Connection Between Sleep and Athletic Performance

Summary

In the last few decades much knowledge has been accumulated on the connection between healthy, sufficient sleep and overall health, cognitive function, memory and job or school performance, motor vehicle accidents and work accidents. There has been growing awareness recently of the connection between physical activity and competitive sports performance, and the amount and quality of sleep. Despite the dearth of scientific studies, there is a constant effort to improve understanding in this field.

An appropriate procedure designed to evaluate the influence of the quality and amount of sleep on ability and athletic performance must fulfill a number of basic requirements:

1. Isolating the influence of components related to sleep homeostasis and factors relating to circadian rhythm.
2. Neutralizing as much as possible the influence of motivation on the evaluation - one must presumably include a significant competitive event (it is not always possible to do a simple extrapolation between physiological measurements and competitive performance).
3. Isolating and canceling as much as possible additional factors affecting performance, such as: home advantage, weather, injury and field conditions.

Athletic activity includes not just competitions but also training towards competitions, since it is difficult to control for influences of competitions and other occasional events, in this study the investigators focus on evaluation of the connection between sleep and athletic performance in training.

Towards the end of adolescence, youth are busy in multiple activities related to studies, social obligations and athletic activity. This is also the age they learn to drive. This is an age in which physiologically a person needs more sleep relative to at other ages (9.25 hours of sleep a day), and paradoxically due to the multiple obligations the amount of sleep is lower than needed.

Beyond the effect on mood, cognitive performance and memory, sleep deprivation causes far-reaching changes in multiple systems, such as:

Cardiovascular System:

* Many studies show that shortened sleep duration constitutes an independent cause of increased cardiac events.
* Resting heart rate and maximum heart rate decrease after 30 hours of sleep deprivation.

Respiratory System:

* Significant decline in respiratory function as measured by: FVC, Maximal voluntary ventilation, Maximal static inspiratory/expiratory pressures, Time to exhaustion with exercise, Peak O2 consumption, Peak CO2 production.
* Worsening of respiratory sleep disturbances.

Digestive System:

• Changes in food consumption accompanied by changes in body weight.

Neurophysiological System

• Disturbance of thermoregulation.

Endocrine System:

* Hormonal changes associated with hypothalamic-hypophyseal axis
* Influence on secretion of Ghrelin and leptin
* Influence on secretion of growth hormone.

In light of this, there is sound basis for the presumption that athletic performance is connected to these influences directly and indirectly.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the connection between sleep quality and duration and athletic performance among young athletes living and training at the Sport-Gifted Centre at the Wingate Institute.

Conditions

• Quality Sleep Time
• Athletic Performance

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Sleep extension

Athletic performance evaluated at baseline and following about 1.5 hours of sleep extension

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Wingate Institute

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Eyal Shargal, PhD · Wingate Institute

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

13 Years

Max Age

20 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2011-06-30

Primary Completion

2012-11-30

Completion

2012-11-30

Countries

• Israel

Study Locations