4 Ways In Which Bad Sleep Makes You A Lot Weaker

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Sleep stands as a cornerstone for your health and strength. When you skimp on shut-eye, the effects ripple through your fitness, clarity of mind, and overall vitality. It’s not just about feeling groggy or reaching for an extra coffee; poor sleep can undermine your physical strength in subtle yet significant ways.

As you navigate your schedule, you may overlook how vital quality sleep is for maintaining your strength. From diminishing muscle recovery to impacting endurance, the consequences of inadequate rest can hinder your active lifestyle and goals. Let’s see how it does that exactly!

Decreased Muscle Repair

When you’re short on sleep, your body starts to skimp on the crucial process of muscle repair. During deep sleep, your pituitary gland gets busy releasing growth hormone, which is essential for muscle growth and repair. But if you’re not clocking enough sleep, you’re cutting down on this hormone’s production line.

Muscle repair isn’t just about bulking up after a gym session. It’s essential for day-to-day recovery, too. Without proper sleep, those tiny tears in your muscle fibers from everyday activities don’t heal as they should. This can lead to a decrease in muscle strength and can leave you feeling weaker overall.

Consider the microscopic level, where cells called fibroblasts repair and build tissue. They’re like the construction workers of your body, piecing everything back together. But without enough sleep, they’re doing very little work. They can’t do their jobs effectively, and as a result, your muscle repair suffers.

Regular resistance training combined with adequate sleep normally equals steady muscle improvement. But when you neglect your sleep, you’re sabotaging those gains. Your muscle-building efforts during the day need to be matched by nighttime recovery.

Also read: 9 Vegan Dinner Options That Will Help You Sleep Like A Baby

Heightened Stress Levels

Poor sleep can also jack up your stress hormones, specifically cortisol. Think of cortisol as your body’s built-in alarm system. It’s great for responding to an actual crisis, but not so much when it keeps firing due to lack of sleep.

So what’s actually happening in your body? Your brain figures something must be wrong if you’re not getting enough sleep, so it ramps up cortisol production. This can create a vicious cycle: you’re stressed because you can’t sleep, and then you can’t sleep because you’re stressed.

Poor sleep also messes with other chemicals in your brain, like serotonin and dopamine. These are your ‘feel good’ neurotransmitters, and when they’re out of whack, your mood and stress levels can really take a hit.

If you’re feeling stressed and aren’t looking forward to your workouts, you’re not giving it your all. As a result, you’re not building as much strength as you could. On top of that, cortisol breaks down molecules and prohibits protein synthesis, which means you’re body is not getting the protein it needs to damage muscle.

Impaired Immune Function

When you skimp on sleep, your body’s defense system suffers.

First off, let’s talk about T cells. They protect you against most infections. Less sleep means fewer T cells, and that makes you an easy target for viruses. During sleep, these cells amp up their ability to stick to and destroy cells infected by viruses. So, if you’re not sleeping enough, they’re less sticky and less effective.

Next up, cytokines. While you’re sleeping, your body should be producing these proteins that are critical in fighting inflammation and infections. Lose sleep and you’re not producing enough of these to keep you healthy. This makes it tougher for your body to bounce back from illness.

Then there’s your immune memory. This is all about your body’s ability to recognize and recall past enemies like the flu or colds. Skimp on sleep and it’s like wiping the hard drive of your immune system’s database.

Being more susceptible to infections and viruses means you’re more likely to feel sick quicker. This means less time working out and also means your body is spending more resources recovering from infections and viruses, instead of using those resources to build strength and muscle.

Poor Emotional Regulation

When you don’t catch enough sleep, your ability to manage those wild emotions can take a nosedive. Emotional volatility goes up, which means you might find yourself on an unpredictable rollercoaster of feelings.

This happens because sleep loss messes with your brain’s prefrontal cortex—that’s the part steering your emotional control. With inadequate rest, your brain’s like a car with dodgy brakes; it’s harder to stop once you start speeding towards anger or annoyance.

Sleep deprivation also cranks up the volume on your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that deals with fear and other emotions. So you’re more likely to exaggerate the negative which can lead to you feeling stressed or anxious without a good reason.

All of this results in you feeling more stressed (which increases cortisol and prohibits muscle recovery) but it could also mean that you’re less likely to make decisions that are good for you. If you feel very annoyed, you’re not likely to want to get a nice workout in or eat the right types of food.

As a result, your strength gains take a hit in the long term. Ensuring you get proper sleep can help keep the emotional waves at a modest level, and keep your strength training on track.

Stefan K.

Stefan has been vegan since 2019 and has been regularly working on his strength since the beginning of 2023. He’s on a mission to help other vegans get stronger and have all of them achieve the quality of life they deserve.