Quick exercises at night can help you sleep longer: study

It turns out that squats are better than evening squats.

New research reveals that taking a break from couch life to do some simple exercise before bed can help you get about half an hour more sleep.

The old thinking is that vigorous exercise before bed will raise your heart rate and body temperature, making it difficult to fall asleep. So researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand focused on short bursts of light activity.

“These results add to a growing body of evidence showing that evening exercise does not impair sleep quality, despite current sleep recommendations to the contrary,” the study authors wrote in their findings, published Tuesday in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine.

Here’s the catch, though: the three-minute exercise circuit—intended to be a break from sitting—must be done every half hour to four hours in the evening.

The study authors recruited 28 non-smoking adults up to 40 years of age. The participants had more than five hours of sitting time in their daily work and two hours in the evening.

They were instructed to wear a fitness tracker for seven consecutive days, in which they also recorded when they went to bed, when they woke up, and when they participated in activities that might not have been picked up by the tracker, such as using a stationary device. cycling or doing yoga.

Each volunteer also completed two four-hour evening visits in a controlled laboratory environment.

In one session, participants remained seated throughout, starting around 5:00 p.m. In the other, they interrupted their rest with three minutes of simple resistance exercise every 30 minutes over four hours.

Each three-minute “activity break” included three rounds of three exercises—squats, calf raises, and standing knee raises with straight hip extensions for 20 seconds each.

“These simple bodyweight exercises were chosen because they don’t require equipment or a lot of space, and you can do them without interrupting the TV show you’re watching,” said study author Meredith Peddie, a senior lecturer in the department of nutrition. human. .

“From what we know from other studies, you can probably get a similar effect if you walk around your house, march in place or even dance in your living room – the most important thing is to get out of your chair regularly and move. your body,” she added.

The idea is that exercise reduces the amount of sugar and fat in the blood after a meal.

Peddie’s team determined that when participants did the exercises, they slept an average of 27 minutes longer than when they spent four hours sitting. Average sleep duration was 7 hours and 12 minutes versus 6 hours and 45 minutes.

Participants did not change their sleep schedule, but their average waking time did.

It was 7:35 a.m. after the extended session and 8:06 a.m. after the break.

Between the two camps, there were no significant differences in uninterrupted sleep.

“This study appears to be the first to explore the effect of evening resistance exercise breaks on sleep quality and physical activity patterns in healthy adults,” the researchers wrote, while acknowledging study limitations include the small number of participants. and the laboratory. placement.

“As with all laboratory studies,” they write, “the highly controlled setting may not reflect behavior” in the real world.

Experts recommend seven to nine hours of sleep a night to lower your risk of developing obesity, heart disease and depression, among other chronic conditions.