If you or your kids play sports, you want to spend more time in the game and less time being injured. Did you ever think about how sleep plays a role in injury risk? Here are some ways that poor sleep increases your injury risk and some ways to improve it.
How Much Sleep Matters?
Amount of sleep is the total time spent asleep per night. This is different than the total time spent in bed because you will often wake up at least once during the night.
Amount of sleep has the highest correlation to injury risk. Interestingly, just one bad night of sleep is not enough to change your injury risk.
Chronically not getting enough sleep does increase your injury risk. Getting less than 7 hours of sleep a night for 14 days or more almost doubles your injury risk (1.7 times greater).
Sleep Quality Helps You Get Enough Sleep
Because you don’t sleep every minute you are in bed, you could spend 7 hours in bed but still not get enough sleep. Improving your sleep quality helps you maximize the sleep you get during your time in bed.
Sleep Quality has 4 components:
- Sleep latency: Time to fall asleep after going to bed
- Number of awakenings per night
- Wake after sleep: Amount of time spent awake between 1st sleep onset and ending sleep for the night
- Sleep efficiency: % of time in bed spent asleep
The cutoffs for each of these below are from the National Sleep Foundation.
These can be tough to measure unless you have a sleep tracker, but can be somewhat assessed based on how you feel when you wake up. Were you in bed for 8 hours but still feel tired? You likely had low sleep quality.
The important take away here is that improving sleep quality let’s you spend less time in bed and still get enough sleep.
How You Can Improve Your Sleep
- Consistent bed times: Going to bed within 30 minutes of the same time every day helps improve your circadian rhythms and improve your sleep efficiency
- Limiting screen use right before bed: Some types of screen use seem to have less effect than others. Reading a book on your Kindle app can prepare you for sleep similar to a book. Scrolling on social media seems to have a more negative effect.
- Sleep in a dark cool room: 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit is the suggested optimal sleeping temperature range
- Timing of eating and drinking: Ideally not eating within 2 hours of bedtime. Alcohol and caffeine use also have a negative impact on sleep quality.
Sleep is one of many factors that contributes risk of sports injuries. If you’re looking to reduce your sports injury risk, we can help you!
At Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine in Alexandria and Springfield, VA, our physical therapists are experts at helping people live an active life.
Call us at 703-299-3111, or click here to request an appointment.
A member of our team will schedule you an appointment with one of our expert physical therapists.
If you want an expert to listen to your unique problems and guide you to success, a Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine physical therapist in Alexandria or Springfield, VA will create a plan specifically for you.
You’ll feel confident that you have the knowledge and ability to stay active and do all the things you want.
Call us at 703-299-3111, or click here to schedule your appointment and get started.
Working to keep you living your best life,
The Solutions Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Team
