how to sleep in twisted LoopingCall

I have a work() method that calls functions that may invoke time.sleep. This clearly goes against recommended twisted usage.

Suppose one could replace LoopingCall with threads.deferToThread() and loop manually in our worker, but are there alternative ways to accomplish this while still utilizing LoopingCall?

Pseudocode:

from twisted.internet.task import LoopingCall

looping_call = LoopingCall(work)
looping_call.start(10)


def work():
    result = False
    for i in elements:
        if blocking_function(i):  # note processing sequentially here is preferred
            result = True

    if result:
        dosomething()


def blocking_function(i):
    time.sleep(5)
    return True  # or False

related: A non blocking way to sleep/wait in twisted?

One solution is to use deferToThread only for the blocking call:

async def work():
    result = False
    for i in elements:
        # note processing sequentially here is preferred
        if await deferToThread(lambda: blocking_function(i)):  
            result = True

    if result:
        dosomething()