It is a widely accepted fact that those who exercise will sleep better. But is it that simple? And what constitutes “enough” exercise that can ward off those sleepless nights.
First, we need to break a myth. Not all activity is considered exercise that will indeed promote better sleep. A study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that people who work in jobs that are more physically demanding tend to be either shorter sleepers (fewer than 6 hours a night) or longer sleepers (longer than 9 hours). These opposite scenarios are considered sleep extremes, and both can pose health risks. Penn researchers examined sleep patterns and job classifications of over 17,000 study participants. Job activity was classified as low (mostly sitting or standing), moderate (mostly walking), or high (mostly manual labor). Compared to those in low activity jobs, those working moderate activity jobs, such as postal service employees, were more likely to be short sleepers and long sleepers, and those working high-activity jobs, such as construction workers, were more likely to be short sleepers.
Between people who consider themselves regular exercisers and those who dub themselves couch potatoes, the regular exercisers report getting better quality shut-eye, according to the 2013 Sleep in America survey from the National Sleep Foundation, even when both groups got the same amount of sleep. The best news was for the non-exercisers, however, since adding even just 10 minutes of exercise may produce a noticeable improvement in sleep quality, poll task force chair Max Hirshkowitz, Ph.D. said in a statement.
Staying active is likely to reduce your risk of developing restless leg syndrome to begin with, according to the Restless Leg Syndrome Foundation, but if you are living with RLS, exercise may help keep symptoms at bay.
Getting a leg-up on the day’s exercise is best done early in the day. That’s the take-away message from a small study that was conducted at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, in which 20 adults on separate days did a moderate, 30-minute workout at 7 a.m., 1 p.m., or 7 p.m. Researchers then monitored the participants’ sleep on each of the nights following those differently timed workouts. Compared to when they’d done afternoon or evening workouts, the participants woke significantly fewer times during the night when they’d exercised at 7 a.m.
Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah monitored the sleep of 375 women for a week and tracked how the amount and quality of sleep, as well as when the women got out of bed, affected their activity level the following day. The researchers found “a significant drop in physical activity for every hour after 7:30 in the morning that the participants got out of bed.” The later the women slept in, the less active they were on that day.
In short, exercise helps sleep – even as little as 10 minutes a day of exercise. Early risers are more likely to have better activity levels during the day with more energy for exercise. And finally, while we may consider our job to be physically active, that’s not necessarily the kind of physical activity that will help you sleep.
Perform your own exercise sleep study – and then let us know your results.
Sleep Insights 