Immediate effects of Ramadan on objective time asleep in male youth football players from the Middle East: an interrupted time-series study

Lolli, Lorenzo, Gregson, Warren ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9820-5925, Pulford, Adam, Kanope, Tane, Lopez, Emmanuel and Di Salvo, Valter (2024) Immediate effects of Ramadan on objective time asleep in male youth football players from the Middle East: an interrupted time-series study. Science and Medicine in Football. pp. 1-11. ISSN 2473-3938

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Abstract

Objective: To examine the abrupt effects of Ramadan onset on actigraphy-based time asleep in male youth Muslim football players. Methods: We adopted a quasi-experimental, interrupted time-series research design and tracked objective time asleep over a minimum of 12 consecutive nights in the two weeks prior to and immediately after Ramadan onset, respectively. Twenty-two, male academy student-athletes (chronological age range: 12.6 to 16.2 years) participated in the study (464 individual observations). Segmented generalized mixed-effects modelling estimated the effects of Ramadan onset on time asleep during the first period of night sleep only. Results: Ramadan onset led to an immediate mean reduction of 89 min (95% confidence interval [CI], 54 to 123 min) in time asleep during the first period of night sleep compared to pre-Ramadan sleep patterns. Model-adjusted estimated marginal means for time asleep were ~ 5.7 h (95%CI, 5.1 to 6.2 h) before and ~ 4.2 h (95%CI, 3.6 to 4.7 h) after Ramadan onset. Night sleep interruptions resulting in two or more fragmented periods accounted for 8% (95%CI, 2 to 21%) to 19% (95%, 11 to 29%) of sleep observations before and after Ramadan onset, respectively. Conclusions: The onset of Ramadan determined an abrupt reduction in time asleep of ~ 1 h 30 min in the first period of a night cycle and contributed to additional problems of heterogeneous sleep fragmentation that can impact optimal school learning and youth athlete performance development processes.