#080 How Heat Therapy Improves Slow Wave Sleep
FoundMyFitness
Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.
4.8 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2023
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
Heat therapy, such as using a sauna or soaking in a hot bath, may significantly improve your slow wave sleep. My latest episode delves into the fascinating intersection between exercise and passive body heating and elucidates how high energy expenditure exercise and heat exposure share nuanced mechanisms in sleep regulation. Some key aspects explored include:
- The surprising role of the immune system in regulating sleep through somnogenic cytokines, immune signals like IL-1B and TNF-alpha, released in response to heat stress and exercise.
- The interconnected nature of thermoregulation and sleep, particularly in the brain, which highlights the importance of overlapping sleep regulation and heat loss processes. This involves warm-sensing preoptic area neurons in the preoptic area of the hypothalamus, a region known to play a crucial role in sleep regulation.
- The intricate, bidirectional relationship between growth hormone (GH) and slow-wave sleep (SWS). With the majority of daily GH secretion occurring during the initial phase of SWS, stimulants of SWS, such as heat exposure, can result in enhanced GH secretion, establishing a strong connection between GH and sleep regulation.
- The varying influence of heat on growth hormone, ranging from doubling after two 20-minute sauna sessions at 80°C, to increasing its circulation up to 16-fold after two one-hour sauna sessions at 80°C.
These findings highlight the potential for heat therapy and exercise with a high rate of energy expenditure to modulate slow wave sleep through the interconnected nature of thermoregulation, immunity, exercise, and hormones. By understanding and harnessing these links, individuals can potentially enhance their sleep quality and overall health and well-being.
In this episode, I discuss:
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:06) - Increasing pre-sleep tiredness
- (02:06) - Effects of exercise
- (04:09) - How the immune system regulates sleep
- (05:07) - What heat and exercise have in common
- (06:39) - Hormonal effects of heat
- (06:59) - Growth hormone
- (09:26) - Prolactin and sleep onset
- (10:39) - Effect of sexual activity
- (12:08) - Overlap in the brain (thermoregulation vs. sleep)
- (12:46) - Heat protocols and tactics
Show notes are available by clicking here
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, Dr. Rhonda Patrick here. Today we're embarking on a deep dive into a fascinating |
| 0:04.9 | aspect of sleep health. The potential enhancement of sleep quality through heat exposure. |
| 0:10.0 | It's been my personal experience that heat exposure along with appropriate cooldown |
| 0:14.2 | has helped me with aspects of my sleep. I'd like to share with you a little bit about why I think |
| 0:18.8 | that happens in some of the complex cellular and molecular mechanisms involved, which should equally |
| 0:23.8 | apply to hot baths, sonnas, and to some degree exercise. These include the release of ATP, |
| 0:30.6 | increased adenosine levels, and the signaling of sleep regulating cytokines. In other words, |
| 0:36.2 | aspects of our immune system that can promote sleepiness. Now you might already be aware of the |
| 0:42.0 | importance of early bright light exposure in resetting our circadian clock and the value of avoiding |
| 0:48.3 | blue light exposure at night for optimizing sleep. These are significant elements in the realm of |
| 0:54.2 | sleep hygiene, but today I'd like to temporarily skirt past those fundamentals and focus on another |
| 1:01.2 | intriguing avenue, the potential of passive body heating. What if the simple act of raising your |
| 1:08.3 | body temperature through taking a warm bath or using the hot tub before bed or spending time in |
| 1:14.0 | the sauna could significantly improve sleep quality? This isn't just an enticing theory, there's |
| 1:19.7 | some scientific research supporting this. Passive body heating, in other words, raising your body |
| 1:25.2 | temperature without exerting yourself through physical activity has been shown to facilitate sleep |
| 1:30.8 | onset. Likewise, taking a warm bath before sleep increased the proportion of slow wave sleep, |
| 1:38.4 | the deep restorative phase of our sleep cycle that is important for staving off neurodegenerative |
| 1:44.0 | diseases like Alzheimer's disease. For our older population where sleep issues are very common, |
| 1:51.0 | passive body heating could be an invaluable tool. A systematic review found that passive body |
| 1:57.2 | heating can aid in sleep initiation and maintenance in the elderly, offering a non-pharmaceutical |
| 2:02.8 | approach to combating sleep disturbances. Let's dive into heating. There's heating |
... |
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