Tip: Increase the Quality of Your Sleep

Lack of sleep and poor sleep quality greatly affects your health and your body's ability to deal with stress. While eight hours is commonly touted as the recommended amount of sleep we should be getting, it may be the quality of your sleep that's more important than the quantity. So, if you can't always get eight hours make sure what you do get is very restful.

It's been shown that hard training athletes have sleep disturbances in part related to higher nighttime epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine concentrations. Drinking decaffeinated green tea before bed may help combat increased norepinephrine levels.

3 Ingredients for Better Sleep

The next level after green tea is a powerful supplement called Z-12™ which contains three anxiety-reducing, sleep-inducing ingredients:

• 4-Amino-3-Phenyl-Butanoic Acid HCl (PhGABA)
• L-Theanine (yep, the same good stuff found in green tea)
• 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP)

Two capsules is just enough to knock me out until morning with no drowsiness upon waking. This is one of the few supplements that works for my clients the first time they take it.

In addition to the aftereffects of poor sleep, getting quality deep sleep is also important for what happens hormonally during the course of the night. While engaged in periods of deep sleep, your body's cortisol secretions are decreased while growth hormone levels rise.

A simple way to optimize sleep for muscle growth? Just get to bed earlier. Turn off the TV, shutdown your computer, make sure your room is completely dark, and try to string together fourteen nights of high-quality sleep to get your body back on track.