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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Sleep Sci 2020; 13(04): 293-297
DOI: 10.5935/1984-0063.20200029
Short Communications

Associations between sleep and in-race gastrointestinal symptoms: an observational study of running and triathlon race competitors

Patrick Benjamin Wilson
1   Old Dominion University, Human Movement Sciences - Norfolk - VA - United States.
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Objective It remains unstudied whether poor sleep is involved in the etiology of gastrointestinal (GI) problems in athletes.

Methods Eighty-seven running and triathlon/duathlon race (>60 minutes) participants completed questionnaires to quantify the Sleep Problems Index-(SPI)-I and sleep parameters from the night before races. For GI symptoms, participants reported the severity (0-10 scale) of four upper and three lower symptoms during races. Spearman’s correlations examined whether sleep measures were associated with in-race GI symptoms. Partial correlations were calculated to control for age, resting GI symptoms, and anxiety.

Results SPI-I scores correlated with in-race upper GI symptoms (rho=0.26, p=0.013). Controlling for anxiety attenuated this association (rho=0.17, p=0.117), while other control variables had little effect. Acute sleep quantity and quality were not associated with GI symptoms.

Conclusions Chronic sleep dysfunction is modestly correlated with in-race upper GI symptoms, though future research should clarify whether this is mediated or moderated by factors like anxiety

Anxiety - Exercise - Pain - Sleep - Stomach


Publication History

Received: 18 January 2020

Accepted: 12 June 2020

Article published online:
09 November 2023

© 2023. Brazilian Sleep Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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