A few squats on the chair, calf raises while watching a TV show, but also marching in the living room or doing a dance in the living room. A few minutes of physical activity before bed could surprisingly lead to better, longer sleep. The result of a new study sounds like a countermand: experts, in fact, based on available evidence, have long advised against doing intense exercise in the evening, before going to sleep, because it increases body temperature and heart rate, which can worsen the quality of sleep. But a group of researchers at the University of Otago, New Zealanddiscovered that short ‘interludes’ of light activity can provide nights in the arms of Morpheus and sweet dreams.
In a study – “the first in the world” of its kind, scientists explain – published in ‘Bmj Open Sport & Exercise Medicine’ and funded by the Health Research Council, The authors asked participants to complete 2 sessions over 4 hours in the evening: in one, people sat for a prolonged period, in the other, they sat with 3-minute exercise breaks every half hour. These short moments of ‘sport’ could be enough, they assure. The researchers found that, after completing the intervention punctuated by activity breaks, people slept 30 minutes more. “We know that for many of us, the longest period of uninterrupted ‘sitting’ occurs at home in the evening. In our previous studies, we found that getting up and doing 2-3 minutes of exercise every half hour reduces the amount of sugar and fat in the bloodstream after a meal,” says lead author Jennifer Gale, from the Department of Human Nutrition at the University of Otago, highlighting that sitting for long periods is associated with a higher risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and death.
“However, many sleep guidelines tell us that we shouldn’t do long bouts or high-intensity exercise in the hours before bed, so we wanted to know what would happen if you did very short bursts of light-intensity exercise repeatedly throughout the evening,” Gale explains. The ‘package’ envisaged in the studysays lead researcher Meredith Peddie, a professor in the university’s Department of Human Nutrition, had 3 exercises: chair squats, calf raises, and standing knee raises with straight-leg hip extension. “These simple bodyweight exercises were chosen because they require no equipment or a lot of space and can be done without interrupting the TV program you’re watching,” she explains.
Thirty non-smokers aged between 18 and 40 were recruited for the research.. All reported accumulating more than 5 hours of sedentary time during the day at work and 2 hours in the evening. To capture their habitual physical activity and sleep patterns, participants wore an activity tracker on their wrist for 7 consecutive days. They were also asked to record their activities, the time they went to bed and when they woke up. Data from the activity tracker showed that before the experiment, participants spent an average of 10 hours and 31 minutes sitting each day, and 4 hours and 55 minutes doing vigorous physical activity. Three out of four slept the recommended 7 hours a night, while the rest slept less (21%) or, conversely, slept for more than 9 hours (4%). The results, based on 28 participants, show that after activity breaks, participants slept an average of 27 minutes longer than when they had been sitting for a prolonged period..
There Average sleep duration was 7 hours and 12 minutescompared to 6 hours and 45 minutes after prolonged sedentary time. And while the time participants attempted to go to sleep was about the same, their average wake-up times differed. Participants woke up, on average, at 7:35 a.m. after the sedentary session and at 8:06 a.m. after the session with activity breaks. There were also no significant differences in sleep efficiency or number of nighttime awakenings between the 2 interventions, indicating that the activity breaks did not disrupt or disrupt subsequent sleep, the researchers say.
“From what we know from other studies,” Peddie points out, you could probably get a similar effect if you walked around your house, marched in place, or even danced in your living room“, precisely. “The most important thing is to get up regularly from the chair and move your body,” he says. The fact that this exercise leads to a longer sleep is important, the authors of the study highlight, because Lack of sleep can negatively impact your diet and has been linked to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. “We know that higher levels of daytime physical activity promote better sleep, but current sleep recommendations discourage high-intensity exercise before bed. It may be time to revisit these guidelines, as our study showed that regularly interrupting long periods of sitting is a promising health intervention,” Peddie concludes.
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