Zeitschrift für ernährungswissenschaftliche Forschung

Abstrakt

Factors Affecting Sleep Quality among Adolescent Athletes

Hoi Man Lo, Joyce Hoi Yee Leung, Gavin Ka Yin Chau, Michael HS Lam, Ka Yiu Lee and Alex Ho

Objectives: This study used a cross-sectional experimental design to examine the association between sleep quality and sports performance among adolescent recreation team-sports athletes in Hong Kong. By investigating the factors that affect sleep quality, it intended to arouse awareness of coaches and athletes the importance of sleeping so that they can improve training and competition performance. Methods: Hundred and twelve male and female participants with age range from 12 to 17 were involved in this study. A One-way ANCOVA model was designed to analyze the relationships among sleep quality and five factors (consume of caffeine or alcohol, extreme mood, sleeping environment, anxiety due to academic, and anxiety due to sports) and multiple regression analysis was adopted to predict the sleep quality through the coefficient of those variables. Results: Consumption of drinks or food that contained caffeine or alcohol, experiencing extreme mood such as shock or being too excited before sleep and having a bright and noisy sleeping environment affected the sleep quality. Most student athletes were struggling between academic results and sports in Hong Kong. The results had shown that nervousness due to academic was another factor that affected sleep quality. It has also found that not only academic results could affect sleep quality of student-athletes, but also nervousness due to sports could also be another thrilling factor. There were significance effects among factors in “drinking/eating drinks/food which contains caffeine or alcohol”, “poor sleeping environment”, “sleeping duration”, and “self-rated sleep quality”. Conclusion: The preliminary findings provide evidence that majority of secondary student-athletes are suffering from inadequate sleep due to dreadful sleeping qualities, which caused adverse conditions both physically and psychologically, and brought worst impacts to training and competitions performance. It is recommended that sleep hygiene could be promoted to coaches and athletes to enrich their knowledge of having better sleeping patterns. Much needed evidence regarding relationships of different aspects such as brain wave, sleeping patterns, injuries, diet, and the possible effects on sleep quality.