Lack of Sleep Tied to Teen Sports Injuries

Thanks to Howell Davies, Under 15s coach for sharing this interesting article with us.

Adolescent athletes who slept eight or more hours each night were 68 per cent less likely to be injured than athletes who regularly slept less, according to an abstract presented Oct 2012,at the American Academy of Paediatrics National Conference In New Orleans,

Researchers asked middle and high school athletes (grades 7 to 12) enrolled at the Harvard West Lake School in Studio City Calif, to answer questions about the number of sports they played and the time they committed to athletics, whether they used a private coach, whether they participated in strength training, how much sleep they got on average each night, and how much they subjectively enjoyed their athletic participation.

Seventy percent of the student athletes (112 out of 160 students, 54 males and 58 females, average age 15) completed the survey, conducted in conjunction with Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Researchers then reviewed those students' school records pertaining to reported athletic injuries.

Hours of sleep per night was a significantly associated with a decreased likelihood of injury, according to the study results. In addition, the higher the grade levels of the athlete, the greater the likelihood of injury-2.3 times greater for each additional grade in the school. Gender, weeks of participation in sport per year, hours of participation per week, number of sports, strength trraining, private coaching and subjective assessments of "having fun in sports "were not significantly associated with injury.

"While other studies have shown that lack of sleep can affect cognitive skills and fine motor skills, nobody has really looked at this subject in terms of the adolescent athletic population" said study author Matthew Milewski MD.

" When we started this study, we thought the amount of sports played,year-round play, and increased specialization in sports would be much more important facts were hours of sleep and grade in school" said Dr Milewski. Instead " what we found is that the two most important facts were hours of sleep  and grade in school ".

The advanced age risk may reflect a cumulative risk for injury after playing three or four years at the high school level,Dr Milewski said, and older athletes are bigger, faster and stronger.