Sleepy Sunday Newsletter

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. 

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.

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.

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.

8hrS June update: (re)launch, the order of a lifetime, taking stuff offline and building the A-team.