Abstract
Coaches have long told athletes to get a good night sleep before competition, but little research has been done to support this advice. Though considered healthy, restorative and necessary, sleep has been placed low on this country’s list of priorities. As of 2002, college athletes were reported to receive fewer than 6.1 hours of sleep per night (Walters, 2002). This is very low considering the demands of school, social life and a rigorous practice schedule. Due to this gap, this study looks at one night of acute sleep loss reduced to 4 hours time in bed and its impact on an endurance treadmill exercise bout. 5 college-aged (18-24 years of age), recreational runners performed 3 maximal exercise tests. The first test was a VO2 max test performed after 8 hours time in bed. The subsequent 2 tests were time to exhaustion tests at 70% of each subjects’ VO2 max. One test was after 8 hours time in bed. The other, after 4 hours time in bed. The variables of interest were time to exhaustion (TTE), respiratory exchange ratio (RER) and rate of perceived exertion (RPE). There was no significant difference in time to exhaustion, though there was a trend toward sleep debt resulting in a decrease in performance (47.6 ± 16.22 min v 41.30 ± 20.33 min, p<0.1). There was no significant change in the respiratory exchange ratio. There was, however, a significant increase in the rate of perceived exertion (17.8 ± 1.79 v 19.2 ± 0.45, p<0.05). Though sleep plays an integral role on many metabolic processes, after one night of acute sleep loss, there was no significant effect on RER, the metabolic measurement of interest in this study. A trend towards decreased endurance performance and increased RPE without metabolic changes suggests that psychological variables may have attributed to the decrease in performance. More research must be done on mood as it correlates to athletic performance as well as to the effect of more than on night sleep debt on metabolic parameters.