Sleep to Win!

AuthorHouse

Contents

1 A Frustrated Athlete..................................12 Winning the Game of Sleep.............................73 Secrets of the Night..................................154 Teenage Walking Zombies...............................235 A Win-Win Situation...................................296 The Dos & Don'ts of Power Napping.....................377 Winning Ways When You're Away.........................458 Sleep Thieves: Drugs and Alcohol......................559 Food for Thought......................................6710 Injury, Recovery & Sleep.............................7511 Giving Nature a Nudge................................8112 A Fairytale Ending?..................................91A References............................................99B Suggested Readings....................................105

Chapter One

My name is Mike Greenza. I'm a professional hockey player–No. 19 with the Philadelphia Flyers. I've been in the league for two years now and am living my dream. Or at least I thought so until I went to my folks' house in Alberta for the holidays and my kid sister, Britt, asked why I seemed so down.

"All my friends want to come over when my big, hockeystar brother's in town," she said, "but they've been asking me why you aren't as friendly as you used to be. Are you okay?"

I tried covering up my surprise by telling her I was just preoccupied. In the NHL, you always need to be getting better, skating faster and scoring more. It's a lot of pressure, and it keeps you on edge. But deep down I knew it was more than that. Truth be told, I was exhausted–from the training, from the traveling, from everything. I just hadn't realized it was showing.

"Sorry Britt. I've actually been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. I toss and turn, and when I finally do fall asleep, before I know it, my alarm is going off and it's time for practice. If I could only get some decent rest, maybe I'd feel and even play better."

Then my kid sister made a brilliant suggestion, something that would ultimately change my career and my life. Why I hadn't thought of it myself proved just how tired I was.

"Remember that psychology professor you had in college–the sleep expert?" she said. "You should email him."

Professor Myers ... Mong ... Maas! That was his name. I had forgotten about him. He'd been one of my college hockey team's advisors. He spoke to us a few times about "sleeping smarter."

You know, that's a really good idea....

To: jbm@powersleep.org

From: mGreenza@nhl.org

RE: Need some advice

Dear Professor Maas,

Hope you're doing well. It's Mike Greenza. If you recall, I took a few of your classes and also played hockey for the varsity hockey team about five years ago. Both experiences served me very well, and I'm currently playing for the Flyers in the NHL.

I'm writing because I need some advice. Lately, I've been having trouble sleeping. And the more I worry about it, the less rest I seem to get. It's gotten to the point where I'm concerned it may not only be affecting my health but also my performance on the ice. I remember your work with the team, and I was hoping you'd be willing to meet with me and talk some more about this. We'll be playing in Buffalo in two weeks, and I could leave some tickets for you–primo seats right behind the bench. It'll be just like old times! Let me know if you can make it.

All the best, Mike Greenza, #19

To: mGreenza@nhl.org

From: jbm@powersleep.org

RE: Need some advice

Dear Mike,

Are you kidding? Seats behind the bench for a Flyers-Sabres' game? I'm there! But seriously, it's great to hear from you, and I'm willing to help in any way I can. I've been following your career in the sports pages and on your team's website. Seems like you started with a bang but have had some ups and downs recently. Since you graduated there's been so much new research about sleep and its relation to athletic performance. And if you're like most of my former students, you've probably forgotten what I taught you, so you're due for a refresher!

Send me the particulars about the game in Buffalo and when you'd like to meet, and I'll take it from there. But before we get together, do me a favor and answer the following questionnaires then email them back to me. They'll help me understand the challenges you're facing so I can better advise you. Looking forward to seeing you again!

With warmest regards,

Your "olde prof," Jim

Chapter Two

A three-hour drive from Ithaca, New York, where my office is located, to Buffalo is not usually something I'd look forward to in mid-January. But I have to admit the chance to see Mike play in person and also help him improve his game had my adrenaline pumping. We had agreed to meet for a late lunch at the Hyatt, where his team was staying.

"Mike, it's wonderful to see you! You look even bigger and stronger than when you graduated."

"That's the difference between college and professional hockey," said Mike, smiling and extending a beefy hand outside the lobby restaurant. "Lots of time in the weight room, especially during the off-season. I swear their goal is to make us into freight trains on skates."

We spent a few minutes catching up after being seated and ordering, but since I knew his time was limited I got right to it.

"Look Mike, I've reviewed your responses to the sleep quizzes. I think you can definitely benefit from some of the new research I mentioned. But before I get into specifics, can you tell me more about what your sleep schedule is like right now?"

He laughed and rolled his eyes. "Well, with morning practices, night games, weekend day games, and all the travel – one night we'll be in New York and the next we'll be in Los Angeles – maintaining a regular sleep schedule is just about impossible. And I didn't even mention the charity events, media interviews, and my girlfriend who's in Toronto. I spend a lot of time with her when I'm there. Even when I do manage to get to bed at a reasonable hour, I often have trouble falling asleep or I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about what happened in the game or what I have to do tomorrow...."

He shrugged his massive shoulders. Despite his size, he did look tired. I could see it in his eyes.

"Let me give you a brief refresher on what I call my `Golden Rules of Sleeping Well,'" I said. "It's critically important that you take sleep seriously and make it a priority. Believe it or not, sleep is essential to peak athletic performance.

"At your age, you're probably not concerned about longevity or serious illness, but let me remind you that even a modest lack of sleep can lead to a higher risk of hypertension, heart attack, stroke, Type II diabetes, weight gain, and even cancer. And as you mentioned in your email, it can also produce irritability, anxiety, depression and, when it comes to playing hockey, slower reaction time, loss of motor skills and coordination, and a reduced ability to think, remember, make critical decisions, and avoid risky behavior."

"Whoa," is all he said. But that was good. I had his attention.

"First Golden Rule is you have to determine your PSQ or Personal Sleep Quotient and meet it every night. From puberty to about 26, people need 9¼ hours of sleep each night to be fully alert and energetic. Since you're a little older, you can probably do okay with 7½ or 8½ hours per night. But that's as low as you can go. Anything less is likely to affect your performance."

Our food had arrived – two large chicken breasts for Mike and a hamburger for me. He was shaking his head.

"Professor, I'm lucky if I get six hours a night. I just don't have that kind of time."

"Mike, it's a matter of valuing sleep. It's your choice, but if you add even one hour I guarantee you'll see a significant increase in your performance. Many people think they're doing fine on six hours of sleep, but when they do what I'm suggesting, they become entirely different people. Plus, that extra hour of sleep will make you more efficient, effective and put you in a better mood, so you'll get everything done with time to spare."

"Okay, I hear you," he said, "but it's not all under my control. Coach Harkwell usually calls early-morning practices, even after night games."

"That's a problem," I admitted. "We've been trying to educate coaches in all different sports, but they're pretty skeptical. But listen to this: In every case where we've convinced a coach to cut out early-morning practices, the team's performance has improved dramatically. We now know that something happens in your brain after six or seven hours of continuous sleep that improves motor-skill performance. There are these things called sleep spindles that enhance muscle memory. So if a coach schedules practices that shorten sleep, there's no way the team will improve. In fact, early-morning practices are far worse than not practicing at all. It's best to delay practicing until at least 10 or 11 a.m."

"So let me get this right," he said with a point of his fork. "You're saying sleeping later will boost performance more than an early practice?"

"That's correct. And my second Golden Rule, keeping a regular sleep schedule, is just as important as getting enough sleep. You've got to go to bed and get up at the same time every day. This will cure your insomnia by synchronizing the hours you spend in bed with the sleepy phase of your biological clock. That'll be difficult to do when you're traveling cross-country, but we can talk about overcoming jet lag a little later."

"And one more thing. The third Golden Rule is that it's best to get one long block of continuous sleep rather than a few hours here and there. It's critical not only for eliminating fatigue but also consolidating memory and enhancing athletic performance. An occasional late night won't cause too much damage, but reducing your sleep by just one hour for seven consecutive nights has the same effect as pulling one all-nighter. Sleep debt doesn't dissipate by itself over time. Just like credit card debt, it's cumulative. So if you lose several hours of sleep over a few nights, you'll become increasingly more fatigued even if you resume your normal sleep schedule."

Mike pushed his empty plate away and leaned back in his chair. "If I really commit to following these three rules, how soon can I expect to see improvements?"

"One week," I replied without hesitation. "You'll start to feel stronger, more alert, and that should have a significant impact on your game. And to make it easier, I brought a little present for you."

I opened my briefcase and took out a small machine, which I placed on the table between us. In my work with athletes and coaches, I had found this to be the clincher.

"What's that?" asked Mike.

"It's called a ZEO machine. You put it on your nightstand and wear this wireless headband to bed. By measuring and recording brain waves, it will record how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up during the night, what stages of sleep you experienced, and how long you slept overall. In the morning, it'll even provide you with a sleep score, so you can gauge how you did. Athletes really enjoy that aspect of it."

"Cool! How accurate is it?"

"Not as accurate as going to a sleep lab where technicians attach about 15 electrodes to your body, but it's pretty good. Plus, it comes with a jump drive so you can share your data with me over the Internet. Start recording tonight, then send me the results after two weeks. I'll review them and get back to you."

"Awesome! So this is like my own portable sleep coach?"

"Pretty much. You know, most people tend to overestimate how much sleep they get by almost 45 minutes. This device makes it totally objective. It's like using a bathroom scale to gauge how your weight-loss efforts are going."

"Professor, I gotta say this is way better than I expected. I'm so stoked I almost want to skip tonight's game, go back to my room right now, and get started. I can't thank you enough."

"Whoa now, don't go getting too excited. I want to see you play tonight and beat up on those Sabres."

"You got it, Professor. You can pick up those tickets at the Will Call window. It was great seeing you, and I'll be in touch."

And with that he delivered one more crushing handshake and walked off, already seeming a bit more energetic.

The Three Golden Rules of Sleeping to Win

1. Get your body's required amount of sleep every night.

2. Stick to a regular sleep-wake schedule every night.

3. Get your sleep in one continuous block.

Your Personal Sleep Coach

For more information about the ZEO Sleep Manager, visit http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/

Chapter Three

To: mGreenza@nhl.org

From: jbm@powersleep.org

RE: Review of data and suggestions

Dear Mike,

It was great seeing you in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, and thanks again for those tickets. It was a real thrill watching you play. I've reviewed the two weeks of data you sent. It looks like you're getting more sleep, you've established a fairly regular sleep-wake schedule, and you're sleeping in a less fragmented way. Hopefully, you're feeling the positive effects of this. However, your scores are not as high as I'd like to see, so let me make a few additional suggestions.

First, you're still not getting as much overall sleep as you should be. (Remember that someone your age needs 7½ to 8½ hours per night, compared to when you were in college and needed 9¼.) Also, you're not getting enough Stage 4 deep sleep and REM sleep. To help you understand why these stages are particularly important to athletes, let me briefly review what a great night's sleep should look like. This gets a bit technical, so just make believe you're back in one of my classes.

A healthy sleeper usually drifts off in 15 to 20 minutes. Your data shows you're typically falling asleep much faster than that, so this tells me you're still sleep-deprived. Try either moving up your bedtime or pushing back your wake time by 30 minutes.

Now, as you may recall, sleep can basically be divided into REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM components. REM is the period in which most dreams (like winning the Stanley Cup) occur. Non-REM, which is also known as "slow-wave sleep," is subdivided into several stages, each with distinct brainwaves and purposes.

As you're closing your eyes and becoming relaxed, your brainwaves get slower and more regular. As you drift off, you enter Stage 1, where slow theta waves dominate brain activity and muscles further relax. The transition into Stage 2 is marked by a complete disengagement from the environment and is regarded by researchers as the true beginning of sleep. Next come Stages 3 and then 4 – the deepest sleep of the night. During these delta-wave stages, blood pressure drops, respiration slows, and blood flow to muscles decreases. For athletes, this slow-wave sleep is critical because it's when the secretion of human growth hormone (HGH) peaks. As you know, this stimulates muscle development and tissue repair.

After 30 to 40 minutes in Stage 4, you retrace your steps through Stages 3 and 2. However, instead of returning to Stage 1, your sympathetic nervous system becomes more active than it is even when awake.

Blood flow to the brain, respiration, pulse rate, blood pressure and body temperature all increase. Your eyes dart back and forth under their lids, and you enter REM sleep. This is when the previous day's experiences are solidified into memory. And here's the key: This includes muscle memory. So everything you worked on in practice? This is where it comes together.

It takes approximately 90 minutes to cycle through all these stages one time. When you're sleeping adequately, you'll visit REM four or five times during the night, with each period being twice as long as the last. That's why it's vital for athletes to get the recommended amount. If you cut even an hour of sleep, you're missing a huge portion of REM.

Mike, if these aren't reasons enough to keep working on this, something else happens in Stage 2–but only after about 6 ½ hours of sleep. We see the appearance of sleep spindles, triggering a cascade of calcium into the brain's motor cortex. This lays down even more lasting muscle memory for step-by-step sequences and quick, subconscious recall. Can you imagine thinking through every movement involved in a slapshot? By the time you did that, someone would have stolen the puck. So practice your slap-shot and then get at least eight hours of sleep. By the next day it will be in your permanent motor-muscle memory. Without adequate sleep, what you work so hard on learning in practice is lost.

Got all that? Great!

Now here are just a few more pointers for sleeping better. They're little things, but they can make a big difference:

Make sure the bedroom is quiet, dark, and cool (somewhere between 65 and 67 degrees is ideal).

Keep bedroom clutter to a minimum and try to reserve the room only for sleeping. I know that's not possible in hotels, but at home keep the computer and television out.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Sleep to Win!by James B. Maas Haley A. Davis Copyright © 2013 by Dr. James B. Maas. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.