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

<h3>Objective</h3><p dir="ltr">To examine the abrupt effects of Ramadan onset on actigraphy-based time asleep in male youth Muslim football players.</p><h3>Methods</h3><p dir="ltr">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.</p><h3>Results</h3><p dir="ltr">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.</p><h3>Conclusions</h3><p dir="ltr">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</p><h2>Other Information</h2><p dir="ltr">Published in: Science and Medicine in Football<br>License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/</a><br>See article on publisher's website: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24733938.2024.2340112" target="_blank">https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24733938.2024.2340112</a></p>