Everyone Wants Better Hormones. What Time Did You Go to Bed Last Night?

Everyone wants better hormones, faster recovery, more muscle, better performance. Cool. But before you buy another supplement, book another ice bath, or obsess over “optimisation”… what time did you go to bed last night?

In this vlog I break down the physiology of sleep, testosterone, growth hormone, recovery, nervous system regulation, and why sleep might be the most anabolic thing you do all day.

Turns out your hormones are surprisingly old fashioned.
They still like darkness, routine… and you being unconscious for longer than 5 hours.

Below I go deeper on the data behind why sleep might be the most anabolic thing you do all day.

Here’s the physiology

A huge proportion of testosterone production happens during sleep. Not during your pre-workout, not during your ice bath, not because you bought an overpriced supplement with a tribal logo on it. And growth hormone is exactly the same story. Growth hormone secretion is tightly linked to deep sleep, particularly slow wave sleep. Those biggest pulses tend to happen early in the night, which means if your sleep is fragmented, shortened, or poor quality, or you’re proudly surviving on 5 hours because “I function fine,” your endocrine system would actually like a word with you.

And this isn’t wellness influencer folklore. There’s actual data on this. Research has shown that even short-term sleep restriction can meaningfully reduce testosterone levels in healthy young men. In some studies, a week of restricted sleep produced daytime testosterone levels comparable to ageing by several years. Several years from not sleeping. Growth hormone secretion also takes a hit when deep sleep is disrupted, which matters because growth hormone plays a role in tissue repair, recovery, metabolism, and adaptation to training. All the things people claim they want while wearing their whoop strap and ignoring their bedtime.

If you train hard, your sleep requirement goes up not down

Before someone says “but I train hard.” Exactly. If you’re training hard, your need for quality sleep goes up, not down. It doesn’t reduce. You cannot out-supplement, out-caffeinate, out-mindset, or out-discipline a chronically underrecovered nervous system. Your body builds, repairs, restores, and regulates while you sleep. That is the shift.

Heart rate variability, the recovery metric most wearables track, is directly influenced by sleep quality and duration. Chronic sleep restriction shifts the nervous system toward sympathetic dominance, meaning a low-grade stress state that training compounds rather than resolves. The athletes who understand this are not the ones with the most sophisticated recovery protocols. They are the ones who treat sleep with the same seriousness they give to training.

Sleep is not passive. Sleep is productive.

It’s arguably one of the most anabolic things you can do all day. So before you spend another small fortune chasing hormonal optimisation, try the wildly controversial strategy of getting enough sleep consistently. It turns out your hormones are surprisingly old fashioned. They still like darkness, routine, and you being unconscious for longer than 5 hours.