Tobias Harris has a strong opinion on one of the biggest issues facing NBA players. (via Baxter)
He looked around. The bus was exquisite. The players were millionaires, among the greatest athletes in the world. And still, on the basis of everything he'd seen and the data he'd been gathering since he joined the team, Royer had begun to believe that the grind of the NBA schedule was slowly undermining the physical gifts that had granted them a seat on the bus in the first place.
That last element was crucial. Circadian rhythms, tied to the rising and setting of the sun, dictate daily sleep/wake cycles. If those rhythms are thrown off, every cell in the body is affected, so much so that the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified circadian disruption from shift work -- which affects, among others, emergency medical workers, military personnel, pilots, firefighters and law enforcement -- as a possible human carcinogen.
Circadian rhythms, tied to the rising and setting of the sun, dictate daily sleep cycles. Zigzag across time zones and it's worse."There's not a factory on the planet," Royer says,"that would move shift workers the way we move NBA players." not just an NBA problem. It is, in fact, an everybody problem. In 2011, the CDC declared insufficient sleep to be a public health problem. Over the past 50 years, according to research conducted by Dr.
"Based on ... about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number ... is zero." Testosterone is vital for athletes. It's a foundational hormone that impacts speed, strength, muscle mass, mood. And while studies had already shown that sleeping about five hours a night for one week temporarily lowers testosterone levels in men by an equivalent of 11 years of aging, what Royer saw in NBA players stunned him all the more.
"Lack of sleep messes up your recovery, messes up how you play, your cognitive function, your mindset, how you're moving on the court. Sleep is everything."As the years went on, Royer and his staff considered their efforts to counter sleep loss -- like deep-breathing exercises to optimize sleep -- to be all but a Band-Aid for a broken bone.
If deep sleep is like cash in a wallet, REM sleep is like a retirement fund. In such a grinding schedule, with so much sleep debt, the players were all but bankrupt.
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