Why you sleep 7+ hours but still feel tired

We’re going to cover Melatonin, why it’s just as important, and teach you how to make sure cortisol and melatonin work together for better health, recovery and performance.

Melatonin is your sleep and recovery hormone. 

Cortisol and Melatonin work like a seesaw. When one is high, the other should be low.

In the evening, as light exposure decreases and stimulation drops, melatonin should rise naturally, preparing your body for deep, restorative sleep.

Unfortunately, this is where things break down for most people. We’ll explain why…

What Actually Happens:

Instead of cortisol dropping in the evening, many people are unintentionally propping it up.

Common culprits include:

• Late night training sessions 

• High caffeine intake after midday 

• Under fuelling

• Bright screens and artificial light at night 

• Work emails and notifications on your phone 

• Doom scrolling before bed

What this means is that cortisol stays elevated, when it should be dropping, and melatonin will struggle to rise. This is why you get the feeling at night when you’re tired but wired at the same time.

Sure, eventually you fall asleep, but sleep quality will be much lower.

How this has a knock-on effect is recovery will be impaired, cravings will be higher, motivation will drop, and it will create a demand and reliance on caffeine to bring you up to a normal level. This creates more stress, and the cycle starts again.

How to Mitigate it:

We’re particularly big on building into routines slowly, and one at a time, so don’t feel you need to do all of these at once.

• Get light exposure early in the morning to give your circadian and cortisol rhythm a reset. Open your curtains in the morning so that while it’s still fairly dark outside this time of year, when it does start to get light, your body will regulate with the sun coming up. In the warmer months, get outside for your morning coffee and feel the sun on your skin.

• Eat enough food during the day.

• Establish a caffeine cut off earlier in the day. Midday is a good place to aim for.

• Train hard but respect your recovery. If you train late, the try to double down in other areas, and do your best to promote a parasympathetic state. 

• Create a simple evening routine that signals to your nervous system that you’re safe and it’s time to rest and recover. Dimming screens, turning off unnecessary lights and even wearing long sleeved clothing (your skin has photoreceptors which can absorb blue light).

You don’t need to turn into a high-level biohacker for this to work for you. You also don’t need to do everything at once. But simply being aware of a few strategies can help to mitigate an imbalance of cortisol, protect your recovery and health too. Even just understanding the relationship that exists between Cortisol and Melatonin is extremely beneficial.