How Sleep Affects Your Energy Levels

If there are areas of your life that are lacking like sleep, diet, and exercise, it's probably severely affecting your energy levels!

Just like breathing, sleep is just as critical to our body as other basic functions.

Sleep is needed for a number of reasons including energy conservation, restoration of our tissues and cognitive function, emotion regulation, and immune health. But there are other factors that you should be considering throughout your day to regulate yourself. Are you getting the right nutrients and foods to fuel your body? Did you know that the food you consume can have an effect on your sleep cycle and actually getting a good night’s rest? Let’s dive a little deeper!

Sleep Satisfaction

Sleep satisfaction, which refers to one’s subjective perception of their quality of sleep, can also impact energy levels. One study found that poorer subjective sleep quality predicted next-day fatigue in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Sleep quality may also moderate the relationship between physical activity and feelings of fatigue. This indicates that diet, exercise, and sleep all interact and influence our feelings of energy and our energy balance.

Diet & Exercise

So it all goes back to lifestyle choices. The relationship between lifestyle choices and sleep impacts our energy balance. Energy balance is used to describe the net outcome of energy intake (food consumption) with energy expenditure (physical activity).

First, you must ask yourself if you are exercising regularly. Healthy behaviors like walking, jogging, yoga, or anything that gets your body moving contribute to better sleep quality and increased energy. Secondly, consider your diet. Diet and exercise become the biggest factors in relation to positively or negatively impacting the jobs our energy systems are doing for us. For example, a high-calorie diet can disrupt circadian rhythms, and a lack of nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D may negatively affect sleep duration. Consuming junk food or anything that lacks nutritional value will eventually catch up with your body, causing you to crash and disrupt not only your sleep cycles but also the way your body produces energy.

Check out my video where I expand on the science behind nutrients and your energy levels!