How Poor Sleep Leads to More Injuries
Injuries happen to us all, even when we take as much care as we possibly can. However, when a client is suffering from sleep deprivation, injuries are likely to happen a lot more frequently and can be more difficult to recover from.
Sleep Deprivation Leads to Risky Decisions
Clients who haven’t slept well are going to have a much harder time making safe and smart decisions. That risky mindset while training increases your chances of becoming injured. For example, your clients might decide to take on more weight than they can handle or lift without a spotter. They may continue to exercise despite acute pain.
Sleep Deprivation Increases Your Likelihood of Infections
Remember that the human body does most of its work to help itself heal from injuries, diseases, and infections while we are sleeping. If your clients are sleeping well, they will have a much harder time fighting off diseases and infections and will feel a lot worse in general.
Sleep Deprivation Slows Your Healing
Healing from any injury or illness will be a lot harder when your client isn’t sleeping well. Because your clients are more likely to injure themselves and more likely to experience illnesses and infection, it’s going to take your clients a lot longer to heal. This will also give them more opportunities to re-injure themselves and put additional strain on their ability to sleep.
How Can You Improve Your Sleep?
In good news for us all, improving your sleep is just like improving your exercise routine. Small changes make a big impact. It can be as simple as changing when you take a medication or avoiding foods that might create problems. Here are some changes you can make to your life to make you sleep easier.
Getting Rid of Substances That Affect Sleep
Caffeine can interfere with the sleep cycle. Being a stimulant, it causes wakefulness, and should not be taken at least 4-6 hours before the bedtime. While alcohol can initially serve as a depressant, it behaves like a stimulant after a couple of hours and increases the amount of time a person wakes from sleep and results in a poor quality of sleep.
Creating The Right Environment
The importance of a calm, serene, cool and dark sleeping environment cannot be overstated (21). This will help your client to actually fall asleep. Encourage your clients to decrease noise, or replace external noise such as the TV, with white noise equipment.
Step Outside During The Day
The body’s circadian rhythm helps control the sleep-wake cycle. Sunlight synchronizes these rhythms, so it helps to step outside daily. This allows your brain the ability to be able to differentiate between daylight and nighttime and release the appropriate hormones as needed.
Developing a Sleep Routine
It is important to prepare for sleep, giving sufficient time for the body to wind down. Discuss with your client’s ways to develop a sleep routine that fits their own lifestyle. The routine you map out for them is a strategy that should take place over a span of an hour before bedtime.
Sleep When It Is Time To Sleep
Clients should not spend more than 30 minutes struggling to fall asleep. If our clients are unable to sleep, it may be best to discover a relaxing task for them that increases their fatigue level without being too strenuous.
Stress Management
Stress management is crucial to getting good quality sleep. Figuring out healthy ways of managing stress will help your client develop good sleep hygiene. This may include keeping a “to-do” list of tasks, prioritizing and removing time-wasting activities.
Avoid Looking At The Clock
Your clients should avoid looking at the clock, either when initiating sleep, or when trying to fall back asleep after waking up at night. If your client complains about the inability of falling asleep after waking up at night, encourage them to engage in relaxing activities that will allow them to feel sleepy. I
Use Your Body’s Internal Master Clock
Encourage your client to keep a habitual sleep schedule. This helps with guaranteeing great quality sleep. It is important to sleep and wake up at the same time, even on the non-working days like the weekends and holidays.
Skip the Nap
For the person experiencing difficulty sleeping, napping may be part of the problem. If your client likes to nap, it may be better to schedule it for earlier in the afternoon and to keep it short.
Avoid Late Night Snacks
Having your client provides a detailed eating history may be helpful in correcting insomnia. Eating dinner too late – or too close to bedtime – can also affect digestion and cause sleep disturbance. I
Exercise Earlier in the Day
Earlier, exercise was mentioned as possibly disrupting sleep if done too close to bedtime. This is as a result of the release of cortisol, which stimulates the brain. Exercising earlier during the day can help with one’s sleep drive. When done several hours before bedtime, it can make your client tired, which leads to increased sleepiness, and the ability to sleep through the night.
Set a Strict Bedtime
When setting a strict bedtime, your client is ensuring that they are leaving enough time to actually get enough sleep and feel rested in the morning. Getting into your bed at the same time every day will also establish a routine that will help you sleep better in the long term.
Talk to a Sleep Science Coach or Specialist
If you are struggling with a lack of sleep, you can seek out a sleep science coach. For some people, there may be larger health problems making it difficult to heal and function on a day-to-day basis, and a certified sleep science coach will be able to rule out other medical problems. A sleep coach may also be able to identify other areas needing improvement.
When you become a Certified Sleep Science Coach, you will learn how to help your clients dramatically enhance their metabolism, memory, creativity, immune function, hormone balance, hunger management, disease prevention, sports performance, accident avoidance, memory, reaction time, good judgment, surgery recovery, happiness and over 100 additional functions and behaviors.
Our programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
That’s it for now.
Take action!
PS: Click here to see many helpful business/career resources
