I used to run long distance back in my salad (younger) days. I read books and magazines about running and running performance. I remember reading something back in the 1980's about how sleep deprivation did not affect running performance.
However, here is an article about recent research showing small reductions in performance of elite cyclists with voluntary sleep restriction to 4 hours per night for 3 days. The researchers measured energy expenditure, maximal aerobic power, and time to exhaustion. However, I don't see any data about actual cycling performance such as time to complete a course, etc. Therefore, I am not sure if sleep restriction really impacts elite cyclists. I know that not getting enough sleep lowered my motivation to run the next day!
Showing posts with label sleep restriction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep restriction. Show all posts
Friday, July 1, 2016
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Workweek sleep restriction and weekend make up sleep
Here is an interesting study about the effect of mild sleep restriction and make up sleep. In this study, researchers took young, healthy volunteers and had them restrict their sleep from 8 hours down to 6 hours for 6 nights in a row. Then they let them sleep upto 10 hrs per night for 3 nights. During this study, they measured blood markers of inflammation, sleepiness, and performance with a computerized test.
The results showed that cortisol levels did not change with sleep restriction, but did fall below baseline after the recovery sleep. This is interesting to me on two fronts. One is that sleep deprivation did not raise cortisol levels. More interesting was the effect of recovery sleep on lowering cortisol from the baseline. I assume it's the relatively increased amount of deep sleep obtained during recovery that played a role in lowering cortisol levels.
Another marker for inflammation, interleukin-6, did increase during sleep restriction and fell back to baseline with recovery sleep. And subjective and objective sleepiness increased after restriction but returned to baseline after recovery. However, performance deteriorated significantly after restriction and did not improve completely after recovery. And this was after just one week of restriction. It will be interesting to see long term studies that would replicate this week after week, like what many working people do. Would performance continue to decline and not fully recover on weekends? Or would acclimation happen, such that performance level decrements stopped or where recovery sleep became better at improving performance?
The results showed that cortisol levels did not change with sleep restriction, but did fall below baseline after the recovery sleep. This is interesting to me on two fronts. One is that sleep deprivation did not raise cortisol levels. More interesting was the effect of recovery sleep on lowering cortisol from the baseline. I assume it's the relatively increased amount of deep sleep obtained during recovery that played a role in lowering cortisol levels.
Another marker for inflammation, interleukin-6, did increase during sleep restriction and fell back to baseline with recovery sleep. And subjective and objective sleepiness increased after restriction but returned to baseline after recovery. However, performance deteriorated significantly after restriction and did not improve completely after recovery. And this was after just one week of restriction. It will be interesting to see long term studies that would replicate this week after week, like what many working people do. Would performance continue to decline and not fully recover on weekends? Or would acclimation happen, such that performance level decrements stopped or where recovery sleep became better at improving performance?
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sleep Restriction and ADHD
In the March edition of the Sleep Journal, there is an article about the effect of sleep restriction on cognitive performance of children with ADHD. In this study, researchers studied children with and without ADHD. They measured the kids' performance on cognitive testing while getting normal sleep at home and after getting about an hour (average 40.7 minutes) less sleep per night for six straight nights.
The results showed that kids with and without ADHD experienced deterioration of performance on cognitive testing with sleep deprivation. The researchers had the children with ADHD stop their medications 48 hours before the study. It would have been interesting to see if the kids with ADHD were able to improve their cognitive performance on their medications despite sleep restriction.
I think the point of this study is that sleep deprivation could worsen academic performance if kids are sleep-deprived. In our society, many pre-teens are sleep deprived, at least according to the amount that sleep experts say these kids should be getting. If you have a child with ADHD, make sure they get plenty of rest.
The results showed that kids with and without ADHD experienced deterioration of performance on cognitive testing with sleep deprivation. The researchers had the children with ADHD stop their medications 48 hours before the study. It would have been interesting to see if the kids with ADHD were able to improve their cognitive performance on their medications despite sleep restriction.
I think the point of this study is that sleep deprivation could worsen academic performance if kids are sleep-deprived. In our society, many pre-teens are sleep deprived, at least according to the amount that sleep experts say these kids should be getting. If you have a child with ADHD, make sure they get plenty of rest.
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