It’s March 13th again - which means it’s World Sleep Day.

A quick 3-minute flick through LinkedIn today shows that many sleep experts are suddenly an expert about the links between the immune system and sleep.

To be clear - we haven’t done research into the links between the immune system and sleep (and it’s likely that 99% of sleep experts on LinkedIn haven’t either).

So on World Sleep Day we’re going to educate about something we have done - and are doing - research on.

Esports

(*sorry to those who don’t like ‘esports’ capitalised - it was the start of the sentence)

Before delving into what esports is (for those who don’t explore that part of the Internet), let’s delve into the disparities between physical sporting athletes vs esport athletes - by looking through the eyes of a sleep researcher.

Esports Athletes vs Physical Sports Athletes

In summary, 1 hr of physical activity per day, whether it’s cardiovascular or resistance training), is linked to good sleep quality. Aside from this research finding, many physical sport athletes have already experienced this for themselves.

Broadly speaking, physical athletes have undergone training schedules, and seen how they sleep well during such phases of their lives. Conversely, in the pre-competition phase, when anxiety can increase, they will notice how sleep becomes disrupted. Because of these two sides of the coin, physical athletes have learned the importance of sleep from experience (*keep in mind that physical athletes are human like the rest of us, and many of them can sacrifice sleep to make the most of their wake time).

All of this assumes that physical athletes are active during … should we say … sensible times of the day. If physical activity is performed very early in the day (ie, early morning) or very late in the day (ie, late evening), then this may affect their body clock (which is one of the main contributors to when we sleep). For instance, we’ve reviewed the scientific literature and found that repetitive late night exercise can delay the timing of one’s body clock.

(*if you wish to learn how to treat delayed circadian rhythm disorders from those who do it each week (and have researched it) … aka, us … then check out Teen WINK (Circadian) - even subscribe to our newsletter and watch out for any future discounts)*.

Conversely, we’re currently writing up our study where we had 19 teenagers stay in our sleep laboratory for a week, and half of them were physically active in the morning (ie, walking on treadmills) and the other half were sedentary (ie, watching TV). The results surprised us, and we’re really looking forward to publishing them!

So what about esports athletes?

On the assumption that we’re talking about professional esports athletes (where their job is being an esports athlete), then their experiences with physical activity and sleep may be markedly different to that of the physical athlete.

An esports athlete’s training is sedentary. They need to sit still whilst playing video games.

A recent video I watched stated that the odds of becoming a professional esports athlete - today - is about the same as becoming an NBA player. Because of this level of competition, esports athletes need not only to be inherently talented, but they need to put in huge hours of training.

And historically, esports athletes have been training all their lives.

They’ve been playing video games for years (likely more than a decade).

So it’s a no brainer that esports athletes don’t appreciate sleep - right?

Because everyone knows technology use affects sleep - right?

Well maybe I’m partly to blame. Because in 2010 I co-authored a review of the links between technology use and sleep in young people. It’s been my most popular scientific study. Not only because we summarised what studies have found, but we also proposed a model for how technology use affects sleep.

But my perspective has changed over the past decade.

And that’s because, I continued to research the effects of technology use on sleep (and still do). And I’m finding that there isn’t compelling evidence. If you want, here’s the chapter I’ve written about this, which includes what we’ve found when we have tried to wreck people’s sleep by getting them to videogame in the hour before bed.

And if you read this and think “Oh well, it must be that blue light that comes from the screens that affects sleep” - we’ve studied that too (you can read that story here).

So after a decade of researching the effects of physical activity and videogaming on sleep, my stance is that the former is helpful, and the latter is not detrimental.

But there is an exception to the rule - and that’s when the behaviour is excessive. And esports athletes are a great example of that.

In order to be competitive, they need to train for long hours.

And hence comes the trade-off.

The more I’m awake, the more I can train.

But in order to do that, I have less sleep.

Each person has been their own scientist when it comes to sleep. They’ve had many times when they have ‘manipulated the independent variable’ (ie, got less sleep) and observed what that’s done to a range of dependent variables (ie, their concentration, mood, anxiety, reaction times, making mistakes, etc.). Usually they get by each day - which is fine. As long as the mistakes aren’t life threatening (ie, crashing a vehicle, letting the scalpel slip when performing surgery).

For an esports athlete, mistakes will count when they compete.

But it’s not just the sleep the night before a comp. It’s the sleep leading up to the comp.

Our team - consisting of Aly Sun, Sangha Lee, Daniel Bonnar, Daniel Blum, Brandy Roane (and myself) have been studying the sleep of esports athletes. Whilst we cannot yet say what the final results are (as we are preparing them for publication in a scientific journal), we can say that there have been times that our jaws have dropped. Collectively, we’ve been treating people with insomnia and circadian rhythm disorders for at least 30 years - and some of the sleep patterns we’ve seen in esports athletes have made us realise how much help they need.

And because we’re both sleep researchers and sleep psychologists, we have been providing sleep interventions for esports athletes. Whilst we haven’t yet crunched the data, what we are seeing is very promising! Hopefully we’ll let this cat-out-of-the-bag later this year when we publish the findings.

Sleep therapy research is very rewarding and highly informative. It can show what techniques are best suited for specific people. So we’re learning a lot from this research - because that’s what science does - it advances our knowledge. So we’re grateful to those esports organisations who have collaborated with us - including Ground Zero Gaming, Gravitas, and Gen.G (just to name those starting with a ‘G’).

We also look forward to working with other teams. See our Virtual page listing a range of research, educational and clinical services.

So, on World Sleep Day, a huge thanks to those esports organisations who are taking the health of their players very seriously.

As the caption says - Sleep doesn’t just take up 33% of our lives - it dictates what the other 67% is like!

If you’ve got this far, you’ll see I haven’t ridden the bandwagon and mentioned the Corona virus (ah, crap! I was doing so well). But I’ll just say this. Whilst the NBA are cancelling games (likely due to the risk of human interaction), can you see how esports can continue despite travel bans and self-isolation?

How’s that for a great business model? (*just gotta hope there isn’t the equivalent digital virus!).