When patients come to see me for fatigue, low testosterone, weight gain, brain fog, poor recovery, or low motivation, there is one question I almost always ask:
“How are you sleeping?”
It sounds simple, but sleep can affect almost everything we're trying to improve.
You can have a great supplement plan, exercise regularly, eat well, and work on optimizing your hormones but if you're consistently getting poor-quality sleep, you're fighting an uphill battle.
I think of sleep as your body's nightly maintenance period.
While you're sleeping, your body is doing much more than simply “resting.”
Sleep plays an important role in hormone regulation, glucose metabolism, appetite, immune function, brain function, cardiovascular health, tissue recovery, and nervous system regulation.
When sleep starts falling apart, those systems can start getting disrupted too.
And sometimes the symptoms look like something completely different.
This is especially important in men's health.
A patient may come to me because he's tired, gaining weight, struggling with motivation, recovering poorly from workouts, and noticing a decline in libido.
Naturally, he thinks:
“My testosterone must be low.”
Maybe it is.
But I also want to know whether he's sleeping five hours a night, waking up repeatedly, snoring, working late, drinking alcohol before bed, or potentially dealing with sleep apnea.
Poor sleep can influence testosterone production and many of the same areas we associate with hormonal health.
Before we start chasing numbers, I want to understand what may be influencing them.
Sleep can also affect how your body handles glucose, hunger, appetite, and energy.
Ever notice how much harder it is to make good food choices after a terrible night of sleep?
That's not simply a lack of willpower.
Sleep restriction can alter the systems involved in appetite and metabolic regulation. Over time, poor sleep can make managing body composition and metabolic health more difficult.
Then the cycle starts.
Poor sleep leads to fatigue. Fatigue leads to less activity. You reach for more caffeine. Workouts suffer. Food choices change. Stress increases. Then you sleep poorly again.
This is where I think healthcare and wellness can get backward.
You're tired, so you add a stimulant.
Your workouts are suffering, so you add another supplement.
Your testosterone isn't where you want it, so you focus entirely on hormones.
You're gaining weight, so you look for another diet.
Meanwhile, you're sleeping five, six or less hours a night and wondering why nothing seems to stick.
Sometimes we don't need to keep adding things.
We need to address the foundation.
Sleep is one of the areas we look at when evaluating the bigger picture of a patient's health.
Because if we want to improve hormones, metabolism, energy, cognition, recovery, and long-term health, we can't ignore what happens during roughly one-third of our lives.
You can do a lot of things right BUT poor sleep can throw everything off.
- Dr. C
