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I see lots of recommendations of drinking enough water. Another usual fitness recommendation is getting a decent amount of sleep in order to help muscle growth and tissue repair (precious testosterone and growth hormone secretions are well known to happen mostly during deep sleep in adults).

But nobody says anything about how to reconcile both things there where they collide: drinking water immediately before going to bed will make you interrupt your sleep in order to go to the toilet.

The only way I can get eight hours of continuous sleep is by avoiding drinking any liquid two hours before bedtime. I drink water often during the day (specially immediately before and after exercise) but if I maintain my usual water intake until bedtime, then my sleep gets interrupted because I have to go to the toilet at least once.

From the way I fell the next morning, I am not sure which strategy is best: less continuous sleep but well hydrated, or 8 hours of sound sleep but thirsty. I guess low hydration must not favour much the natural anabolic processes in your body.

I once saw a recommendation in a Navy Seals fitness video in youtube. A military physician recommended high water intake before going to bed, no matter how many times that made you go to the toilet. But in the other end of the spectrum, interrupting sleep for going to the toilet often is considered a health condition (Nocturia).

I would like to hear how the more experiences athletes here manage that equilibrium.

Mephisto
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  • This is off-topic...but try eating more salt. – Dave Liepmann Nov 12 '14 at 11:28
  • @DaveLiepmann I am afraid that is a very bad idea. – Mephisto Nov 12 '14 at 12:39
  • Why the vote to close the question? "Drink enough water before and during exercise" and "Sleep well in order to allow tissue recovery and fat loss" are two rules that appears in virtually every single book dealing with fitness and sports. Why the conflict between the two statements should be off-topic? – Mephisto Nov 12 '14 at 12:44
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    Questions about general health and nutrition are explicitly off-topic. – Dave Liepmann Nov 12 '14 at 12:46
  • I didn't talk about nutrition. There are many answered questions here about sleep, because it is essential to fitness. For instance: http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/16564/sleep-longer-the-night-after-workout or http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/4444/sleeping-less-than-4-hours-a-day/4450#4450 or http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/9454/how-can-i-figure-out-how-much-sleep-i-need or http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/how-to-get-rid-of-oversleeping – Mephisto Nov 12 '14 at 12:53
  • Some of those should be closed. Some were asked before the policy against general-health questions was made. The rest are related to a specific workout issue. If you have a problem with this single close vote, go to meta.fitness.stackexchange.com. – Dave Liepmann Nov 12 '14 at 12:57
  • Agreed that this is off topic and highly individual specific. For example, I can drink quite a bit of fluid (upwards of 48oz) and not have to interrupt sleep for the bathroom. – JohnP Nov 12 '14 at 17:47
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    There are natural near-awakened states that your brain enters while you sleep. I would bet that the times you wake up to urinate correspond to the periods of near-awakenedness. Actually there's a theory that people used to wake up for ~ an hour every night in the middle of the night. So it may be possible that the sleep you're losing may be of insignificant quality anyway. If you don't feel any more tired after nights when you get up to urinate, then that would suggest my theory is correct. – Tyler Nov 13 '14 at 03:17
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    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep – Tyler Nov 13 '14 at 03:18
  • Oh, and @Mephisto - How much water to drink and when is certainly nutrition. Water is a critical component of diet and overall health. – JohnP Nov 13 '14 at 15:21
  • @JohnP I agree, and sleep (and his quality) is certainly part of bodybuilding and strength training at least, together with the quantity and type of rest between workouts and other variables. – Mephisto Nov 13 '14 at 16:31
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    @JohnP I guess moderators have had a hard time trying to keep this site away from people asking about medical health or diets. You have probably had a lot of discussions in meta (too busy to do a search now). I understand the difficulty: how to exclude "My knees usually hurt a bit after much running" (answer: change to new running shoes regularly - but that can be regarded as medical advice) or "Muscle cramps at the end of long swimming sessions" (answer: increase dietary magnesium intake - oops, nutrition)? - I haven't been here for the past year, but it seems to me things are stricter now. – Mephisto Nov 13 '14 at 16:49
  • @Mephisto - A bit, but your two examples both have elements of fitness activity to them, where the problem arises out of an activity. This is pretty much a medical problem, there isn't a fitness portion to it. – JohnP Nov 13 '14 at 19:08
  • @JohnP Er... You don't see a fitness element connecting sleep quality and strength training? Try lifting weights tomorrow without having slept tonight... By the way, muscle cramps are more likely to occur if you don't sleep well, and many other things. – Mephisto Nov 14 '14 at 11:13
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    @Mephisto - Not as you phrase it. Simply asking about sleep doesn't make it on topic. It's the same thing as asking "I get short of breath if I slouch over, what's wrong?". I mean, after all, if you can't breathe you can't exercise. By your logic, anything is on topic because if you can't do X you can't exercise. – JohnP Nov 14 '14 at 15:09
  • @JohnP Every book or webpage about any sport or fitness system recommends (i) good sleep (ii) sufficient water intake. But what they say can be contradictory even in young healthy fit people (please drink a gallon of water just right before going to bed before stating that it does not go with you), but they are contradictory as exposed, and it is as contradictory as saying "do only 2 sets and then do this of that after the third set". I am not discussing this thing any further, please read my question carefully and take your time until you understand the contradiction I try to expose, – Mephisto Nov 14 '14 at 15:30
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    Let us continue this discussion in chat. – JohnP Nov 14 '14 at 16:01

1 Answers1

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You are correct that both sleep and hydration are very important, especially for a training athlete. Many professional triathletes sleep 9-11 hours/night, in addition to a nap during the day.

You stated that you ordinarily refrain from drinking water 2 hours before bed. This is the correct behavior. Furthermore, you should also not eat shortly before bed.

The reason to go to bed on an empty stomach (which is different from going to bed hungry) is to fully maximize the restorative processes that occur during sleep such as muscle building, capillary growth, and other beneficial processes. When you go to bed with water and/or food in your stomach, the body shifts some of the energy it would normally use for restorative processes, and instead directs those energies to metabolizing whats in your stomach.

Short answer: go to bed on empty stomach -> recover more quickly from training -> increased training load -> better results.

klsoren
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