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Sign UpSleep and hormones are deeply connected. Logan Pendergrast, Ph.D., breaks down the major hormones involved in sleep and wakefulness and offers tips on how to work with them—not against them—when your schedule runs overnight.
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so now we'll move into talking a bit
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about hormones and as I mentioned
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hormones are oscillating over the course
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of a day in ways to help us maintain our
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function and optimize our function
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during either the early part of the day
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or the later part of the day and there
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are a few examples of this one primary
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example is cortisol you may have heard
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of cortisol before this is associated
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with being the stress hormone which we
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associate with being a bad thing
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typically but actually uh cortisol is a
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hormone that helps us feel more awake
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and alert and it's the case in the
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scientific research that individuals who
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have higher levels of morning cortisol
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perform about 20% better on memory and
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attention tasks so this hormone is
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helping individuals retain memory and
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feel alert another example of a hormone
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that changes over the course of the day
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is melatonin i'd mentioned this in
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previous slides but melatonin helps our
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body to prepare for sleep and part of
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the way it does this is by reducing our
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body temperature which prepares us for
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deeper phases of sleep such as phase
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three and phase 4 sleep and speaking of
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phase three and phase four sleep this
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moves us to growth hormone and growth
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hormone is a hormone that is associated
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with repair of our body's tissues such
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as our muscle and it's a recovery
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hormone that can help us recover from
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exercise or our daily activities and it
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is elevated actually during phase three
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and phase four sleep so this is another
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reason why it's important to maintain a
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steady biological rhythm so we can reach
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these deeper stages of sleep which can
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help us recover from our daily
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activities continuing forward here with
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just a few more hormones our next
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hormone that we'll talk about is insulin
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so insulin is typically associated with
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diabetes however it is a helpful hormone
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for our general energy metabolism what
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insulin does is is it takes sugar from
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our bloodstream and deposits it into our
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cells to be used for energy and insulin
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is at its most elevated earlier upon
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waking and so if we're consuming foods
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such as breads or cereals those foods
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are more digested and then placed into
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our cells more readily by insulin
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earlier upon waking
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the next hormone here that we'll talk
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about is testosterone so like insulin
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testosterone is elevated in the earlier
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part of our day and it is responsible in
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both males and in females for greater
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levels of energy improvements in libido
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and greater muscle strength so we can
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capitalize upon these benefits earlier
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upon waking through
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testosterone and our last hormone here
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is thyroid hormone so thyroid hormone is
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responsible for cellular energy
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metabolism and energy generally in the
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cells in our body and thyroid hormone is
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increased later after waking so as we
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approach sleep thyroid hormone is our
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general means of energy production so as
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a general takeaway here after talking
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about all these hormones the circadian
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rhythms generally help us manage these
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hormones in a tightly regulated process
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so that we can function more as we move
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throughout our
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