Pickleball Players often think of high-level performance and restorative recovery as two separate approaches in their health and wellness plan. This often leads to focusing too much on the more action-oriented component, performance, while the more passive element, recovery, is a lower priority.
Recent studies* show that elite athletes have shown that good sleep significantly influences their performance across a range of activities including reaction time, accuracy, and endurance. Poor quality sleep, on the other hand, can increase the risk of injury and results in lack of physical and cognitive performance. Therefore, pickleball players should build quality sleep into their recovery protocol
However, there are many differences in sleep quality especially when over the counter sleeping aids like melatonin are used! Melatonin has been shown to cause adverse side effects, such as dizziness, drowsiness, and headaches.* It is imperative to use the right nutraceutical sleep aid that is helping patients achieve a restful quality sleep because truly restorative rest is not only measured by the length but also by the quality of sleep.
Alternatives to melatonin with high safety profiles include botanicals and extracts such as chamomile, lavender, myrcene, valerian root, passionflower, hops and extracts from Cannabis sativa. Hemp is one form of cannabis that has less than 0.3% THC and contains cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN).These non-psychotropic cannabinoids do not induce a “high” and have a calming effect in the central nervous system are promising candidates in the treatment of chronic inflammations.* Pickleball Players should be encouraged to use nutraceutical supplements containing cannabinoids to help their patients with sleep and pain management.
Charest J, Grandner MA. Sleep and Athletic Performance: Impacts on Physical Performance, Mental Performance, Injury Risk and Recovery, and Mental Health. Sleep Med Clin. 2020 Mar;15(1):41-57. doi: 10.1016/j.jsmc.2019.11.005. PMID: 32005349; PMCID: PMC9960533.
Menczel Schrire Z, Phillips CL, Chapman JL, Duffy SL, Wong G, D'Rozario AL, Comas M, Raisin I, Saini B, Gordon CJ, McKinnon AC, Naismith SL, Marshall NS, Grunstein RR, Hoyos CM. Safety of higher doses of melatonin in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Pineal Res. 2022 Mar;72(2):e12782. doi: 10.1111/jpi.12782. Epub 2021 Dec 30. PMID: 34923676.
Shannon S, Lewis N, Lee H, Hughes S. Cannabidiol in Anxiety and Sleep: A Large Case Series. Perm J. 2019;23:18-041. doi: 10.7812/TPP/18-041. PMID: 30624194; PMCID: PMC6326553.
Zurier, R.B. and Burstein, S.H. (2016), Cannabinoids, inflammation, and fibrosis. The FASEB Journal, 30: 3682-3689. https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.201600646R
