The role of sleep in injury prevention and recovery

💡 Today in a sentence:

Today, we’ll take a look at the role of sleep in injury prevention and recovery, by reviewing and breaking down recent research and addressing a present issue.

📖 4-minute Read

How important is sleep actually for you to prevent injuries in the first place or, in case, help your recovery?

The simple question would be: Very! But that’s a bit too simple…! First, there are definitely people who are less affected than others, regarding a lack of sleep over a short or long period of time. But it’s safe to say, sleep isn’t what you should necessarily diminish! But why? Let’s break it down!

With that being said, let’s have a look at how sleep deprivation relates to sports injuries, by taking the resulting state of consciousness and … into account.
What instantly comes to mind is how sleepy you are when you get out of bed and haven’t slept sufficiently enough. And yes, that results in slower reaction times and therefore a lowered level of awareness.
But that isn’t everything! Sleep deprivation has been shown to suppress testosterone and Growth Hormone (GH) production but enhance cortisol levels, which may weaken your muscles and make you more vulnerable to injuries. Also, sleep is when you regenerate muscle tissue to compensate for previous workload, your brain is catching up with all the information gathered during the day, and nerve cells reorganize. So, naturally, it would make perfect sense to extend the time in which all those positive processes occur, that make you more perceptive and fit.
E.g., one study has found the following:

Now, it’s still unknown, if a lack of sleep makes an athlete more susceptible to specific types of musculoskeletal injuries. So this may not be as easy to generalize.

To round this off, let’s have a look at how sleep affects recovery from an already-caused injury.
During recovery, the growth hormone is one of your best friends and it is released almost entirely during sleep. So: more hours spent sleeping equals higher GH production and release, increasing chances of easier recovery, and this only compounds over time. Also, enough sleep will make you more perceptive, thereby lowering the chances of you making mistakes and injury on re-entry during rehabilitation.

Also, sleep isn’t the holy grail that solves all injury problems (preventing or treating them). View it more as part of an equation, as many other variables play an important role in that regard! However, turning the variable positive and increasing the likelihood of injury prevention, doesn’t seem counterproductive to me…

A quick note aside: At the time, sleep and injury recovery, as well as injury prevention, is a relatively new field of study and therefore has to be taken with a grain of salt. To deliver really one hundred percent backed evidence, most likely more studies, especially more specific ones to deliver less generalized results as generalizing sports is I’d say really difficult regarding its diversity and differences.
 

References

1. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/sleep-injury-risk-research-2021/

2. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/Suppl_1/A173.3

3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34099605/

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