In Part 1, I outlined why our sleep environment is so important and what I’ve done to optimize it, explained why I track my sleep, and analyzed my sleep trends over the last year and a half, as measured by the Oura ring.
In Part 2, I’ll analyze my sleep data from the last year, which has been particularly interesting because I’ve had such a differing sleep schedules and a lot of travel.
I work as an analyst for the San Francisco Giants, and for 6 weeks during Spring Training in Arizona, I’m on a very early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule. Once the 6-month season starts, the majority of games finish after 10pm, which leads to a much later schedule. This is followed by a 4 month off-season where I’m able to shift back to my natural circadian rhythm.
These graphs show the drastic changes in sleep schedule between the season (April-September) and the offseason.
The later bedtime and wake times in-season are in stark contrast with Spring Training (Feb-March) and my natural circadian rhythm, reflected in March-May data, when Covid-19 sent everyone home from Spring Training.
The most drastic sleep changes come in Spring Training, when overall sleep and REM sleep plummet, but deep sleep actually increases. My guess as to why deep sleep increases is that the days are long and intense, and your body tries to recover as much as possible.
Travel
While people with a later circadian rhythm don’t need to adjust their sleep schedules as much during the season, everyone deals with frequent travel and inconsistent sleep hours, which isn’t ideal for optimized sleep.
One downside West Coast teams have is increased travel. The Giants had the 5th most travel of any team in baseball last year, with 41,934 miles covered during the season.
Two scenarios are particularly tough on sleep quality. First, when the last game of a series is a night game. On a night getaway game at Dodger Stadium, by the time we eat, leave the clubhouse, drive to LAX, fly to SFO, take the bus to Oracle park, and finally go home, it’s around 3am.
The other scenario that impacted sleep the most were any East Coast trips, which usually got us to the hotel around 3am-4am. All of those trips were followed by an off-day.
Luckily those scenarios didn’t happen often–we had 4 night getaway days, and 4 East Coast trips. Unfortunately I’m missing sleep data from a lot of these nights.
The last collective bargaining agreement smartly mandated more day games on travel days, limiting the nights teams would arrive to a new city at 3am and play the next day.
As you’d expect, day games were incredibly helpful for getting more sleep that night–I averaged a full extra hour of sleep on nights after a day game.
Conversely, on nights before day games, I had significantly lower sleep quality. Not surprising, given the quick turnaround of a night game, and an early morning the following day.
For sleep quality, nothing beat home. On nights I slept in my own bed, I had more total sleep, more REM sleep, and more deep sleep. Given the sleep environment I’ve set up there, this isn’t surprising. One thing to note: I tended to go to bed earlier at home, which likely impacted these numbers, independent of the environment.
When looking at road games by time zone, it isn’t surprising to see better sleep in cities on PDT compared to CDT or EDT. Much has been written on the negative effects of time zone changes. The shorter travel definitely helps, and is reflected in all metrics.
It’s also interesting to see how bad my sleep was in Denver–of all the cities we played in, it was where I had by far the worst sleep.
Subjectively, I always felt like I slept poorly there, likely because of the altitude and dry air. It was also one of the hotels that didn’t get particularly cold AC, so I ended up bringing a fan for our last trip there.
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What I Learned
Having gone through this exercise, I have a few ideas of what I’d do differently in Year 2 to manage the quirks of an MLB season, and keep my sleep quality as high as possible.
- I’d take my sleep environment on the road more seriously. I remember two nights last year where I didn’t turn the AC up to full blast until I was ready to go to bed, only to find it wasn’t functioning properly. They got fixed the next day, but led to a few nights of poorer sleep. Moving forward, I’ll crank the AC up immediately when I arrive to confirm it works, and allow time for fixing if not. I’ll also travel with a fan for scenarios where the AC just doesn’t get that cold, or doesn’t make enough white noise.
- Especially on East Coast trips, I’d get more sunlight early in the day, and possibly travel with a full spectrum light (I have one, but haven’t really used it yet). Sunlight helps regulate our circadian rhythm, so instead of staying in the hotel the morning after arriving in an East Coast city, I’d get outside and get some sun on my face and let my body know it’s time to go.
- I’d take travel naps more seriously. Knowing my sleep on the road is going to be impacted, I’d make better use of buses and plane rides to sleep, which I didn’t do often enough.
- I’d supplement more aggressively on days I know it will be harder to get good sleep. I’m cautious of taking melatonin or other sleep-inducing compounds, but I think they could be a very beneficial aid during nights when I know it’ll be harder to sleep well, like an East Coast trip, or night getaway day.
- I’d take more saunas. I haven’t logged the data well, but anecdotally, I sleep better on nights I take a sauna, which I did for a lot of the offseason, and part of Spring Training.
Experiments to Run
I haven’t formally experimented enough to see how different interventions impact my sleep. I’ve relied more on anecdotal observations, but I’d like to run the following experiments and see what, if anything, happens:
- Cold showers. I take cold showers often, but at random intervals, and have never tracked them.
- Full-spectrum light in the morning. I’m up every morning before the sun rises, so I wonder if getting exposed to this light early in the morning will impact sleep.
- Monitor drinking. Anecdotally, 2 drinks or less has little to no impact on sleep, but 3 does. I’d like to test this.
- Float tank. I floated 3 times last year, and felt great after each session. I can’t remember how I slept, but I’m interested to see if there’s an impact.
- Epsom salt baths. Magnesium, one of the minerals in epsom salt, is a well-documented sleep aid (and a hypothesis for why the float tank could impact sleep).
- Limit screens before bed. I’m good, not great at this. I wonder what would happen if I extended this to 60 minutes before bed.
- Don’t eat for at least 2 hours before bed. A late meal skyrockets my resting heart rate, but I’ve never tested this over a long period.
Hopefully I’ll have something interesting to report back.