The organizing committee of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games recently announced that some of the preliminary and final competitions will be held at night. The present article discusses the potential harmful effects of these late-night competitions on sleep, circadian rhythms and athletic performance during the Olympic Games. Specifically, night-time competition could lead to injury and may compromise an athlete's decision-making, attentional, physiological and other processes. Consequently, these impacts could negatively affect the performance of athletes and their teams. Thus, it is suggested that technical commissions take special care when creating strategies to minimize harm to the athletes by considering factors such as light exposure, melatonin intake, sleep hygiene and scheduled naps, and training at local competition time. Furthermore, it is necessary for specialists in chronobiology and sleep to engage with members of the national teams to develop an activity schedule for physical, technical, tactical and psychological preparation that accounts for circadian rhythms, thereby creating the best possible environment for the athletes to achieve their ideal performance.
This study investigated the effect of using an artificial bright light on the entrainment of the sleep/wake cycle as well as the reaction times of athletes before the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. A total of 22 athletes from the Brazilian Olympic Swimming Team were evaluated, with the aim of preparing them to compete at a time when they would normally be about to go to bed for the night. During the 8-day acclimatization period, their sleep/wake cycles were assessed by actigraphy, with all the athletes being treated with artificial light therapy for between 30 and 45 min (starting at day 3). In addition, other recommendations to improve sleep hygiene were made to the athletes. In order to assess reaction times, the Psychomotor Vigilance Test was performed before (day 1) and after (day 8) the bright light therapy. As a result of the intervention, the athletes slept later on the third (p = 0.01), seventh (p = 0.01) and eighth (p = 0.01) days after starting bright light therapy. Regarding reaction times, when tested in the morning the athletes showed improved average (p = 0.01) and minimum reaction time (p = 0.03) when comparing day 8 to day 1. When tested in the evening, they showed improved average (p = 0.04), minimum (p = 0.03) and maximum reaction time (p = 0.02) when comparing day 8 to day 1. Light therapy treatment delayed the sleep/wake cycles and improved reaction times of members of the swimming team. The use of bright light therapy was shown to be effective in modulating the sleep/wake cycles of athletes who had to perform in competitions that took place late at night.
The objective of the study was to evaluate the psychobiological aspects of the Paralympic athletes athletics mode, before the London Paralympic Games 2012. We evaluated 40 athletes without 31 men and 9 women who were selected by the Brazilian Paralympic Committee to be part of the Brazilian delegation. For the evaluation of psychobiological aspects used questionnaires: Trait Anxiety Inventory-State, POMS, the Beck Depression questionnaire Pittsburgh Epworth Scale to assess, respectively, anxiety, mood, depression, sleep and sleepiness. For trait anxiety and state anxiety, athletes exhibited a mean level of anxiety in relation to the profile of mood states and higher intensity values than any other dimensions. The lower total sleep time was in athletes with bad sleep, sleep deficiency was lower in athletes with poor sleep and total sleep time was lower for those who had efficiency < 85%. All psychobiological variables evaluated in pre-competition period were normal for the athletes of the Brazilian Paralympic athletics team that took part in the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
An increase in the prevalence of obesity in people with spinal cord injury can contribute to low-grade chronic inflammation and increase the risk of infection in this population. A decrease in sympathetic activity contributes to immunosuppression due to the lower activation of immune cells in the blood. The effects of physical exercise on inflammatory parameters in individuals with spinal cord injury have not been well described. We conducted a review of the literature published from 1974 to 2012. This review explored the relationships between low-grade inflammation, spinal cord injury, and exercise to discuss a novel mechanism that might explain the beneficial effects of exercise involving an increase in catecholamines and cytokines in people with spinal cord injury.
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