*s2/e06 The Science of Sleep & Athletic Performance with Dr. Amy Bender, MS, PhD (@sleep4sport)
The Running Explained Podcast
Running Explained
4.6 • 534 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2022
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you get enough sleep? Do struggle with sleep quality or quantity? Are you unconvinced by regular, non-scientist people telling you how important getting enough sleep is for your overall health and your training/running performance? Real-life sleep scientist Dr. Amy Bender (@sleep4sport) joins the show to teach us all about sleep, specifically in the context of athletic performance!
- The different stages of sleep
- How much sleep do you need as a runner?
- Sleep quantity: do naps count?
- "Banking" sleep
- Sleep quality
- Early birds vs Night Owls & training schedule optimization
- Sleep disorders versus a "normal bad night of sleep"
- Treatment for insomnia
- Optimizing our nighttime routine for good sleep quality
- Meditation or mindfulness for sleep
- And more!
Dr. Amy Bender is the Director Clinical Sleep Science at Cerebra, a digital health company focused on improving access to advanced digital sleep analysis and diagnostic sleep technology. An award-winning sleep scientist, Amy Bender is bursting with evidence-based insights that will play an integral role in creating your new sleep strategy. After spending over 15 years studying sleep through many avenues including work as a sleep technician, clinical research, written publications, interviews for stories in Oprah Magazine and public speaking appearances including her Ted Med talk, Dr. Bender has an intimate relationship with the science. Her ability to translate science to the field is evident through her successful work with NHL, Canadian national team athletes, and Olympic athletes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Running Explain podcast. I'm Elizabeth, a marathoner, running coach, and answer seeker. |
| 0:08.2 | When I became a new runner at the age of 29, I had so many questions, but it felt like I was on my |
| 0:14.6 | own to figure all of the answers. So now I'm here to answer all your running questions to help |
| 0:19.6 | make you a better, smarter, faster |
| 0:22.5 | runner. |
| 0:23.4 | There's no question too simple and no topic too complex. |
| 0:26.8 | So let's get started. |
| 0:28.4 | My guest this week is sleep scientist, Dr. Amy Bender. |
| 0:32.1 | Now, not only is Dr. Bender a sleep scientist, she is a scientist who studies sleep specifically in the context of athletes |
| 0:40.3 | and athletic performance. She is a sleep scientist for athletes. And hey, guess what? You are a runner. |
| 0:47.3 | You are an athlete. And it was very cool for me when I was just doing some research about sleep |
| 0:52.9 | and athletic performance, mostly in the |
| 0:54.6 | context of not sleeping enough and how that impacts athletic performance to see Dr. Bender's |
| 1:00.2 | name as an author or co-author on so many of the studies that I was seeing in my research. |
| 1:06.0 | And so I was very excited that she agreed to come on the podcast today. |
| 1:09.9 | She is full of information, as you would |
| 1:12.7 | expect, about sleep, like education about sleep, the things we need to know, the things that |
| 1:18.0 | maybe we think we know about sleep, but don't actually know about sleep, how important sleep |
| 1:22.4 | actually is, and what you can do to help get good sleep, more, sleep, enough sleep in your life to be a better |
| 1:29.1 | runner and just kind of a better, healthier person overall. |
| 1:34.2 | Dr. Amy Bender, welcome to the show. I'm very excited to have you here. |
| 1:38.0 | Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here too. |
... |
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