Sleepy Sunday Newsletter
by 8hrS
Chapter 7 - July
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Selfcare Tip of the Month.
👆 Easier said than done, but try and see stress as something positive and even healthy. Studies were done where people got either told the (true) positive benefits of stress or the negative effects of stress. Then both groups were subjected to a stressful situation. The group that was told that stress was actually good for them performed remarkably better than the other group and felt great afterwards. Your mental and physical health are intrinsically connected anyhow, so a growth mindset will even benefit you physically. Moreover, it's not like you're bullshitting yourself: some stress is actually great for f.e. memory and brain-function! It's only when it becomes chronic (and you believe it to be bad) that it starts to wreck havoc.
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Sleep Tip of the Month
😴 Tossing and turning and not being able to fall asleep? Try and challenge yourself to stay awake. Chances are you might be in dreamland soon after. It's known as the Sleep Paradox. It's similar to when you tell your brain 'I don't want to see apples'. What happens: soon your brain shows you images of apples. Similarly by focusing on 'not going to sleep', your brain takes it as an instruction to paradoxically do just that and you might feel sleepy soon after.
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Media tips of the Month.
👂 Listen: Matthew Walker explores a really interesting theory of Sleep as basically an antioxidant for free radicals in his latest podcast. Not only will you learn about what exactly are free radicals, but also where sound Sleep comes into play. If you want to read more about it, also see main section of this newsletter.
📚 Read: Sleep by Nick Littlehales is a very interesting book. Admittedly, the line 'the myth of 8 hours' triggered us, but he's a lot more diligent about it than that statement uncovers. And as one of the leading Sleep performance coaches, having worked with everyone from Olympic athletes to the Team Sky cyclists, he's a voice to be reckoned with.
👀 Watch: James Smith is a refreshingly transparent Personal Trainer and fitness influencer, who gave his take on the greatest (legal) performance enhancer ever: Sleep. His latest video is both hilarious and spot on.
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The Free Radical Flux Theory of Sleep.
You might have heard of 'free radicals' before, but what are free radicals exactly? To simplify it: they're unstable molecules in the body that can build up in cells and actually cause damage to other molecules such as DNA, lipids or proteins. This can increase the odds of rogue cells (aka cancer or other diseases) multiplying. In short: no bueno! And how do these free radicals come to be? It's actually an unavoidable byproduct of normal cell metabolism, hence our bodies also have the defence mechanisms to take care of these rogue agents. But you can help your body as well: opposite of the spectrum of free radicals you have another type of compounds you've certainly heard of: antioxidants. In short these are chemicals that interact with the free radicals and neutralise them, hence their nickname 'free radical scavengers'. And how do you get these antioxidants, guess what: a healthy diet (many berries and cherries f.e. are packed with antioxidants), exercise and healthy routines.
But... (and here comes our angle) ... Sleep might just be one of the most powerful antioxidants. We've discussed before that the actual reason why we Sleep is still largely unknown, yet one very interesting theory dating back to 1994 is called the Free Radical Flux Theory, which proposed that cerebral free radicals accumulate during wakefulness and are then actually removed during Sleep. This is accomplished by a decreased rate of formation of these radicals but also an increased efficiency of endogenous antioxidant mechanisms. Moral of the Story: one (of the many) function(s) of Sleep is to act as an antioxidant for the brain.
See the graph below and fully study to be found here.
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8hrS June update: (re)launch, the order of a lifetime, taking stuff offline and building the A-team.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: things are moving. Fast.
Our (re)launch is live and poppin' on the site, we couldn't be happier with the result.
But what's cooking in the background is even bigger, way bigger.
All we're going to say for now is:
1) We're building an all-star team;
2) After over a year of development, we've put in the order of a lifetime;
3) 8hrS deserves to live in the real world... Offline is the new luxury.
Hello friend who reads to the end: here's a gift for our faithful readers. Shop with 10% discount applied automatically at checkout through this link.
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Be your own Guinea Pig.
Many supplement brands claim they can predict what you need from a 4-question quiz (and guess what, the result is always a multivitamin 🙄). There's only two ways you can test what works: 1) get actual blood-work done to check deficiencies 2) test. it. out. (1 month on, 1 month off, 1 supplement at a time and keep the variables stable). Do your research, but don't be afraid to be your own guinea pig. However, it should always be clear that the fundamentals (movement, nutrition, routines) will net you 80-90% of all benefits. Skills before pills. Supplements should be exactly that: a supplement to a healthy lifestyle that can potentially unlock that extra 10%. And even within the realm of supplements: the high quality 20% will net you 80% of the benefits. There is absolutely no need to have a stack like displayed here, we just really like testing things (and reporting on it)! 🔬
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A note from the Founder.
Are you driven or being dragged?
In studies performed on rats, they first starved a pair of rats to the brink of starvation and then released the scent of cheese in the front of their cage, measuring the force at which the rats pulled with by their tail. Next, they took the same rats, same cage, but this time released the scent of a cat at the back. Guess what? The rats pulled with almost twice the force in the latter setting. Although the experiment is imperfect and even borderline gimmicky, moral is that fear is a strong(er) motivator than passion or drive. Reflecting back on my own goals and motivations, I can certainly see how I would be dragged by some stuff. Being real with myself: the journey I've been on with health and athletic performance might stem from having a very protective upbringing and being labelled with all these 'allergies and intolerances' as a kid (from things I couldn't eat to things I couldn't do). It might be my play of proving to myself and the outside world that I AM strong and healthy after all. And I know for certain that I'm trying to prove some people wrong that have always tried to keep me and my dreams small.
Then again, I truly and thoroughly enjoy exercise, am fascinated by the human body and processes and extremely passionate about building 8hrS and pursuing this vision of a better self through Sleep and Recovery. The 'fear' of not being enough even serves as an additional match to the fire. So what does it really matter? As with many things, the truth of the matter is probably somewhere in between anyway. But, without getting caught up in it, it remains an interesting thought experiment...
What's driving you? And maybe equally importantly: what are you being dragged by?
Mathias
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