When it comes to training, muscle building and sports performance, one is inclined to mention among the aspects do not overlook the importance of sleep.
What is sleep?
It is a physiological process, as opposed to waking, temporarily suspending the interaction between the subject and the external environment.
In other words, we reversibly alters consciousness, in fact, simply a noise or a stimulus to return fire.
Faced with a State of apparent calm hides a brain activity even more than 10 times the waking state, trigger registers and processes back to the physiological equilibrium (homeostasis) and hormonal level (GH) secretion.
Sleep is one of the actions that our body performs to recharge and do it for too few hours means:
- review of circadian cycles, resulting in changing patterns of our body's hormone production during the day;
- increased levels of cortisol (stress hormone) and increased accumulation of fat (lithogenesis) and protein catabolism;
- increase of hunger due to the fact that our body consumes more energy while awake;
- lowering of the immune system.
If we care about our health in the long run, sleep must represent an integral part of our lives; allows recovery (supercompensation), saves energy by reducing metabolic activity and body temperature, promotes learning by setting the memory and facilitating the incorporation of new behaviors learned in vigil.
What is however more just hours to spend in bed? When risk overtraining?
In ancient times the man had a sleep-wake cycle regulated by the Sun, which means they could get to sleep even 12 hours in the darkest periods, but also because of technological progress this discourse has changed: it is not uncommon to have an average of 6 hours of sleep a night, as it is not impossible to find people who sleep during the day and are awake at night.
What does this mean?
The man has some very high adaptive capacity and this led him to change their metabolism to suit your needs. There is therefore a universal recipe will provide adequate nutrition and important always conform to our own devices and that they are sustainable over the long term (minimum 6/8 hours per night). Professional athletes with high workloads (morning, afternoon and evening) require a precise programming between sleeping and waking, the amateur has the possibility to obtain improvements, regardless of training hours treating the amount of sleep.
