When you’re taking care of yourself, and exercising regularly, you likely notice that you’re not only feeling better during the day, but sleeping better at night, too. Exercise can provide excellent benefits for your sleep.
There’s a substantial body of scientific evidence that exercise helps improve sleep. Making exercise part of your regular routine can contribute to healthier, more restful sleep—and may help improve sleep issues such as insomnia. It may decreases sleep latency (e.g. you get to sleep faster) and increases sleep efficiency (e.g. you won’t be awake so much in bed).
How can exercise affect your sleep?
Exercise can give a boost to sleep in several ways. Making time to exercise can:
Exercise can contribute to more sound and restful sleep. Physical activity increases time spent in deep sleep, the most physically restorative sleep phase. Deep sleep helps to boost immune function, support cardiac health, and control stress and anxiety.
In addition to improving the quality of sleep, exercise also can help you increase the duration of your nightly rest. Being physically active requires you to expend energy, and helps you feel more tired and ready to rest at the end of the day. Research indicates that exercise—in particular, regular exercise that’s part of a consistent routine—can help boost sleep duration, in addition to sleep quality.
A regular exercise routine can help to reduce your stress levels. Stress is a common cause of sleep problems, including trouble falling asleep and sleeping restlessly during the night. Exercise is a potent remedy for anxiety and other mood disorders—just 5 minutes of exercise can trigger anti-anxiety responses in the body. Mind-body exercise such as yoga can help quiet the parasympathetic nervous system, which can help you relax. Research shows that mind-body exercises such as yoga and stretching can help to lower cortisol levels and reduce blood pressure, as well as having positive effects on mood.
How much exercise is right?
There is no one right answer to this question. The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association recommend at least 150 minutes of exercise a week for healthy adults—that’s 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Studies indicate that sleep may receive some of its most significant benefits from exercise that is consistent and routine over time, especially for people who experience difficulty sleeping.
Although, much exercise can also pose problems for sleep. Many people don’t give it much thought, but over-training is a common problem—and can lead to sleep difficulties. In fact, one of the first symptoms of over-training is insomnia and difficulty sleeping, according to research.
When exercising, watch out for bedtime
When it comes to the timing of exercise, you should be aware that exercising too close to bedtime may interfere with sleep. Working out too late in the day can leave you feeling energized and stimulated right before bed, and delay your transition to sleep.
Body temperature stays elevated for about four hours after you finish exercising. A higher body temperature can interfere with your ability to sleep. Since as your body prepares itself for sleep, you experience a drop in core body temperature—a drop that begins in the late afternoon. Falling core body temperature contributes to feeling drowsy. Exercise too close to bedtime can reverse that downward shift in body temp, and keep you awake. It’s a good idea to avoid everything but the gentlest forms of exercise—light stretching, relaxed yoga, and after-dinner stroll—within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
As with any routine, it takes a little bit longer than a couple weeks to reap the benefits. The Psychology Today piece urges sleepless
individuals to look at it like weight loss: It doesn’t happen right away, but
there are definitely small improvements happening under the surface.
The better sleep you get, the better workouts
you’ll have, and those better workouts will eventually help to promote a deeper
sleep. It may seem discouraging at first, but if you keep up with a moderate
exercise regimen, eventually you’ll set off a positive chain reaction that
leads to improvements in both areas. (If you have legitimate clinical sleep
problems, as always, it’s best to seek the advice of a medical professional
before choosing exercise as your go-to sleep cure.)
Just keep in mind that you need to make exercise a more frequent
activity for a prolonged period of time before you begin to see tangible
results. Although the effect might not be immediate, in the long run,
maintaining a moderate exercise routine can go a long way in helping improve quality
of sleep and quality of life.
Source:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/javier-sanchezmariscal/does-exercise-affect-how-_b_9421922.html?guccounter=1
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