Cited by 186Sleep and related disordersCircadian rhythm and melatoninSleep and Work-Related Fatigue

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 72 of the 75 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 142 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Sleep and Nutrition Interactions: Implications for Athletes

Open access

Abstract

This narrative review explores the relationship between sleep and nutrition. Various nutritional interventions have been shown to improve sleep including high carbohydrate, high glycaemic index evening meals, melatonin, tryptophan rich protein, tart cherry juice, kiwifruit and micronutrients. Sleep disturbances and short sleep duration are behavioural risk factors for inflammation, associated with increased risk of illness and disease, which can be modified to promote sleep health. For sleep to have a restorative effect on the body, it must be of adequate duration and quality; particularly for athletes whose physical and mental recovery needs may be greater due to the high physiological and psychological demands placed on them during training and competition. Sleep has been shown to have a restorative effect on the immune system, the endocrine system, facilitate the recovery of the nervous system and metabolic cost of the waking state and has an integral role in learning, memory and synaptic plasticity, all of which can impact both athletic recovery and performance. Functional food-based interventions designed to enhance sleep quality and quantity or promote general health, sleep health, training adaptations and/or recovery warrant further investigation.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This narrative review examines interactions between sleep and nutrition, with a focus on implications for athlete recovery and performance. It concludes that several nutritional interventions may improve sleep, but evidence in athletic populations remains limited and requires further investigation.

Key findings

  • Nutritional factors reported to affect sleep include high-carbohydrate/high-glycaemic-index evening meals, melatonin, tryptophan-rich protein, tart cherry juice, kiwifruit, and micronutrients such as B vitamins and magnesium.
  • A high-GI meal consumed four hours before bed significantly reduced sleep onset latency (9.0 ± 6.2 min) compared with a low-GI meal (17.5 ± 6.2 min) and the same meal consumed one hour before bed (14.6 ± 9.9 min; p = 0.009).
  • Tart cherry juice supplementation increased time in bed (+24 min), total sleep duration (+34 min), sleep efficiency (82.3%), and reduced daytime napping (–22%) (p < 0.05); in older females with insomnia (n = 7), it reduced insomnia severity index scores and wake after sleep onset.
  • In athletes, sleep disturbances are common: professional male ice hockey players (n = 23) had mean total sleep duration of 6.92 h (95% CI 6.3–7.5 h), and 66% of elite German athletes (n = 632) reported pre-competition insomnia symptoms; sleep duration <8 h was the strongest predictor of injury in adolescent athletes (RR = 2.1; 95% CI 1.2–3.9).

Methods

  • Narrative review; no systematic search strategy, inclusion/exclusion criteria, or meta-analytic synthesis is described.
  • Synthesizes existing literature on sleep physiology, sleep in athletes, and nutritional interventions including carbohydrate, melatonin, tryptophan-rich protein, antioxidants, tart cherry, kiwifruit, B vitamins, and magnesium.
  • Draws on studies with varied designs and populations, including athletes (e.g., n = 23 ice hockey players; n = 632 German athletes), healthy adults, older adults, and some animal evidence.

Limitations

  • The paper states that further research is warranted, particularly in athletic populations, and that the effects of tryptophan-rich protein interventions, antioxidant recovery-promoting doses, and food-based sleep interventions require more investigation.
  • The paper notes that the kiwifruit study lacked a control group, had a high dropout rate (n = 5), and recruited subjects interested in a dietary sleep intervention, which may bias findings.
  • Evident from the text: as a narrative review, it lacks systematic quality appraisal; conclusions rely on heterogeneous studies, several small samples (e.g., n = 6, n = 7, n = 14, n = 25, n = 43), and some animal or mechanistic evidence, so causality and generalizability to athletes are not established.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3390/nu11040822

Cites

72 of 72 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 142 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 61 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 59
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 10
66 of 66
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Athletes’ physical and mental recovery needs may be greater due to the high physiological and psychological demands placed on them during training and competition.

    “particularly for athletes whose physical and mental recovery needs may be greater due to the high physiological and psychological demands placed on them during training and competition.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Sleep disturbances and short sleep duration can be modified to promote sleep health.

    “Sleep disturbances and short sleep duration are behavioural risk factors for inflammation, associated with increased risk of illness and disease, which can be modified to promote sleep health.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The effect of exogenous melatonin on sleep quality is relative to the person’s endogenous melatonin levels.

    “However, the effect is relative to the person’s endogenous melatonin levels.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Both the general population and athletes can benefit from nutritional and supplementation support to boost immunity and reduce acute and chronic inflammation during periods of increased training load and competition.

    “Both the general population and athletes can benefit from nutritional and supplementation support to boost immunity and reduce acute and chronic inflammation during periods of increased training load and competition.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Supplementing magnesium, zinc, and melatonin will most likely only have an effect in cases of deficiency or insufficiency.

    “It must be noted that supplementing these nutrients will most likely only have an effect in cases of deficiency or insufficiency.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Folates are destroyed by cooking or processing, but kiwifruit are typically consumed in their raw form.

    “Although folates are widely consumed in the diet, they are destroyed by cooking or processing, however, kiwifruit are typically consumed in their raw form.”
6 of 6

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

  • Sleep efficiency is reported in minutes despite being defined as a percentage

    Minor

    The paper defines sleep efficiency as a percentage of time in bed spent asleep, but gives the kiwifruit study's baseline and post-intervention sleep-efficiency values in minutes.

  • Arousal-system activation is said to facilitate sleep

    Minor

    The account says that arousal-system activation inhibits sleep-active neurons yet facilitates sleep. Elsewhere, it describes activation of sleep-promoting neurons as reinforcing sleep episodes.

2 of 2

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 75 references

3 of the 75 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Kryger, M.H., Roth, R., and Dement, W.C. (2011). Monitoring and Staging Human Sleep. Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, Elsevier. [5th ed.].
  2. Kryger, M.H., Roth, T., and Dement, W.C. (2011). Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, Elsevier. [5th ed.].
  3. Oliver, 2017, Sleep improvement in athletes: Use of nutritional supplements, Am. J. Sports Med., 34, 93

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–184 of 184

Metadata

Authors
Doherty, R., Madigan, S., Warrington, G., & Ellis, J.
Affiliations
  • Letterkenny Institute of Technology (IE)
  • Sport Ireland Institute (IE)
  • University of Limerick (IE)
  • Northumbria University (GB)
Corresponding author
Doherty, Rónán
Venue
Nutrients
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2019-04-11
Volume
11
Issue
4
Pages
822
ISSN
2072-6643 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2938906146
Cited by
186
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 22 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 1
FWCI
2.47
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nutrients (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • University of Limerick Institutional Repository (University of Limerick) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
  • Northumbria Research Link (Northumbria University) (submittedVersion)
  • Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • Lenus, The Irish Health Repository (Dr Steevens Hospital Library) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Endocrine and Autonomic Systems › Circadian rhythm and melatonin
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue
Keywords
sleep, nutrition, athletes, sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep disorders, inflammation, melatonin, tryptophan, tart cherry juice, kiwifruit, micronutrients, carbohydrate intake, immune system, recovery, functional foods, sleep health
MeSH terms
Prunus avium, Antioxidants, Circadian Rhythm, Diet, Dietary Carbohydrates, Fruit, Humans, Melatonin, Nutritional Physiological Phenomena, Sleep, Sleep Wake Disorders, Tryptophan, Vitamin B Complex, Glycemic Index, Athletic Performance, Athletes

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-08, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-08 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review