I’ve said it before, and you can bet I’ll say it again – EXERCISE is GOOD for you. Right – you knew that. Again, it’s the single best thing you can do to improve your overall health and longevity, as long as you do it intelligently. So what’s new?
The article says “Regular Exercise Linked to Better Sleep”. Cool – but what are the details (that’s where the devil is, after all)?
Thousands of people in 9 countries over 10 years have 30-50% better sleep when people who did exercise more than 30 minutes twice a week were compared to those who were inactive (which was 37% of the population tested!).
As usual, there’s loads of limitations to this report – two questionnaires 10 years apart and drawing conclusions from that. But it does support that getting up and moving actually is important and has real health benefits.
GET UP! MOVE!
Talk soon.
Regular Exercise Linked to Better Sleep
TOPLINE:
Over time, exercising at least twice a week is associated with significantly fewer insomnia symptoms and better sleep duration, new research shows.
METHODOLOGY:
The study included 4339 adults aged 39-67 years (48% men) from 21 centers in nine countries participating in the third follow-up to the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS III).
Participants responded to questions about physical activity, insomnia symptoms, sleep duration, and daytime sleepiness at 10-year follow-up.
Being "physically active" was defined as exercising with a frequency of at least twice a week for ≥ 1 hour per week.
The main outcome measures were insomnia, sleep time, and daytime sleepiness in relation to physical activity.
TAKEAWAY:
From baseline to follow-up, 37% of participants were persistently inactive, 25% were persistently active, 20% became inactive, and 18% became active.
After adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, smoking history, and study center, persistently active participants were less likely to report difficulties with sleep initiation (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.60; 95% CI, 0.45-0.78), with short sleep duration of ≤ 6 hours/night (aOR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.59-0.85) and long sleep of ≥ 9 hours/night (aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.33-0.84), compared with persistently nonactive subjects.
Those who were persistently active were 22% less likely to report any symptoms of insomnia, 40% less likely to report two symptoms, and 37% less likely to report three symptoms.
Daytime sleepiness and difficulties maintaining sleep were found to be unrelated to physical activity status.
IN PRACTICE:
"This study has a long follow-up period (10 years) and indicates strongly that consistency in physical activity might be an important factor in optimizing sleep duration and reducing the symptoms of insomnia," the authors wrote.
SOURCE:
Erla Björnsdóttir, of the Department of Psychology, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland, was the co-senior author and corresponding author of the study. It was published online on March 25 in BMJ Open.
LIMITATIONS:
It's unclear whether individuals who were active at both timepoints had been continuously physically active throughout the study period or only at those two timepoints. Sleep variables were available only at follow-up and were all subjectively reported, meaning the associations between physical activity and sleep may not be longitudinal. Residual confounders (eg, mental health and musculoskeletal disorders or chronic pain) that can influence both sleep and exercise were not explored.