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In the News, Summer 2024: Evening Exercise Can Lead to Better Sleep
Exercise in the evening has generally been discouraged, but a small study out of New Zealand, published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine (UK), suggests that short bursts of light exercise can have a beneficial effect on subsequent sleep quality and quantity.
The researchers analyzed data on 28 participants, mostly women of New Zealand European ancestry, who completed two evening interventions: one involving four hours of prolonged sitting, and the other involving four hours of sitting interrupted every half-hour with three minutes of bodyweight resistance exercises. The exercises performed were calf raises, chair squats, and standing knee raises with straight leg hip extensions. It was found that regular activity breaks increased mean sleep period time by about 29 minutes and time spent asleep by about 28 minutes, compared with prolonged sitting with no activity breaks.
The study is of importance due to the association of insufficient sleep with type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The researchers noted that “regular bodyweight resistance exercise breaks in the evening have the potential to help individuals meet optimal sleep recommendations and, over the long term, reduce cardiometabolic disease risk. Furthermore, previous research indicates that 30 additional minutes of sleep time have been found to have a positive impact on clinical well-being, thus suggesting our results are clinically relevant, especially so if the benefit could be extended over the long-term.”
Sources:
Evening activity for better sleep – Otago study. University of Otago, July 17, 2024. otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/evening-activity-for-better-sleep-otago-study.
Gale JT, Haszard JJ, Wei DL, et al. Evening regular activity breaks extend subsequent free-living sleep time in healthy adults: a randomised crossover trial. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. 2024; 10:e001774. doi:10.1136/bmjsem-2023-001774.
Published in the Journal of Health and Healing™
Summer 2024 | Volume 48, Number 2
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