The epidemiological survey of exercise-induced insomnia in chinese athletes

Introduction

Exercise-induced Insomnia(EII), a specific type of insomnia, is one of the symptoms of exercise-induced fatigue. It is common in athletes. The study aimed to investigate the prevalence, characteristics and contributing factors of Exercise-Induced Insomnia (EII) in Chinese athletes as well as to provide new guidelines to assess and prevent EII prevalence

Methods

Two physicians using the Sleep-EVAL system face-to-face interviewed 856 athletes randomly who were from 31 different regions in China and 17 different events. Diagnoses of EII：1. It refers to diagnoses criteria of CCMD-2-R(Chinese classification of Mental Diseases, Second Edition) for insomnia. 2. The insomnia was induced by exercise or competition. SPSS FOR WINDOWS 10.0 was used for statistics analyses.

Results

1. Athletes with EII symptoms covered all events, ages(12~40y) and regions which we investigated. The prevalence rate of EII was 60.5% in total, 61.1% in male, 59.8% in female, 62.78% in excellent athletes and 58.78% in non-excellent athletes. 2. EII symptoms occurring at least three nights per week were reported by 20.8% of the sample; EII symptoms occurring at least three nights per week and lasting for over three weeks were mentioned by 5%; difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) was mentioned by 79.5% of the simple, difficulty maintaining sleep (DMS) by 20.5%, early morning awakenings(EMA) by 17.4%. 3. Insomnia symptoms occurring after intensity exercise were reported by 62.9% of the sample, over anxious or nervous before competition by 62.1%, over excited after training or competition by 37.1%. 4. Treatment status: The rate of EII athletes seeking medical help for their sleep problems was 30%.

Conclusions

EII symptoms are generally existed in Chinese athletes. The difficulty-initiating sleep(DIS)are most prevalent (79.5%) among EII. It frequently occurs after intensity exercise and before competition. 95% of EII symptoms belong to temporary psychological and physiological insomnia while 5% of them match the definition of insomnia described by the CCMD-2-R or are so-called obstinate psychological and physiological insomnia.

References

[1]. Lan Shengren. (1999). Sleep and Insomnia. Beijing: publishing company.
[2]. Qu Mianyu et al.(1996) Applied sports medicine .Beijing: Science and technology Publishing company in Beijing.