New study points to the usefulness of anaerobic exercise for night rest but the combination of different activities that generally makes sleep better
What is the most suitable physical activity to help our body rest at night? Numerous studies have concluded that the aerobic sports (i.e. any physical activity practiced for over ten minutes that accelerates the heart rate and requires a greater supply of oxygen such as running, swimming or cycling) are best for fighting insomnia with respect to anaerobic exercises (which instead require more effort for a very short period of time, such as exercises with machines in the gym). However, the question is still complex because various factors come into play, including age, state of health, chronotype but above all the time in which a sport activity is carried out, whether it is aerobic or anaerobic.
The revenge of the aerobics
A recent study presented at a meeting of the Amertican Hearth Association wanted to better investigate the effects of resistance exercise on sleep, which has been less studied so far, and concluded that overall exercise with machines in the gym seems to be better than aerobic activity for getting better sleep. Researchers from the University of Ames, Iowa (United States) enrolled 386 obese or overweight and hypertensive adults and divided them into three exercise groups: aerobic only (treadmill or moderate or vigorous intensity bike), anaerobic only ( reps on 12 resistance machines) and combined (30 minutes of aerobic exercise and another 30 on nine machines). All participated in one-hour supervised work sessions three times a week for 12 months. At the start of the study, the volunteers filled out a detailed questionnaire on sleep quality and the researchers measured sleep duration, sleep efficiency (how long you actually sleep versus time spent in bed), latency (how long it takes to fall asleep) and sleep disturbances (being hot, cold, painful, getting up to go to the toilet, snoring).
Different benefits
What emerged? More than a third (35%) of the participants had poor quality sleep at the start of the survey. In 42% of the participants who slept less than 7 hours la sleep duration increased by 40 minutes in the resistance exercise groupfrom 23 minutes in the aerobic exercise group17 minutes in the combined group. Sleep efficiency increased with resistance exercise and combined exercises, but not with aerobic exercise; there sleep latency slightly lowered in the resistance group (three minutes) and unchanged in the others; sleep quality and sleep disturbances improved in all groups. The major limitation of the research, also admitted by the authors themselves, is that sleep was not monitored but reported by the volunteers. And we know that there is not always a close match between objective and subjective suggests Luigi Ferini Strambi, chief physician of the Sleep Medicine Center at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan. Furthermore, the time of day in which the exercises were carried out is not reported, which is of crucial importance on sleep.
Quality and quantity
The American National Sleep Foundation also acknowledges that endurance activity plays an important role in the sleep cycle: if 150 minutes of aerobic activity per week improves the quality of sleepespecially in older people, the anaerobic one to be able to reduce both the latency of falling asleep and the awakenings during the night, therefore it affects the amount of sleep. there is no doubt that physical activity is good for both the quality and quantity of sleep – concludes Ferini Strambi, who is also professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Psychology of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University – however most studies are in favor of a combination of the two activities to improve sleep as a whole, although there is no unanimous agreement in the answer. Among other things, frequency is also very important: a recent Canadian meta-analysis has shown that performing physical exercise sporadically reduces REM sleep on the day of activity, while constant training has no effect on the structure of sleep and its phases.
August 11, 2022 (change August 11, 2022 | 12:48)
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