How to sleep like a Premier League footballer

[sospan]

Well when I saw this heading on the BBC website, I thought great! I have always wanted to drift off fuelled by champagne with a Eastern European super model either side of me .......

However, the article was far more interesting than anything that may appear in a tabloid paper and was very informative on how we should change our approach to to sleep and gave me a minor "ahh that's why!" moment.

Whilst not about Head injuries, the article has a lot of similarities with the way sportsmen treat sleep and the way because of our injuries we are forced to treat sleep.

Post injury many of us have trouble with sleep; either we can't sleep, restless, sleep to much or fall asleep randomly or combinations of all these. What the article says is that we should think of sleep as cycles.

Our sleep follows a natural 90-minute cycle as we move between deep NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM sleep. The important thing, he says, is not to interrupt one of these phases, so structure your sleep in multiples of 90 minutes: this could be 7.5, 6, or 4.5 hours. This is apparently much better than trying to enforce going to bed at a fixed time and getting up at fixed time. We should get 35 (90 minute) sleep cycles over a week and it doesn't matter if we get less sleep one night as long as we make it up later on.

Apparently, humans were designed to sleep polyphasically, - shorter, more often. Which is what a lot of us do post injury anyway. We do something, it exhausts us and then we sleep. Hence by the time the night comes we have had quite a bit of sleep requirement so we don't need or can't get a full 8 hours sleep.

This shorter sleep, more often fits in with the notion that we are designed to rest twice a day; midday and also between 5 and 7pm. Many athletes use these times of rest to aid recovery. Anybody whom uses public transport is well aware of the number of snoring comatose commuters slumped in the seats on the way home at night!

After decades working very long hours, seven days a week with limited rest. I couldn't work out, why now I fall asleep during the day typically after lunch and early evening. Now I know,it is perfectly natural and quite reassuring to find out that this is fine and potentially beneficial. If don't give into sleep my speech, balance and concentration goes but restores when I wake up.

So maybe pre-injury I was doing it wrong ?

The full article is here

bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl...

[Hidden]

The siesta strikes back!

Good summary, and good to know other people are hitting the wall at the same times!

Like you I tended to work long intensive days and the fatigue now limits so much.

As you say if you don't close your eyes when your body tells you, the option of just pushing through no longer works as your words, balance and ability to process thoughts just disappear without your permission!

The next stage for me is tremors, or random limbs not responding to the move command...not scary any more, just have to roll through it.

All part of a normal day now, in fact that would still class as a relatively "good" day, just annoying, unless you're in work, then you're stuffed!

I might try and actually schedule in 90 min at 6pm and see if it helps to plan it into the day properly rather than fight it and feel like I'm failing every day!

(Although if I'm working I'm usually asleep by 8pm in the week just to survive!)

Do you know what's a good period of time if it has to be less than 90 min during the day?

Ax