The Sleep Experiment: Hypothesis Statement

Like the Fitness and Strength experiment, you will want to set a "compound" hypothesis statement for the sleep experiment. In other words, you are really going to be running two experiments, the first to see if you can measurably improve your sleep and the second to see if that improvement has an impact on your metabolic parameters and body composition. As with all of the experiments, you want to begin by assessing where you are after completion of the first two, very important experiments on sugar and fitness/strength. Begin this experiment with a statement like the one below:

After completion of the sugar and fitness/strength experiments, my body fat percentage is now down to 22% (man), 32% (woman) and my HbA1c is down to 5.7, my hsCRP is down from 2.0 to 1.7. I feel much better, but not ideal and I am concerned that maintaining my discipline with exercise and avoidance of carbohydrates will likely become a problem in the future.

I have screened negative for sleep apnea, anxiety, depression and substance use

(anyone who can NOT write this last statement, should talk to their physician immediately)

Note, that the sleep experiment is the first time that we encourage our patients to start thinking about sustainability of their program. People who get poor sleep are more emotionally vulnerable and more likely to succumb to cravings or apathy. Thus, we recommend including something about challenges to maintenance of your program in your starting statement and hypotheses. This is not to say that sleep can't have a direct effect on your metabolism. It actually can, so include that in your hypothesis statement too. A reasonable first hypothesis is shown below:

Knowing that my typical nightly sleep score is 64 driven largely by restlessness and poor deep sleep and my daily Epworth score is 14, I can improve my nightly sleep score to 70 or more and my daily Epworth score to less than 10 by implementing the 7 CALTATA interventions over 2 months.

The second hypothesis will then look something like this, depending on your specific situation.

An improvement of 6 points in my nightly sleep score and a reduction in Epworth sleepiness score to less than 10 will improve my subjective sense that my program is sustainable and result in a further decline in my HbA1c to 5.6 and my body fat percentage to 21% (man), 31% (woman).

Notice how we make the sleep improvements ambitious and the metabolic changes less ambitious in this experiment. Trust us when we say that the sleep improvement will pay long term dividends that are well worth it.