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How Exercise Affects Sleep: Evening Workouts Linked To Better Sleep Quality, New Study Suggests

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How Exercise Affects Sleep: Evening Workouts Linked To Better Sleep Quality, New Study Suggests

Topline

Body weight workouts in the evening may be linked to around 30 more minutes of sleep at night and without increasing sleep interruptions, a new study suggests, the newest evidence in the long debate about the relationship between evening exercise and sleep.

Key Facts

The consensus on whether working out before bedtime is detrimental to sleep health has been a long debated topic, with many studies finding exercise—especially vigorous exercise—in the evening results in poor sleep quality, so a new study based in New Zealand and published Tuesday in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine took a fresh look at this relationship.

Prior to the study, 21% of the 30 participants—who were between the ages of 19 and 39 and mainly women—slept fewer than seven hours a night, 4% slept more than nine hours and the rest slept seven hours, which is the optimal amount of sleep.

The participants completed three-minute exercise breaks every 30 minutes over a period of four hours starting between 5:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., and the exercises included body weight resistance training like chair squats and calf raises; the control group sat for four hours.

The researchers found the participants who had evening exercise breaks slept for an average of 27 minutes longer than those a part of the control group who were sedentary for four hours.

There were also no significant differences in uninterrupted sleep between the two groups, indicating evening resistance training doesn’t cause sleep interruptions, according to the study.

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What’s The Recommended Amount Of Sleep Per Night?

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends adults get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. Though getting less than seven hours of sleep can have detrimental effects on a person’s health, sometimes more than nine hours is needed, like if a person’s recovering from illness, in people with sleep deprivation and young adults.

How Does Sleep Quality Affect Your Health?

Getting good sleep is important because sleep is connected to every aspect of humans’ health, from how they think to how the body fights off infection, according to Yale Medicine. Women who sleep five hours or less are 15% more likely to become obese, a study found. People with irregular sleep schedules are more likely to have high blood pressure. Participants in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study who got six hours or less of sleep were 2.5 times more likely to have frequent mental distress than those who slept more. People who get the recommended amount of sleep decrease their risk of heart disease and stroke by 75%, according to a 2022 study by the European Society of Cardiologists. Good sleep can boost the immune system, improve mood and energy, decrease the risk of chronic disease, increase muscle growth and boost brain function, according to the American Heart Association.

Key Background

There’s conflicting research on the impact working out at night has on sleep. One study found strenuous exercise—like high-intensity interval training and lifting heavy weights—three hours before bed may negatively affect the heart during the first hours of sleep. Evening exercise may negatively affect the sleep cycle of early risers, but not for night owls, according to a separate study. However, one study that allowed participants to keep their regular exercise routines and didn’t assign new ones found there was no difference in sleep quality between people who exercise in the morning versus the evening. The researchers believe this may be because people chose workout times that best align with their circadian rhythm, which is the body’s natural clock. Participants who did moderate-intensity workouts four to two hours before bed didn’t see any disturbances in their ability to sleep, a 2020 study found.

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