Optimizing Sleep
Sleep is becoming one of my top focuses to optimize my athletic performance and overall wellness. Many people commonly overlook sleep habits because of societal pressures such as demanding jobs, late-night television and media usage, and alcohol and caffeine consumption. Especially for young people aggressively trying to jumpstart their careers and social lives, it is very easy to fall into a lifestyle that detracts from sleep quality. I deeply empathize with these lifestyle pulls as they have influenced me throughout my life. The quality of my sleep habits has ebbed and flowed over the years, but improving it is now a priority for me over the last few months. I find that when I stay disciplined on prioritizing my sleep that I not only perform better in my fitness goals but also feel happier and healthier overall. This post will show you some of the gadgets and strategies I have been using to optimize my sleep.
8 Sleep
The largest and most meaningful investment that I have made toward sleep optimization is using the 8 Sleep Pod Pro Cover (a photo of one of these 8 Sleep systems is above). This tool is a cover for the mattress that allows the user to regulate the temperature throughout the night and to track sleep quality. 8 Sleep has very expensive products, but I believe wholeheartedly that the investment has been worth the money for me. I prefer to sleep at very cool temperatures, and 8 Sleep allows me to set the exact temperature that suits my needs. In fact, research studies and health experts recommendations support my use of cool temperatures during sleep to improve sleep quality. 8 Sleep allows the user to control the bed’s temperature through a dynamic phone app, and the user can create temperature settings that change throughout the night. The app also has algorithms that give their best recommendations on settings that the technology believes will work best for each individual user. You can see the user interface for these algorithms where is says “Autopilot” in the photo below. For me, I begin the night at a very cool temperature, and the temperature rises throughout my sleep. Here are some examples of the user interface:
While I primarily use the 8 Sleep to set the bed’s temperature, the data and features provided by 8 Sleep are awesome. I do not utilize the data and tools often because my habit is to rely on my Whoop to provide me all of the data. (Is it surprising that I have too much data than needed…) I believe that the Whoop data has slightly higher accuracy since the Whoop’s strap is directly connected to my heart rate (on the wrist), but the metics between the two platforms are often very comparable. If someone only has an 8 Sleep and no Whoop, then the data provided would add immense value to tracking sleep performance.
Whoop
I have talked in-depth about the Whoop data before, but I want to reiterate how important this tool is for me to understand my sleep quality. If I did not have my Whoop (and 8 Sleep), I would be interpreting my sleep routine based on feel entirely. Doing what feels natural may work for some people, but I highly value using data to inform my sleep decisions. Tracking sleep metrics often provides personal accountability to not lose the drive to improve sleep. The consistent data provides a mental nudge each day to think a little harder about the lifestyle decisions that influence my sleep.
The “Sleep Score” out of 100% is the headline data point. This score simplifies all of the various metrics tracked by the Whoop each night in order to give the use an overall snapshot of sleep performance. The Whoop separates sleep scores into 3 buckets:
Green — 67% or greater — Optimal sleep quality
Yellow — 34% to 66% — Mediocre to Decent sleep quality
Red — 33% or lower — Poor sleep quality
The three color buckets provide the perfect target to shoot for: as many Green recoveries as possible. As you can see, I have had a very solid start to July with my sleep scores. The scores are calculated from a variety of sleep metrics that are based on the user’s heart rate, respiratory rate, and length of sleep. The Whoop provides 4 key metrics on sleep that drive the sleep, but also it tracks a whole host of other statistics. The 4 key metrics are:
HRV – Heart Rate Variability — (the higher the better)
RHR – Resting Heart Rate — (the lower the better)
Duration — How long the user slept
Respiratory Rate — Rate of breathing — (the lower the better)
Below is one of the best nights of sleep that I have had so far in July with my 4 key metric shown. Even though my duration was lower than my average (and lower than an ideal length), my HRV was so much higher than average and my RHR and Respiratory Rate so much lower that my score was close to maximum. If I had been able to sleep 8+ hours with those same metrics, my score likely would have neared 99%:
Some of the other interesting data that it provides are:
Sleep Performance (the percentage of sleep duration based on the optimal recommendation)
Recommended Sleep Needed
Duration of Sleep Stages (Light, Deep, REM, Awake)
Disturbances (how many times you toss and turn, which I do a lot)
Sleep Debt (the total duration of sleep under the optimal length)
Recommended Bed and Wake Times
Below are a variety of examples of the Whoop app’s user interface that provides the data. The photos with the dark gray background are examples of daily data, and the photos with the white background are example of weekly data provided in the “Weekly Performance Assessment” that the app curates for the user.
The Whoop interface also curates a “Monthly Performance Assessment” to track fitness and sleep trends over a longer time frame. My Monthly Assessment from May will be showcased in the next section.
Reduce Drinking
Not everyone understands how much drinking alcohol influences the quality of our sleep, but the negative impact is massive. On nights that I have 2+ drinks in a night, my HRV score, which is likely the best indicator of our bodies’ recovery, can reduce 20% to 70% depending on the amount of alcohol consumed. This is not just a minor detractor; drinking alcohol can totally compromise the recovery our bodies receive on a given night.
For these reasons, I have been drinking far less consistently, especially compared to my early 20s. I even went an entire month without drinking during May to focus on maximal quality fitness, health, and recovery. Below is how my sleep metrics compared on average between April and May, but it is important to note that I did not drink on the majority of the nights in April and this comparison is based on the overall average. (In March, I did not wear my Whoop for most of the month as my sleep and fitness habits were very poor, and I just didn’t even want to know the poor metrics…)
The 23% improvement in average HRV between April and May is the most notable takeaway from all of this data for me; this is a considerable improvement. I hope that I can eventually inch my average HRV close to 70 over the coming months. On the final screenshot, you can see that alcohol on average lowers sleep scores by 12 percent, but this average includes nights when I drank only 1 or 2 drinks. As a stark comparison, see a night of optimal sleep compared to a night of disastrous sleep after excessive alcohol indulgence:
After the July 4th holiday, I am now once again avoiding alcohol leading up to my two races in August. I want to be laser-focused on absorbing the final weeks of training with the best overnight recoveries possible so that I can perform at my best and hopefully reach my time goals. More importantly, I tend to feel happier and healthier when I avoid consistent drinking. The social pressure to drink can often feel so strong especially at large parties like holidays and weddings, but learning to overcome these temptations and enjoying social gatherings without drinking alcohol can be a valuable practice. That said, enjoying special occasions or even a relaxed night at home with a few drinks can be a fun experience or stress relief, and there is nothing wrong with that. As my Dad always says, “everything in moderation.”
Consistency – Timing & Duration
Everyone knows that sleep duration is important to our energy levels and recovery on a daily basis and that most experts recommend about 8 hours of sleep per night. Another very important factor is the consistency of when you go to bed and wake up each day. Developing consistency on this timing has always been a challenge for me. Depending on my schedule, I often will alter my exact bed and wake times so that I can avoid missing hours of sleep. This can be especially difficult on weekends when I and many people tend to stay up later and sleep in more. My consistency of times to bed and waking up is still not ideal, but I am making improvements. Luckily, my Whoop helps me track the statistics on my sleep consistency. Here is the data on sleep consistency and duration (“performance:) for last week’s Weekly Performance Assessment:
Consistency and duration are probably the two weakest links of my sleep quality right now. I hope I can report back in a few weeks or months with improvement!
Mouth Tape
Another tool that I use often is applying mouth tape overnight. This practice may sound strange, but the purpose is to ensure that I breathe through my nose. Nasal breathing is far better for us than mouth breathing, and I have been a chronic mouth breather my whole life. This topic is discussed deeply in Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor, which is a fascinating book on the importance of various breathing habits informed by scientific research. That book will likely deserve an entire post in the near future.
I am not yet committed to using mouth tape every night, but I try to do this routine a few nights a week. I sometimes subconsciously remove the tape during the middle of the night, but over time, I have become more consistent at sleeping through the entire night with the tape. When I do successfully make it the whole night, I often notice a boost in my HRV and Whoop Sleep Score.
Avoid Screens Before Bed
Using our phones or watching TV before going to sleep is a very common, bad habit, especially for young people. This tendency is a trap I fall into too often, but I am working toward changing this pattern. I empathize with those who like to catch up on communication and social media before going to sleep as this practice may be hard to resist if the habit is ingrained in our daily routine. That said, all of the research on sleep is indisputable that using screens before bed is detrimental to our sleep quality and circadian rhythm.
As Dr. Huberman discusses in one of his podcast episodes that I mentioned in my last post, blue light and light in general are triggers for our body to start our internal wakefulness clock at the beginning of the day. When we receive exposure to bright, blue light from screens late in the day when our internal clocks are supposed to be winding down, the circadian rhythm and related hormones that promote sleep can be disrupted. Human bodies have evolved to begin rest when the sun goes down, and the modern stimuli from bright lights with addicting media content does not align with our evolutionary proclivities.
From my personal experience trying to break this habit, when I do successfully limit screens before bed, my sleep metrics tend to receive a boost and I fall asleep faster. I will need to continue nurturing the discipline needed to break this habit, but I am happy with the initial momentum I am achieving.
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If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading about my (potentially overboard) obsession on sleep optimization! I hope it provides deep value and actionable insights, and we shall see if my tinkering pays off for my endurance races soon.