There are three critical pillars to good health — diet, exercise, and sleep — so the fact that 84 million adults in the United States aren’t getting solid, uninterrupted sleep each night is worrisome.
This month, Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román and the team at No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida, dive into the importance of sleep when it comes to men’s health, which includes keeping your testosterone at optimal levels.
To give you a broader idea about how important sleep is for your overall wellness, it helps to realize the many processes that occur when you’re asleep. Here are just a few of them:
There’s a good deal of activity in your brain, too. During your sleep, your brain sifts through the events of the day and creates memories.
Think of sleep as a time when your body takes advantage of the fact that your overactive and thinking mind is quieted. This allows your body to take stock, scan itself, and spend time making necessary repairs and corrections.
As we just noted, sleep is a time when your metabolic system resets and balances itself. During the night, your body regulates critical hormones, including:
Your testosterone levels are generally low when you fall asleep. These levels start to go up during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, so any delay getting to REM sleep or disruptions in REM sleep can lead to lower testosterone production.
Ongoing research is being conducted into the effects of lack of sleep on testosterone levels and researchers are confirming a connection. For example, one study found that young males who got less than 5 hours of sleep per night for a week experienced a 10%-15% decrease in hormone levels.
If you’re having problems with sleep, make an appointment with Dr. Irizarry-Román so he can evaluate the effects that this issue is having on your health.
From there, he can come up with a program to help you get the sleep you need, as well as the testosterone. In most cases, he recommends a multipronged approach that can include one or more of the following:
Our team can also go over some lifestyle changes that can improve sleep, such as curbing alcohol consumption and exercising more.
If you want to get on the road to better sleep and better health, including hormonal health, we invite you to contact No Mercy Sports Medicine at 305-614-6757 to schedule a consultation. You can also use the message form on our website to request an appointment anytime.
