when you're sleepy, go wake up. Are you refreshed in the morning? How do you feel? That's the best indicator. I have so many people that come in with all sorts of, of Fitbit data and Garmin data and sleep data, and I just, you know, and it's fantastic and it's a great starting place and it's a great baseline for change. It's a great way to look at change. But if that sleep data is a source of anxiety to you, if you're looking at it every day and thinking, well, it tells me I've only got 30 minutes of deep sleep and you're worrying about that, then actually what a much more powerful indicator of, of if you're sleeping well is how do you feel? If the watch has told you you've only had 10 minutes of deep sleep, but actually you feel fine, that's a much more robust measure of how you're sleeping. You know, your quality and quantity of sleep. So it's important to be a bit kind of subjective with it, not just use objective data all the time.

And while you mention these gadgets of.

Garmins and Fitbits, and there's also. Is it the Aurora ring, something along those lines?

Yeah, there's all sorts of. All sorts of stuff like this. There's aura rings and whoop bands and beddits that go under your sheet. There's all sorts of gadgets and gizmos and some are better than others, and some are. And, you know, some are better than others. I think the thing just to bear in mind is treat the data with not maybe a pinch of salt, but be, be, be very objective with your data. You know, this data. The majority of these devices are based on movement. They are movement sensors. They're measuring on what you're doing throughout the night. And I know a lot of them combine the data with heart rate and some of them are getting really quite advanced and quite good. But you know that you have to just be aware that they are movement sensors. So if you're a very active sleeper, then it may tell you you get less quality, less sleep than you actually do. It may tell you that you get less deep sleep than you actually do. If you're a sleeper that falls asleep and you don't move a muscle and you wake up in the same position as you went to sleep, it may conversely tell you the converse. It may tell you that you've had so much sleep and that may become a source of anxiety because I have a lot of people will come in and say, well, it's telling me that I've had all this good sleep, but I'm exhausted, I'm not sleeping well, I. I don't feel well. And so it's important just to have a little bit of. Just think about the data a little bit objectively because they, but they're, as I say, they're a great starting place and they're a great way to measure change. I think that's important. You know, look at your sleep and if you feel like you're not sleeping well with these gadgets, go away, change something. You know, look at your sleep hygiene, whatever change you want to make, and then go back to the data and see if it changes. But it's. Yeah, I mean, they're good. But, you know, my other bugbear with these is that not many people. I mean, what do people do with their sleep data? It's like, what. You know, so many people come into me and be like, I've got all this data and I'm like, well, okay, but what do you do with it? What does it mean to you? What is it? Well, how Is it meaningful? You know, I had one chap recently who came in and said that he had. He said, look, look, my. What just told me that I've been awake all night. I've been awake. And I said, well, were you awake? He said, well, I don't think so. And I said, well, then you weren't awake. You know, just because the watch says something, you've got to take this stuff with a pinch of salt and be a little bit sensible about it and be, just be cautious in your interpretation of the data.

And of course, us athletes generally love data, don't we? Particularly bottom left to top right. You know, my sleep is getting better then. We love that.

Yeah, I absolutely love data and that's great and you can get some great data, but it's just be cautious in your interpretation, like all these things, you know, and most athletes are very cautious and very analytical in their data now, and that's fantastic. And there's certainly a place for these devices, but use good ones and use it cautiously.

And are there any particular ones that stand out for you as good ones?

Yeah, there's a couple that are good. The Oura ring is not bad. Oura ring's not bad, I think. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's. There's some. I would. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to. I don't want to say the ones that are good for fear of not saying the ones that are bad.

The Oura ring stands out as one of the best.

It's not bad.

The whoop bands.

All right, the Oura ring's not bad. You know, they're okay. They're good because they use electrical impedance as well. So they're looking at heart rate. It's that, I think. Okay. I think something to be aware of is look at. Use ones that are taking into consideration heart rate as well and using that within the data. I think that's a good guideline. If you've got one that's just giving you a graph with your sleep, then I think that's not such a good one. We don't want something that's just looking at sleep. We certainly don't want one that means you to put your mobile phone under your pillow or have your phone in your bed. No, certainly don't use those ones. I think there are some now that are not even wearable. So you can have some that are devices that are placed under your sheet. I like those quite a lot. I think some of those are quite good. Yeah, there's some, some good ones, but use, make sure you use one that's using heart rate as well.

Okay, fantastic.

Thinking about athletes then, what would, what if somebody's got an endurance event coming up, particularly a multi day event where you are going to be deprived of sleep in the week, week or so, whatever leading up to it, what should somebody be doing with regards to their sleep to try and improve their performance and offset that loss of sleep later on?

So sleep people always say to me, can you bank sleep? So I, you know, typically we have, I have people who will say to me oh I'm, you know, I'm going to bed at midnight in the week, up at 5 o' clock in the morning with work and you know, certainly corporate types, city types who are doing that, they're working hard, they're training hard, they're playing hard and it's okay because I'm going to catch up with my sleep at the, at the weekend. And unfortunately sleep doesn't work like that. You can't bank sleep. However, what we have seen is for endurance events and certainly with our UTMB research, we have seen to a certain extent those who try and bank sleep, that is get a bit more sleep before the event will do a little bit better. So how do we bank sleep before an event? Well, I suppose typically most people who have got a big event coming up, a big race coming up, they will, for a few days before the race will start going to bed a bit earlier. That's a typical sleep strategy. So when I ask people, athletes, what is your strategy for sleep, how are you preparing for sleep, your sleep for this race? Most will say well I'm just going to get a bit more sleep before the race. And that's obviously absolutely logical and that's fantastic. But what we find is that just doing that three, four, five days before an event isn't super efficacious. Or because if you imagine if I said to you tonight, right, I want you to get some extra sleep, I need you to sleep for an extra hour because you need more sleep and like, you know, you went to bed an hour earlier than you normally did do you would lie awake, you know, because you're not, you'd lie awake and be like, well obviously I'm not sleepy, I'm not going to go to sleep. So you probably wouldn't get, you might get an extra 10 minutes, but you certainly wouldn't get an extra hour if I tried to give you an extra hour of sleep tonight. So what we start to do is in terms of strategizing sleep Prior to an event is really start to looking at a sleep shifting and changing sleep patterns for a good. Probably I'd start with someone probably three weeks before an event. So really start planning for this really a lot longer, a lot further in advance than you think you need to. That's a good advice, a good thing to do. Start small. There's another great piece of advice. Don't jump into bed two nights before your event at 7 o' clock in the evening and think I must get 3 hours extra sleep because it's obviously not going to work. Your sleep efficiency will be very poor and you won't get that extra sleep. So starting very small. So two or three weeks before an event I would start to ask someone to go to sleep 10 or 15 minutes early and we'd increment it incrementally increase that in a bid to kind of change sleep in preparation and in readiness for the event that we're planning for.

Brilliant.

And would that all be worthwhile if.

It wasn't a multi day event? So let's say something somebody was doing an ironman that's you know, a long day exercise but they're not going to be sleep deprived. Is it still worth trying to bank sleep in advance? Is there any benefits to that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely it is, you know because the physical exertion that you're going to undergo during that event is. I mean it's probably, we probably wouldn't need to go undergo quite such an intensive regime beforehand but absolutely it's worth trying to get some extra sleep in preparation because that that physical endurance and mental endurance that you're going to undergo during that one event that kind of 12, 13 hour block of period of time is intensive and it's absolutely will be very beneficial to do that. So I would certainly advise a bit of a sleep strategy prior to a one day event as well as a multi day or a long seven, 48 hour event. Absolutely.

And then what about during the event? So I've interviewed people like Beth Pascal and Damien hall and Nikki Spinks and several times I seem to remember it was Damien saying that he would grab like one minute sleep on it and Beth definitely said this. They just find like just one minute sleep actually helped them on one of their long multi day events. What about. And also I remember Kerry Sutton telling me the story about where she was leading the spine race and, and because of she'd messed up her sleep stress, she hadn't practiced multi day events. She made some really bad decisions. She ended up having clinging to A rock in the dark and needing to get rescued because she couldn't go up, down or sideways. And she put it all down to not having enough sleep. So how can people deal with that lack of those multi day events from.

A sleepwalk of view?

I think one of the unfortunate issues with this is it's so individual and it's practice, practice, practice, you know. So I have strategies that I advise people use. I mean napping is really critical. I have, you know, every year at the UTMB I speak to lots of athletes and we know because part of my job there is to raise awareness. And certainly for the organizers it's a safety issue. You know, they are wanting people to be safe on them, you know, up in the mountains. So for them it's a real safety issue. So I spend a lot of time talking to runners and saying, what's your strategy? What's your, do you have a street strategy? And honestly the majority will say no. The majority will say we'll see how I go. Some will say, well you know, if I need a sleep, I'll take one. And a lot will say, you know, I think there's a bit of kind of machismo, macho ness around sleep. And no, I don't need to, of course, course I don't need to. I can manage without it. I don't need to. What we've seen our results of our UTMB studies is that we know that those who. So what we've done in our study is we always ask people prior to their participation what's their predicted time, what's their expected time. And I know obviously lots of things can kind of go wrong and can impact that. But generally those who sleep, those who build a strategy into that sleep, strategy into their kind of race preparation and race kind of plan will generally finish around their expected time. Those who don't sleep generally always finish slower. So I always say try and plan a nap, try and plan a nap. And if it's a minute, fine, if it's 10 minutes, fine, plan for those naps because I absolutely promise you, you will make up that time and performance. The detriment to performance by being, you know, being seriously sleep deprived is that, you know, and obviously I'm not talking about elite runners here, we're talking about the kind of your average runner. But the detriment is so great by sleep deprivation that you will make up that time and some probably, and you'll, you'll feel a lot better. You'll feel, you know, morally, you know, you'll feel A lot better. You'll feel like you can perform a bit better and you'll have that extra energy. So planning a nap, strategizing naps into certain time places is really critical because there's not many people there really aren't and I know of it. We're not talking about elites because they can, because they're faster and so they probably spend a lot less time out on the trail or on the, on the route. But most people just cannot survive with that level of sleep deprivation. And when you're talking about them having a one minute sleep or a five minute sleep and feeling like they slept an hour, I mean that's because they're dissipating their sleep pressure so that all stop, we start to talk about sleep pressure and sleep drive then and they've got such a great, such a high sleep pressure then that when they do sleep they dissipate it so quickly that they're kind of feeling, they feel great afterwards.

So for somebody coming into their first multi day event, what would they, what should they be doing? I know you said to practice, what should they be doing in terms of how can they work out what their sleep shaft strategy would be and is there any sort of format to what a good sleep strategy might look like, albeit they're going to need to tweak it for themselves?

Yeah, they're going to have to give themselves. I mean I would say what we would, what I'd say is for every 14 hours try and get a 10 minute nap. It's a rough kind of guideline. So try and get a 10, 20, half an hour nap. I mean it depends what they're doing, what altitude there are, how long they're going, how hard. You know, there's so many predictors into this and there's so many variables which is why, you know, it's a bit of a, it becomes a bit of an exact science. But a rough guideline every 12 to 14 hours, if you're working hard, try and take a nap every 12 to 14 hours, every kind of half day. You know, if you're looking at, if you're looking at a two day event, we'd want four naps in there. Even if they're short, even if you don't want to take one, take five minutes and see how you feel. You can always build more naps into it, but budget as a minimum budget every kind of, you know, 12 to 14 hours, plan for a nap there.

Fantastic.

That sounds like a very rough guideline but you know, again it's there's lots of variables but you know, if you, if you, if you've never done this before and you've never done a multi day event and you've got no idea what to expect, plan like that and see what happens, see how it goes.

Well that sounds like a good starting point, doesn't it? And then as you learn more about.

Your body and your experience you can tweak it. But rather than stepping out and saying I'm going to try with no sleep and then I'll sleep if I have to.

So it's really important to plan it because so many people with absolutely fantastic, great intention say well I'll set out and if I feel tired I'll go to sleep. But the problem with lack of sleep is that your subjective, your subjective, it's a little, I liken it to going to a bar and having a couple of drinks and thinking you're okay to drive. You know, we think we are more able than we are and we don't realize that we are not very able. So if you don't plan it into your strategy is that you don't realize when you need the sleep. You've often gone too far or you've often made critical poor decision. You've often gone a little bit too far and not eaten at the right time. You know, if you don't plan that sleep. So it's important to just think, okay, right, I've hit 12 hours now let's try and have a five minute sleep. If I can't sleep immediately, fine, get up, move on. But if you can take it because your ability to make your judgment becomes so impaired that you often won't listen to your body when you truly need to.

So it's that, that decision making when.

You'Re in your sleep deprived state that often ends up costing you more time or even the entire race like you saw with Kerry.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I see it time and time and time again in all the races I work on in races I've been in myself in race as, as, as a competitor but also in races I've worked on as a, as a, as a clinician or as a researcher. You see people have, they make the port. The decision making is absolutely critical and obviously that's the importance of having a brilliant crew with you, a brilliant support team. But also often in these races you are up certainly in the races out in the Alps here, you know there'll be six, seven, eight hours where you don't see your crew. You need to be able to make the Right decision, when do you eat, when do you put clothing on? You know, getting dressed at the right time is a critical thing, you know, especially certainly up here in the mountains at two and a half thousand meters. It's cold weather, it's the middle of the night. I've seen elites who haven't dressed at the right time, who haven't put layers on at the right time, and that's it. It's cost them the race. So that decision making is so critical and it's massively impaired. It's probably the biggest decision making and concentration, vigilance is something that we assess with our runners. So reaction time and alertness hugely impaired just with, you know, a couple of hours of sleep deprivation, never mind a whole night sleep depth sleep deprivation, and then a second night onto. Compounded by a second night certainly out here with the big races out here. And that's why I suppose people become very reliant on having a good crew as well, which can dress you and feed you at every checkpoint.

So it should really be just seen like nutrition, really, shouldn't it? Or fuel in that you don't. You don't keep running until you can't run anymore and then start putting the fuel in because at that point you've. You've imploded, haven't you?

Absolutely. And it's. That's a really great way of looking at it actually, is that it is like nutrition. You know, you don't wait until you. You don't wait until you're absolutely gasping before you take a sip of water. You don't wake into. Wait until you're absolutely starving before you have a bite of whatever you're planning to eat. You know, it's about little and often and strategizing for it and planning for it because the. Just the impact. Yeah, absolutely. Look, we can all. I'm sure a lot of people could probably grunt their way around a course. Lots of people could probably get round without having a sleep. But I promise you it'll be a much more pleasant experience. It'll be a quicker experience if you sleep. You know, you'll have a better race, you'll have a faster race, you have a more pleasant race all round if you just strategize those sleeps. And it's not, it's not a. It shouldn't be seen as a weakness. You know, I think there's a lot of people here who certainly that I speak to who see it as a sign of weakness to need a sleep. It's, you know, you're only Going to do better because of it.

And you mentioned earlier on about hallucinations, is that all linked to the lack of sleep and, or is it just sort of, does it happen for one person, not another? You know, where does that fit in?

It is absolutely due to a lack of sleep. Different people have different tolerances for it. So where I might start hallucinating after 20 hours of no sleep, you might not. It might be 26 hours for you. So we all have different kind of tolerances for it. But absolutely, you know, hallucinating is that state is when we're in a state between sleep and wake up. And it's fundamentally it's our brain taking rem. So when we sleep at night, we've discussed, we sleep in these sleep cycles. There are five stages in our sleep cycle and during REM sleep that's when we have our rapid eye movement and that's where we dream. So that's, I'm sure we're all aware of that. That's your dreaming stage of sleep. When we are sleep deprived, our brain doesn't get that REM sleep and it needs all stages, stages of sleep. And that REM does appear to be incredibly critical. When we're out of bed for 20, 30, 40, 50 hours or whatever it is when the brain gets so unbelievably exhausted, it says to us, right, well if you're not mean to give me any rem, if you're not going to give me my sleep, I'm going to take it when you're awake. So that's what it is, hallucinations is that it's a, it's kind of a consciousness, consciousness level between, or a state between sleep and wake and it's kind of dreaming, it's dreaming when you're awake. It's the brain taking that sleep that it so desperately needs to function. But you're not giving it to it because you're not giving it any sleep. So it says, okay, I'm going to take it when you're awake. And that's kind of what a hallucination is. So yeah, I've got some great hallucination stories from all sorts of athletes, but I'm sure a lot of people listening have experienced, experienced either auditory or visual hallucinations because there's two different types.

But is there one particular hallucination story.

That stands out to you?

There is actually. I had a lady last year who told me that after, I don't know, after, I think she was in the UTMB and after hour 26 or something she kept seeing and hearing Cliff Richard, all Cliff Richards songs and she kept seeing Cliff Richard and all the bushes, which is lovely. But it did make me laugh a little bit.

That would be enough to make you.

Run faster I think.

Exactly. It really stood out. But yeah, no, this, I mean I could, I could write a book on this. But that one did make me laugh a little bit actually.

Fantastic. So what about, what about after the event then? After you've done your Ironman or your multi day event, how should you go about treating? You know, how can you use sleep to help you recover as quickly as possible?

Well, I think, you know, I think with recovery, again treat it very subjectively. Listen to your body, do what you think you need to do. I think we're actually just, I can, I can share this with your listeners once it's published. We've just written a paper on recovery post utmb. So we've used all our UTMB data to look at recovery and we know it takes up to between six and 10 days to fully recover from an event like that. I think recovery can be quite difficult in the days immediately following a big event because actually we find people have a lot of muscle soreness, a lot of body soreness. So actually getting that kind of critical sleep can be quite difficult and that's one of the reasons it can take a little bit longer to recover from these events because actually our bodies are just so sore afterwards that it can be difficult. But you know, extra time in bed. I think recovery afterwards, there's lots of kind of in depth strategy we can do surrounding it but fundamentally it's, you know, listen to your body and we all probably want to go to bed a little bit earlier every night after these events and get a bit more sleep. So give yourself the time, plan your day, give yourself the time to, you know, get more time in bed. I think think is really critical but don't be, you know we know from all our data, from everything we've looked at, we know it's a good between 6 and 10 days. Certainly 10 days for cardiac function to be back to what it was pre race for muscle soreness, for fatigue levels, for concentration, for vigilance, alertness, for memory, all of those cognitive functions as well. Six days is the benchmark.

Right?

Okay.

Don't be concerned if six to 10 days later you're still feeling the after effects because it's normal. But you know, listen to your body and just get some extra time in bed. There's not much more you can do about. Do you know for it. And if you need a nap, absolutely take one. During the daytime I think napping is really critical as well.

So let's talk about napping. What, why is napping so helpful? Because you often hear it talked about between 10 and 20 minutes, but that doesn't even, I wouldn't have thought that gets you into your REM sleep. So why is napping so important and how can you use it strategically?

So to kind of understand how napping works, we need to understand what makes us sleep. There are two functions I'm sure lots of your listeners and you would have heard about. There's two different functions that make us, or mechanisms, if you like, that make us go to sleep. The first is very commonly known, our circadian rhythm. And your circadian rhythm is a function of the presence and absence of light. In the day it's solely, all your biological functions are controlled by the presence and absence of light and that's your circadian rhythm. So that's fine. And that's the reason that if you have, if you're racing in the night, probably 2, 3, 4 o' clock in the morning, you feel absolutely awful, you feel exhausted. But the minute the sun comes up, I'm sure we've all experienced, we feel great again, we feel much more alert, we feel much more awake. And that's part of our circadian rhythm. So that's one thing. The other mechanism that works absolutely in combination with our circadian rhythm is our homeostatic sleep drive that we have or sleep pressure, our pressure to sleep. So I mentioned it earlier and what that is is from the moment we wake up in the morning, we have a build up, we start to build up neurotoxic waste or neuro metabolic waste if you like. We have chemicals that build up and up and up and up and up in the brain and in other places. But this one we're talking about in the brain and one of those chemicals is called adenosine. So if you imagine we wake up in the morning and our level of adenosine is nice and low, and then throughout the day it builds up and up and up and up and up. When we cannot sustain that pressure of that chemical of that adenosine, when we can't sustain the pressure of it anymore, we fall asleep. So the buildup of adenosine makes us sleepy and when it gets too high, we fall asleep. We get so sleepy we fall asleep. So it's a really nice simple satisfaction and deprivation model. So when we go to sleep at night, we dissipate all the adenosine, we dissipate it, it doesn't disappear, but it gets reabsorbed, it disappears. And the next day we start again, nice and low, and we build up. What a nap does is it dissipates a little bit of that adenosine, it dissipates a little bit of that homeostatic sleep pressure. So if you imagine it's building, building, building throughout the day, we're feeling really tired, perhaps we've got this really big buildup of adenosine, we fall asleep, we have a quick 20 minute nap, it dissipates, it gets rid of a little bit of that adenosine and then we wake up feeling a bit more refreshed and we start that build up again. So I liken it to imagine adenosine being like your biological brakes. So from the minute we wake up in the morning, we're applying slowly, we're applying pressure on our brakes and then by the end of the day, we come to us kind of screeching halt. And we go to bed. That's how a nap works. It's dissipating a little bit of that adenosine. And the reason people say 10 to 20 minutes is so you don't fall into that really deep, deep sleep at the end of your sleep cycle, that REM sleep. Because actually that's when you feel really groggy and you feel really tired, you feel really lethargic. Actually, we find if you have 10 to 20 minutes, you don't allow yourself to fall into that super deep sleep. You'll feel typically a bit more refreshed when you wake up.

And so how, how do people for, how do you. Is it best to just, you know, go and lie on your bed and set your alarm for 20 minutes time? Or is there any. I remember hearing reading that Einstein used to hold a spoon and when he dropped the spoon, that was the right time to wake up. Are there any strategies around how to.

Optimize your napping setting alarm? I mean, the one thing I'd say is if you several things about napping. If you can have a nap in the day and you then can go to bed at a reasonable time at night, you know, if you're having a nap and then you're not going to bed at 1 o' clock in the morning, you don't need a nap, you shouldn't be napping because we shouldn't be going to bed at, you know, 11:30, 12, 1:00 clock in the morning. So first of all, if you can nap and you're still going to bed at a moment, reasonable time, that is hopefully around 10 o' clock ish, then that's great. If you find you need a nap every single day and you're consistently so tired that you need a nap, there's some underlying issue there. We should not, we shouldn't need to nap, you know, it's not okay as a one off, fine. If we've had a really busy week and we're really tired, great, have one. But actually if you're finding increasingly you need one every single day, I would suggest there's something underlying that means. Meaning that you're too sleep deprived, you know, you're not getting enough sleep at night. If you're needing to nap in the daytime. If you are going to have a nap. Yeah, set an alarm clock, lay down, get comfy and just sleep for 20 minutes. Absolutely. But don't let it impact. A nap should not impact your nighttime sleep. And if it does, you don't need the nap or you're consistently, you are sleeping deprived.

Is there a particular time of day that's best to nap?

Well, I mean we've just say pre 2 o', clock, pre 2, 3 o', clock, you know, because then it's less likely to impact. You're giving your body a little bit more time for that adenosine to build up in preparation for bedtime. And incidentally, that's how caffeine works as well. I don't know. I mean, I know a lot of people are quite reliant on caffeine. A lot of people use caffeine to race and, and that's great, I do that, that's fantastic. That's fine. But you know, we think of caffeine as an accelerator. We think of caffeine as something that speeds us up, but actually it's not. Caffeine molecules imitate adenosine molecules. So that buildup of adenosine, I was talking about that buildup of your sleep pressure throughout the day. Caffeine comes in and blocks your brakes. Caffeine comes in and stops the buildup of that chemical, which is how it works. And so I'm sure a lot of people have had a caffeine kind of crash after your coffee's worn off. You feel absolutely shattered. It's because those caffeine molecules are blocking the buildup of adenosine, but they don't really stop it from building up. All that kind of adenosine sits and builds up and up and up and up and up. And so once that Caffeine wears off often. We find people kind of crash afterwards and feel even more exhausted than they did before.

So caffeine obviously stops you going to sleep, but does it affect the quality of your sleep as well?

No, it doesn't really. I mean, it just. It just prevents you from going to sleep. I mean, once you're asleep, I mean, alcohol is what really impacts the quality of sleep. Alcohol, you know, is the biggest room. It's the most potent REM suppressor that exists. I mean, we don't know anything that suppresses REM sleep like alcohol does. I mean, when you. We've all experienced having had a bit too much to drink or having anything to drink, really. And, you know, we've all experienced probably falling asleep quite quickly, having drunk a little bit too much or having drunk anything at all. And then we wake up the following morning feeling not great, you know, feeling really tired and lethargic and groggy and just feeling really rough. And there are many reasons for that, but one of those is that suppression of REM sleep we don't get. We don't. We stay in a very. Alcohol is a sedative, you know, and it's like. It's how sleeping pills work. You know, we will be sedated very quickly, but following a sleeping tablet and following certain sleeping tablets, obviously there's many different ones and there's many different physiological mechanisms by which they work. So I can't generalise, but generally taking a sleeping tablet, people will always talk about having a bit of a hangover the next day, having drink and alcohol. Drinking alcohol, they are sedative, so they will put you to sleep very quickly, but you'll feel up feeling. Wake up feeling terrible because you've stayed in a very light stage of sleep throughout the night, so you haven't had that really good quality sleep that kind of. That makes you feel restored the next morning.

Okay.

And so thinking about caffeine and alcohol separately, but how if people are going to use caffeine either to kind of fuel their normal day or to train.

Is there a way of kind of.

Stopping it impacting your sleep?

And the same with alcohol.

If you're going to have a few glass of wine after your day's work.

Or training, is there a way to.

Stop that messing up your sleep?

Well, caffeine, it's important. I mean, caffeine is absolutely. It's not dreadful, it's not something that should be avoided. I mean, it's not. I'm not absolutely. Don't want to paint it as A dreadful thing. If you want to take caffeine or drink caffeine, then that's fine. If you. Again, it's like the naps. If you're needing 10 coffees to get through the day, there's probably an underlying issue there. But it's important to note with caffeine that it has around about a six hour half hour life. So that means that up to, you know, 10 to 12 hours after you have last ingested some caffeine, be it by a coffee or a Pro plus or a green tea, whatever it is, it's still working its way out of your system. So often people who are very, very sensitive to caffeine, I.e. those who don't metabolize it very well, those who are very sensitive to caffeine often don't draw the link between well, you know, I had my last coffee at lunchtime but I'm still not sleeping very, very well or my sleep latency is very difficult, that is, it's difficult to fall asleep at night or my sleep maintenance is poor I. E. I'm waking up a lot in the night. People often don't draw the links between the two. Now you know, if you can use caffeine and pass out and fall asleep, then that's fine. You know, there's a lot of people who will say, well, I have an espresso before I go to bed and sleep like a baby. Well that's fantastic. Yeah, great. But there are lots of wishes.

I've had a bottle of red wine as well.

But there's a lot of people who are incredibly sensitive to caffeine but maybe don't realize it. So if you're struggling with any aspect of your sleep, be it getting to sleep, staying asleep or waking up too early in the morning, just think about, it's just another thing to think about, think about when you're having your last caffeinated drink or I mean certainly don't use caffeine to train anytime, like don't have a coffee. You know, we try and say after lunchtime, you know, let two o' clock ish be your last caffeine based drink. Food. And again and as a training, you know, if you're taking gels using caffeine, you know, don't probably don't try and use those after lunchtime because they will impact your sleep. Whether you know it or not, they're probably impacting your sleep and maybe you don't realize it, maybe you haven't drawn the link between I'm a bit restless for an hour before I go to bed or I don't fall asleep as quickly as I'd like to. Maybe you're not drawing that link, but it's just have a think about it.

Okay.

And what about alcohol? Is there. I mean, I certainly found that just making sure that I'd got a good hour between my last drink and going to bed seemed to help for some reason. But is there a way of. Or is it just don't drink alcohol?

Don't drink alcohol. I mean, yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, I'm absolutely not saying have a glass of wine in the evening, but it will impact your sleep, it will impact your ability to. And your time spent in rem. I mean, it's literally, there's nothing we.

Can do about that.

It's an incredibly potent REM suppressor. And the more you drink, the less good quality sleep you get. And, you know, one glass will impact your sleep. If that's not a problem for you, if that's not a problem and you're happy with and you feel refreshed, if you have a glass of wine in the evening and you go to bed and you go to sleep and you feel refreshed upon wakening in the morning and you don't feel exhausted the next day, then fine. But be aware, it is impacting your sleep. You will probably sleep better without that glass of wine. So it's being aware of what it's doing to your body and it's having an impact, but it's your choice. It's. Everyone can choose to do that or not. And obviously we all do it occasionally, so. Absolutely.

And what about the time of the year? Does that impact how much sleep we need?

It doesn't impact how much time sleep we need, it impacts how much sleep we want. You know, typically in winter at the moment, we typically feel sleepier, don't we? We feel sleepier earlier because it's dark and perhaps our lighting, hopefully is a little bit dimmer in the house. We don't have all the full lights on, you know, all night until the minute we go to sleep, but absolutely, we tend to feel a little bit more alert a little bit later in the summer. And we tend to feel sleepier and more lethargic and it's more difficult to get out of bed. And we want to go to bed earlier in the winter. And that's all to do with that circadian rhythm, those triggers to sleep. You know, the minute we have lots of cells in our eyes that are there for seeing, obviously, but we have a Lot of cells in our eyes and ears in some that are there just to detect the presence and absence of light. And the minute, you know, during our, during our day to day life, as soon as it becomes dim outside, as soon as the light starts to dissipate and it gets darker and a little bit more kind of a little bit dimmer outside, that's one of the triggers to our body. That's a trigger to say, oh, oh, it's getting darker. You know, oh, I think we need to start preparing for bed. You know, that's one of the triggers that, the main trigger that tells our body from the Zeitbergers, we call it the kind of external stimuli, if you like, it's the trigger to sleep. And so when it gets darker earlier, those processes in our body that we're absolutely unaware of, those physiological processes start a bit earlier and we can fight them by putting lights on and having dinner later and controlling all the other external stimuli. We tend to kind of fight that, that natural response. But essentially, you know, our body wants to go to bed earlier because it thinks it's dark and it's nighttime, so it's time to go to bed.

Okay, that's really interesting. And just thinking about general sleep hygiene, are there any tips and strategies that you can give people to improve the quality of their sleep?

I mean, there's loads. And I know you, I mean so many people are aware of all of these because I mean, it's difficult not to open a newspaper at the moment without there being another sleep hygiene article. But you know, as a general rule, keep it dark, keep it cool, keep it quiet, you know, keep it dark. As I said, light is the biggest source of sleep disruption that we have. And be it light from screens, from phones, from. And I know we're all told not to look at our phones and don't look at blue light and wear blue light filter glasses and put an amber lens or put an amber filter on your phone. But many people don't understand the physiology behind that. You know, we know that blue light restricts or impacts and suppresses the production of melatonin, which, Melatonin, again, people think of that as the hormone that makes us go to sleep. And lots of people take melatonin tablets, like sleeping tablets. It's not how it works works. Melatonin kind of triggers the other processes in our body to sleep. So it's just really important to be aware that, you know, light, light is a huge impactful factor. You know, we have electrified society and as such we have completely Disrupted our own circadian rhythms. You know, we're finding we have, people have big phase delay problems. Kind of their sleep is shifting backwards a little bit because the, there's, you know, there's lights on in the room. You know, I say to people, turn half the lights off in the house in the evening. And most people do, most people will kind of have mood lighting or have a lamp on. But so light is really, really, really critical. And if you are insistent on looking at devices and televisions and iPads and iPhones and devices, which, let's face it, we all do, it's the same advice as always, try and, try and stop it a good, a good hour before you're going to go to bed. Really give your body the chance. There's a great study recently was published looking at the difference between people who were reading a book, a paper book, and people versus versus people reading a book on an iPad. And what did that do to melatonin levels? And we saw, and it's been repeated over and over again, this work that we saw, that the release of melatonin was reduced by up to 50%.

The.

Release of melatonin was delayed by three hours. So when we have a lot, we have lots of people who have sleep maintenance problems is probably the most common issue that people speak to me with, and that's sleep maintenance being that they go to sleep really easily because most people are pretty tired throughout the daytime from work and whatever they're doing, but then they wake up and middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. Melatonin production issues is one of the things that we look at when we, when we're assessing that. So light is really important, keeping it cool. I mean, we know that to initiate and maintain good sleep, our body has to reduce its core body temperature by up to 2 degrees. So, you know, that's where you're getting your Chillipad technologies, those kind of pads that are cooling the body.

I was going to ask you, what.

Do you think of them? Do you think they're beneficial.

If they work for you? You know, if that's something that works for you. If you are someone who has thermoregulatory issues during the night. And it's very, very common, specifically in athletes actually, who are very, very hot, they get very hot at night. And also for certain women, you know, premenopausal, menopausal women, they're very, very hot. A lot of people. And some people just run hot. Some people are just very hot sleepers. I mean, obviously My advice would always be the obvious. It's the things that people do anyway. Don't have a big, thick duvet. Don't wear big, thick flannel pyjamas. Don't sleep with the window shut, you know, open, you know, cool it down. Put a fan in your room. Do all these things that are patently obvious. But chilly pads, I've got patients that use them and like them. I've got patients that use them and don't like them. You know, it's absolutely a personal thing. If you find that it cools you down and you like it, then great. There is some. There is science behind it. We need to cool. Our bodies need to be cooled. And that's incidentally, how a hot bath works. You know, I think the anecdotal. You know, lots of the anecdotal. How to get a good night's sleep. Oh, have a nice warm bath before bed. Because I think people think that makes you all warm and cozy. It's absolutely not how it works. You have a nice hot bath, all the blood rushes to your extremities, creating big thermal dump. So you actually, your core blood, your core body temperature reduces hugely when the blood rushes to your extremities. Your hands and feet and your extremities get nice and warm, so your core cools down. So actually, a hot bath cools you down, which is how that works. So, yeah, I mean, keep it. So, you know, keep it light. Control light, Control temperature, control noise, you know, and on that kind of light subject, actually, a lot of people don't realize how much ambient light is in the room. You know, I sleep with an eye mask because I like pitch black, and it's fantastic. You know, people don't realize how much ambient light comes in from street lighting, from gadgets and gizmos, from a phone being next to the bed, from the plug socket with the red light on it. You know, there's lots of ambient light that's kind of around. So control that. Control temperature and control noise. Noise is a big thing.

Okay, fantastic. That sounds like some great advice. And we all know. And actually, it seems to affect the.

Pros just as much as the amateurs. When we've got a big event tomorrow, we all struggle to get to sleep now. We're like, I've got to get a good night's sleep tonight. But it's the same. Like when you're getting up early for a 4am flight or something. You say, I've got to get to sleep early because I'm getting Up early and I've got a big day tomorrow. And of course, you then lie there for the next three hours going, why am I not sleeping? Any strategy. But equally, I appreciate you that other people just struggle to get to sleep regularly as a result of sleep issues. Any strategies that you can give people to help them get to sleep more quickly?

Well, in the first instance for an athlete, that's why it's so important to really start planning and adjusting your sleep weeks prior to an event, because hopefully that allows for that one night of, look, let's face it, you just. We've all, We've all experienced it. You've got so much adrenaline and you're thinking about all those things that you've got to be ready for the race, you know, and you've forgotten to pack. Okay, what have you packed? What have you not packed? What do you need in your bag? What? You know, blah, blah, blah. But that's one of those things we kind of have to accept. We know it's going to happen. So building that into the strategy, being prepared for that night is really important. On a more general note, for people who have that sleep maintenance issue, wake up, struggle to get back to sleep, lie awake for hours in the night. There's loads we can do. And I suppose in the first instance, I would always look at what's lying behind that, screening for any more kind of sinister issues, any sleep, real sleep disorders. If we're sure that it's just a kind of. It's just a stress issue. If we're sure that there's not an underlying physiological issue that there, then we use a lot of cognitive distraction techniques and there's absolutely loads. And unfortunately, it's about finding what works for you. I have patients that listen to the same TED Talk for every single night, and it's so boring, it sends them off to sleep. People who listen to podcasts, people who count in serial sevens back from a thousand, you know, breathing techniques, meditation techniques, you know, we have that golden rule of 15 and sleep medicine that if you're awake for more than 15 minutes, you absolutely should get up and leave the bedroom. If it's something that you're really struggling with. And this is a chronic thing that's every single night, get up and leave the bedroom is really important because by lying in bed every single night, awake for hours and hours, you're just building this really negative association between bed and wakefulness and not sleeping. And, you know, it's just really building this negative association. We need to break that because it becomes A source of anxiety, going to bed thinking, oh, well, I'm just going to wake up again. Oh, I'm awake. Oh, I can't go back to sleep. And it becomes a bit of a vicious cycle. The more you lie there, the more anxious you get, the more angry you get, the more irritated you get, the less you can go to sleep. So what I always recommend is get up, leave the bedroom after 15, you know, after 15 minutes, if you're sure, you know, if you're feeling wide awake, leave the bedroom and go and do something calming and relaxing. And once you feel sleepy, you go back to bed, thereby building the association between bed is for sleep, it's not for feeling agitated and angry and upset. It's a really key thing to do. But besides that finding a distraction technique, because essentially what we want to do is distract ourselves from the fact that we can't go to sleep. Having a cognitive control diary, having a pen and paper next to your bed. What I ask people to do often is create a quote and I can send you a template to share with your listeners if they're interested or I can.

Yeah, well, that and the research you.

Mentioned earlier, we can put in the footnote in the show notes.

I can send you lots of. Yeah, lots of great kind of resources for your listeners. But the cognitive control diary is a fantastic one. I can send you a template, you know, spend half an hour before you go to bed, write down what did you achieve today? What do you need to achieve tomorrow? What are you worried about tomorrow? There's several different kind of headings that we use. Write it all down, make it symbolic, put it in a notebook that you can close, put it by your bed. If you wake up and you're ruminating or you have intrusive thoughts about, oh, I've got to do that tomorrow, or I'm worried about this. Write it down, close the book and then you should be able. It becomes a lot easier to fall asleep actually once it's written down and you don't worry about not forgetting it or. But I think using. I found that have had really great success with actually using a cognitive control diary prior to bedtime. And it sounds a bit fluffy and it sounds a bit like it's something that wouldn't help, but it's really, really powerful and it can be a great way to put the day to bed. Before you go to bed is what we call it. Sometimes you need to put the data bed before you can go to bed yourself. But then by doing that, obviously you wake up in the night and you've got nothing to worry about and nothing to ruminate about, you then lie there thinking, well, now what can I think about? And that's when. That's when you put all those cognitive distraction techniques into place. So there's lots, there's lots that can be done for nighttime awakenings, but.

Okay, fantastic. And you mentioned melatonin supplements earlier on. Where do you stand with supplements and do you think that they help? Do they have a place in particular situations or for sleep?

Yeah, I think you should. They should be avoided at all cost. Absolutely. Avoided sleeping tablets. Don't take them. I mean, absolutely. If your doctor has advised you take them for a specific reason, then, you know, always follow your doctor's advice. However, where possible, avoid them. If you're taking. If you've been to your GP and say, I can't see, and they said, give here some sleeping tablets, honestly, there's so many other resources and things that can be done. A sleeping tablet, as we discussed, it's a sedative. You're not going to feel great, you're not getting good quality sleep. You may sleep for eight hours, but you'll still feel dreadful. But obviously it's something to discuss with a sleep specialist. If you have that issue, then it's very important to talk to someone. But melatonin, honestly, I'd stay away from it. It's a placebo, really. I think the only time I would agree melatonin is warranted and really useful and powerful, is given in the right dosage at the right times for jet lag. As a jet lag strategy, then it's fantastic. Other than that, it won't do you any harm, but it's certainly not going to help you sleep. People take it inappropriately. It is not a sleeping tablet, melatonin. You do not pop a melatonin into your mouth and then go to sleep an hour later. That's not how melatonin works. So it's important if you want to use it, speak to a sleep specialist or, yes, speak to a sleep specialist who can advise you on how you want to take it. But honestly, it's, you know, and if you take it, and if you take it now before bed and you think you sleep like a baby, then fantastic. What a great placebo effect. It's the most powerful effect in science, the placebo effect, that's great, but I promise you, that's all it is. So. But you know, and it's the same for all these kind of the herbal remedies. Your night ol all of those things done. Yeah. I mean, if you take them and you think they work, then fantastic. But the one thing I would strongly recommend staying away from is sleeping tablets. If you can, if there's anything else that you can do, you can speak to someone, you know, like, like me, a sleep specialist. Try other things before you resort to a sleeping tablet because you don't get good quality sleep.

And you just mentioned jet lag there. That immediately makes me think, oh, you know, there's people flying off all over the world to do Ironmans. They only have or whatever event it is and they only have two or three days beforehand to get, get sorted out for the race, anything that they can do. You mentioned using melatonin for jet lag. How would you deal with jet lag? Both using melatonin and any other advice as well.

So jet lag, you can absolutely manage jet lag. And jet lag strategy is a big part of what I do for people, for kind of corporates and for athletes is that you can plan. You should be able to manage jet lag appropriately so you minimize it hugely upon arrival. Melatonin use, look, it's used. It depends which direction you're going, where you're going and how long you're going for. You know, we use it sometimes, not all the time. What a great way to with jet lag is manage your environment, think about your meals, your light exposure, using a light box and really you should be preparing. We do jet lag strategies that start again, it depends on what people want and where they're going. But really we would start seven days before travel. We would start implementing a jet lag.

Strategy and actually there is an app that can help people. You can do that. I've used an app for that in the past. I can't remember what it's called.

Yeah, there's a couple of websites and a couple of apps that now do that. Some better than others. But yeah, there's, there's definitely some apps that will advise you, you know, try and nap at this time, go to sleep at this time, eat at this time, expose yourself to light at this time, control all of those external Zeit burgers, those external stimuli to sleep and to control of. To control your desire to be asleep or be awake and you start to control those before. But yeah, I mean writing very explicit jet lag strategy plans is great and works really well. Yeah, if you're traveling to do a race, really think about implementing a jet lag strategy prior to, prior to departure because it can, you know, in theory, you should be able to get there and not suffer at all. Again, depending where you're going.

Yeah, Hawaii is. I just think it's quite.

There's absolutely. You can absolutely minimize this impact. Without doubt.

Fantastic.

That's the only time I would use melatonin. But again, if you're going to use melatonin, please don't just pop one. You know, it's really worth speaking to a specialist because, you know, the timing and dosage is so important and it makes the difference as to whether it's. Whether it works or doesn't. So. So.

Right.

Okay, fantastic. And one final question because you've given us so much amazing advice here. Any. For people that want to learn more about this subject, any particular books that you would recommend, Anything, anything that you think is a really good place to start.

There's, I mean, look, there's some fantastic ones and the one that everyone's talking about at the moment and has quadrupled my workload, I would say, is Matt Walker's why We Sleep. That's a great, that's a great starting place for basic and not so basic. But he's, you know, for good science explained. Well, I think that's a good starting place. But listen, again, I can send you, I'll send you a list of resources that I think are really useful and good quality. There are some good ones and there are some not so good ones. So Matt Walker's, I would say, is a good one. He's a scientist. So listen to people who are qualified in science and check, check credentials. If you're going to go and see someone, check their credentials, check they're qualified because there's a lot of people, a lot of people offering a lot of advice at the moment. So just be critical of who you listen to and if there is an.

Ultra runner out there listening to this that wants your help, where's the best health are you?

Yeah, absolutely. You can go to my website, the Sleep science coach, or charlotteddleston.com and contact me by email or by phone. And absolutely, I'm delighted to help anyone.

Fantastic.

Please do get in touch.

Charlotte, it's been absolutely fascinating. I could talk to you for hours about this subject. I think it's a really interesting subject and you've been incredibly generous with your time. So a huge thank you. I know people are going to learn a lot from this.

Yeah, no, it's absolute pleasure. Yeah, I hope people do.

Thank you very much, Very much. You can find out more about Sharla at the Sleep Science Coach. Dot com. I'll put that link in the show notes as well, as well as her social media links as well. So go check out Charlotte Edelston, the sleep science coach. So I found that conversation with Charlotte fascinating. But Sid, what did you make of that and how have, how do you kind of use sleep to get better with your. What you do?

Oh, gosh. Well, I'm like the worst person to talk about sleep because I have such bad sleep habits and always have done. But I did find it, I was, I found it fascinating listening to Charlotte, like not only from a lot of it I knew and a lot of the science and what she talked about was new. But what I did find interesting, especially now, is there's so many devices around. I know she talked about the Oura Ring and Whoop and various other apps that measure your sleep, but it was around taking those with a pinch of salt. And when you wake up and actually judge, I think probably the first thing is actually just judge how you feel yourself before you look at what the app tells you before you look at that data. And I've had it myself. I have a whoop strap which I got as that kind of not to use for strain of training and to guide my training, but more to monitor like just that sleep aspect and just as a bit of a, just more of interest to see what it said. But there's days when I wake up and I'm like, I feel great. I've had a good sleep. I'm really, I've got a big session today. I'm really excited. I'm like, you know, motivated to hit this. I've really got to focus on this session. And then I look at my Whoop data and it tells me I've got like, I had like 27% recovery and it's this big red light. And then it almost seems all right, well, I'm not going to be able to do my session. You know, I'm not going to be able to do the session as well as I should. Whereas if I hadn't looked at that data and just went off how I felt, I'd have been fine. So often, like before a race or something, like a big session, I often sometimes don't look at that data because it could, it has then effect in your mind of and conversely the other way. Sometimes, like you wake up and you're like, God, I didn't sleep at all. I must have had my, my sleep recovery score will be really low. And then it comes out. I don't get greens very Often, which is the high one, but it comes out like high and you go, oh, okay, we thought I did sleep well sort of thing. So that was interesting from her perspective is like, yes, use. And it's the same with training and using power and heart rate. Yes, use the data, but use it with a pinch of salt. And then the things about obviously jet lag. And that conversation was pretty, was pretty poignant at the moment with me having just traveled and how I kind of manage my jet lag. But then I also liked her stories when she was doing her like long, long endurance events and her hallucinations of Cliff Richards, which I just thought was hilarious.

I think the whole hallucination thing, it just. The more I've read about ultra running, the more I think that that is. Yeah, I think for some people, I mean, I have heard of races that are purposely started in the evening so that you're, you're trying to get the hallucination to. In fact, a friend of mine was telling he didn't enter it in the end, but there's a race that happens just in a tunnel, dark tunnel. So it's 24 hour race and all you do is run towards the light at both ends and Yeah, I mean it would drive you absolutely crazy.

Yeah, I'm. I'm pretty sure and I can't remember them now, but when I did my gap year in the army and we were on X like in training before we, we got released to the real world, so to speak, and we'd be doing like overnight exercises and they would like be sleep deprived. But you were on, you were on watch. So you're lying down in the grass in the dark, leaning, you know, with your rifle, trying to like keep watch for the enemy approaching. And your mind play, I mean that's like your mind playing tricks. You think you see shadows. You think. And I'm pretty sure on that occasion there were some hallucination stories about Mickey Mouse popping up or that. I think the Teletubbies were there at one point. I'm pretty sure it was some random shit.

I'm not sure which is worse, Cliff Richard or the Teletubbies. I know it's kind of a tough cool.

My only image of Cliff Richards I think is. Well, not only image, one of the few is the Wimbledon where he's like popped up at the Wimbledon tennis. So when she was mentioning that, I just had these images of it like popping up in the, in the stands at Wimbledon and singing Congratulations or whatever it was.

It's either that or I'm sure there was a video with the young ones as well, wasn't there?

Wasn't there? Yeah, I think it was.

But what was interesting, I was trying to employ the advice that Charlotte had given me for this ultra that I've just done and she's absolutely right. I was trying to increase my sleep in the week for the week beforehand, but it's actually really difficult to do that. And what I found was it wasn't difficult to start with because I was still training, but as my tapering increased, my need for sleep. Sorry, yes. My increased tapering increased, my need for sleep decreased. So I was actually getting less and less sleep as I got towards the event. But I'm now trying to make sure I get some extra sleep to try and catch up. But of course then you sleep worse because my legs are killing me.

So.

Yes.

Yeah, It's a catch 22, isn't it.

The same like, you know, the night before a big race, you never tend to sleep and everyone sort of warns you about that. They say, and that's what you do. You try and almost bank up your sleep in the days before because you know that night before you're probably not going to sleep. But everyone forgets to tell you the night after the race, you never sleep either because you've got that much caffeine inside you, your body is screaming, saying, what the F have you just done to me? And you've got that much going on. And it always takes a few time, a few, a while to kind of then get back into that sleep and again build it up again. But it was interesting, like you said about that building up of. Or trying to bank sleep beforehand or. And this goes, I think, you know, even just trying to create better habits. So for me, I know I just don't go to bed early. I just have a blockage about going to bed and that's, that's a whole, you know, can get a whole another story again. But just think about just, almost like just go to bed five minutes earlier and wake up five minutes later and then that's ten minutes rather than. And then, you know, and then if you do it slow increases like that rather than saying you're going to go to bed two hours earlier, which then clearly isn't going to help because your body clock will still just wake up sort of after those set hours and it's the middle of night sort of thing.

Yeah, you go to bed too early, you end up waking up in the middle of the night and then you can't get back to sleep and then you're lying there at three in the morning going, what on earth is going on here? But no, I think it's really interesting and it's something that if we take more seriously, I know that there's some.

Definitely, it is definitely one of. And not just in sport, in business and in life as well. And I, I know it and I'm still hopeless at it. I was hopeless at it in my corporate days when I was corporate and training. I, you know, I used to think I was one of those lucky people that could survive on very few hours sleep a night. And I was just happy to cope on that. But you realize that, yes, you're coping, but you're coping, you're not performing, if that makes sense. And even though I still struggle with it now, the benefits of it's probably one of the biggest performance enhancers, natural performance enhancers that you can have, both for sport, but just decision making and managing stressful situations at home, with families and at work.

One of the reasons why I like that Matthew Walker book, why, why We Sleep so much is because the first chapter, or few is all about why, you know, why it's so important. That is, you know, how much businesses lose as a result of people getting a lack of sleep, how much the health service, you know, has extra costs as a result of people not sleeping enough, you know, so, you know, how much people are overweight because they're not sleeping enough people, you know, so. And then it comes onto the performance side of things as well. So I think it's a really fascinating subject, but I think we're going to round wind it up now. I hope you have a brilliant first week in your training camp, Sid, and can't wait to find out more about it.

Yeah, hope you're. Hope the body gets better and you'll be back. Yeah, well, we need to know what the next plan is, the next goal is, so we can save that, save that for next time.

I will find one for next time. In the meantime, everybody just keep on training. And remember, this podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfoods. You can find out more@britsuperfoods.co.uk but if you use the link in the show notes or you use the referral code of Tribeathlon, you'll get 10% off your orders. You'll get a free bag of juices worth £15 with every order. And those will happen forever as long as you buy from BritSuperfood. Having started with that referral code, you'll get those forever. In addition to that, you'll also benefit from that 110% money back guarantee. So if you don't see the value in it, then they'll give you your money back and an extra 10%. So go check out the link in the show notes or go to BritSuperfoods.co.uk and use the referral code Tribeathlon and you'll get that 10% off free shipping and free juice on every order. And don't forget to download the Tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete and to build your tribe.

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