Abstract
Professional and colloquial sleep hygiene guidelines advise against evening physical activity, despite meta-analyses of laboratory studies concluding that evening exercise does not impair sleep. This study is the first to investigate the association between objectively measured evening physical activity and sleep within a real-world big-data sample. A total of 153,154 nights from 12,638 individuals aged 18–60 years (M = 40.1 SD = 10.1; 44.5% female) were analyzed. Nighttime sleep and minutes of physical activity were assessed using Polar wearable devices for 14 consecutive days. Thirty minutes or more of moderate-to-near maximal physical activity during the 3 h before sleep onset were recorded in 12.4% of evenings, and were more frequent on weekdays than weekends (13.3 vs. 10.2% respectively, p < 0.001). Linear mixed modeling revealed that sleep efficiency was not significantly associated with evening physical activity, and that sleep duration was 3.4 min longer on average on nights following evenings in which participants engaged in 30 min or more of moderate-intense physical activity. Effects were found for sleep timing metrics, as evening physical activity was linked with earlier sleep onset and offset times (−13.7 and −9.3 min, respectively). Overall, these effects were greater– but still very small– on weekdays compared to weekends. The present study provides further evidence for the lack of meaningful links between sleep duration or quality and physical activity in the hours preceding sleep. Taken together with recent meta-analytic findings, these findings suggest that changes in public health recommendations are warranted regarding evening physical activity and its relation to sleep.
Highlights
Sleep and exercise are both imperative for physical and mental health [1,2,3]
Using objective assessment of physical activity (PA) and sleep patterns across multiple days, the present study aimed to evaluate whether evening PA patterns were equivalent on weekdays compared to weekdays, and whether the association between evening PA and sleep metrics varied between weekdays and weekends
Inspection of weekday and weekend patterns revealed a significant difference, with PA performed on 13.3% and 10.2% of weekday and weekend evenings, respectively [χ 2(1) = 275.02, p < 0.001]
Summary
Sleep and exercise are both imperative for physical and mental health [1,2,3]. Yet, to promote healthy sleep, long-standing guidelines have advised against evening exercise. The American Sleep Association’s “Sleep Hygiene Tips” include exercising before 2 P.M., and avoiding rigorous exercise before bedtime [4]. Such recommendations have been based on the premise that the elevation of core body temperature and increase in physiological arousal resulting from evening. In modern society, allocating time for exercise early in the day may be highly challenging. In a nationally representative survey of 15,239 Europeans, the most commonly endorsed barrier to increase PA was work or study commitments [7]. Discouraging evening PA may come at the high cost of reducing overall PA for individuals who otherwise would have engaged in exercise later in the day
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