Sleep Monitoring in Athletes: Motivation, Methods, Miscalculations and Why it Matters
- PDF / 1,220,533 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 7 Downloads / 161 Views
REVIEW ARTICLE
Sleep Monitoring in Athletes: Motivation, Methods, Miscalculations and Why it Matters Shona L. Halson1
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract It is increasingly recognised that many athletes have poor sleep quantity and/or quality despite the advances in knowledge regarding the importance of sleep for an athletic population. The majority of research in sleep assessment and treatment (within the general population) focuses on the medical disorder insomnia, and therefore may not be specifically relevant for athletes. Further, there are currently no guidelines for the standardisation of assessment, intervention, feedback and behaviour change strategies in athletes. This review outlines potential reasons for sleep disturbances in athletes, advantages and disadvantages of a range of methods to assess sleep (polysomnography, activity monitoring, consumer sleep technology, sleep diaries and questionnaires), considerations for the provision of feedback, a description of potential interventions and behaviour change challenges and strategies. The objective of this review is to provide practitioners with the latest scientific evidence in an area rapidly progressing in awareness, consumerism and athlete engagement.
Key Points
1 Introduction
There are currently no guidelines or recommendations for best practice regarding monitoring of sleep in athletes.
Sleep is becoming widely recognised as essential for optimal heath, wellbeing and athlete performance. Alongside this increased recognition is a concomitant increase in the desire to monitor athletes’ sleep and address presenting sleep concerns or disturbances. As a consequence, there is now a multitude of consumer-based technologies (commercial sleep technology [CST]) and smartphone applications available in addition to the gold standard of sleep assessment (polysomnography), research-grade activity monitoring and sleep diaries and questionnaires. Research conducted examining sleep quality and quantity in athletes has typically utilised activity monitoring with most studies reporting athletes demonstrate insufficient sleep (below the recommended 8 h per night) and many sleep poorer than the general population [1]. Given the reported effect of sleep deprivation on performance, mood, cognitive function, memory, learning, metabolism, illness and injury [2], it is of no surprise that assessing sleep in athletes has become increasingly popular. While there are a number of international consensus statements, position stands and guidelines for managing and treating insomnia, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and other medical sleep disorders [3–5], there is little information on how to best measure, analyse, provide feedback and intervene in athletes who do not have a clinical sleep disorder and
There are numerous advantages and disadvantages of available methods to measure sleep in athletes. It is critical that there is an understanding of the limitations of methods, including activity monitoring, consumer-based technologies and smartphone applications t
Data Loading...
