Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

The real full nights sleep, injury recovery and ‘5am club’ truths.

For a lot of us, getting 8 hours sleep every night has gradually become less and less frequent. When we have family and work commitments, let alone a home to run, meals to deliver, fitness goals and the ‘just one more episode’ of your favourite TV series wins the battle over bedtime far too often. Its all too easily to go to bed later than we perhaps should or heave ourselves out of bed earlier for that Joe Wick’s workout.

Research is now emerging about how sleep could actually be a powerful preventative when it comes to disease, brain booster and injury recovery. Plus, for most of us, we could actually change our routines to ensure we get a proper nights sleep and bat off that ‘5am club’ guilt.

In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker discusses research showing that consistently getting less than eight hours of sleep creates a cumulative sleep deficit. This affects how the brain functions, particularly memory, focus and overall performance.

From a clinical perspective, the impact is not limited to the brain.

Patients who are regularly underslept often experience slower recovery, increased sensitivity to pain, and reduced tolerance to physical strain. The body is effectively trying to heal without being given the full opportunity to do so.

However, sleep is often one of the first things to be disrupted when you are in pain. And at the same time, it is one of the most important factors in how well your body recovers.

There is also emerging research exploring links between long-term sleep deprivation and conditions such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease. While this area is still developing, it reinforces the idea that sleep plays a fundamental role in overall health.

A common belief is that sleep can be caught up at the weekend.

In reality, recovery from sleep loss is not immediate. It can take several weeks of consistent, good-quality sleep to recover from even a single night of significantly reduced sleep.

Alongside this, there has been a growing trend around early rising routines, often referred to as the “5am club”, particularly within fitness and productivity circles.

While early starts can work well for some, particularly those naturally early risers, it is worth considering what is being sacrificed to achieve them in those that aren’t managing to still get their full 8 hour sleep quota.

The final stages of sleep, often the last couple of hours before waking, are when the body is heavily engaged in tissue repair and when the brain is consolidating motor skills and movement patterns. These processes are directly relevant to both physical recovery and performance.

Regularly cutting sleep short to wake earlier may, for some, work against the very goals they are trying to achieve. This is particularly relevant for those training regularly, recovering from injury, or managing inflammatory pain.

From an osteopathic perspective, sleep is a key part of the recovery process for inflammatory related pains.

If sleep is shortened, this important window for repair and regulation can be missed. For patients, this may present as slower healing, more persistent symptoms, and reduced progress despite appropriate treatment.

That said, it is important to acknowledge that for many people in acute pain, getting a full night’s sleep is not straightforward.

Pain can make it difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get comfortable enough to reach deeper stages of rest. This can feel frustrating, particularly when you are aware that sleep is part of recovery.

In these situations, the aim is not perfection.

Instead, the focus is on supporting better quality sleep where possible, alongside treatment to reduce pain and improve comfort. As symptoms settle, sleep often improves alongside it.

Sleep is not something you are failing at when you are in pain.

It is something your body is working towards.

If you are recovering from injury or managing ongoing pain, sleep is not just a background factor. It is part of the process, and where it can be supported, it can make a meaningful difference to how well your body recovers.

Also an interesting side note, there is actually a very small percentage of the entire population (upto 5%, although most research suggests its more likely less at 1%) that have a rare gene which means that they biologically need less sleep. In fact, they will only sleep 6 hours a night and no more as this is the amount they need to sleep. This is called the BHLHE41 Gene, the ‘natural short sleepers’.