Rsponse to Millet et al: Comment on Gattoni et al: Sleep Deprivation Training as a Highway to Hell in Ultratrail (SPONET-ID 4078222), Gattoni et al: Sleep deprivation training to reduce the negative effects of sleep loss on endurance performance: a single case study (SPONET-ID 4074380) We would like to thank Prof Gregoire Millet and colleagues for their commentary on our recently published case study describing our experience with sleep deprivation training (SDT),1 a novel strategy aimed at reducing the negative effects of sleep deprivation on ultraendurance performance. We certainly agree with Millet and colleagues that athletes should not practice any strategy without experimental evidence that it can safely improve performance. However, we strongly disagree with their premature conclusion that SDT is ineffective and dangerous. Such a strong conclusion is not evidence-based because there is no previous research in animals or healthy humans on the effects of repeating for few weeks a schedule of a single sleepless night followed by 6 nights of regular sleep.
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