The surprising exercises that will improve your sleep

The last thing I want to do after a bad night’s sleep is exercise, even if I know that it will probably help me sleep better. An intense activity is simply not attractive when you use a few hours of closing. But I was surprised to learn that you are growing at the gymnasium may not be the best approach to improve sleep.

A recent analysis of 22 studies of more than 1,300 adults suffering from insomnia examined how seven interventions based on the exercise affected sleep. He found that softer activities, such as yoga and tai chi, improved more than painful sleep, such as strength training or aerobic exercises.

Yoga (photo) came out in the lead. It increased the total sleep time by almost 2 hours, on average, compared to the control group. This improvement was even greater than the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy – the standard treatment of insomnia – which increased the sleep time by about an hour. Tai Chi led to an additional 52 minutes of sleep. The exercises have not only helped people to sleep longer, they also reduced the frequency to which they woke up and how long it took them to fall asleep.

I must admit that I was a little surprised by these results. Part of me supposed that one of the reasons why the exercise improves sleep is that it simply exhausts you. However, these results suggest that this is not the case. Intense activities had a negligible effect on sleep.

So, what is softer training that makes them so good to catch Z? This may have to do with the emphasis on controlled breathing and body awareness. Research shows that full-consciousness-based training, such as yoga and tai chi, decrease activity in the sympathetic nervous system, which governs the combat or leak response of our body. As a result, blood pressure and the drop in heart rate and levels of cortisol drop in stress hormone. This, in turn, reduces depressive and anxiety symptoms which so often sleep sleep.

These results do not mean that other types of exercises are not useful for insomnia. In fact, walking or jogging have led to the greatest drop in scores of the gravity of gravity of insomnia, a scale that measures not only the quality of sleep, but also the way in which sleep problems affect mood, concentration and memory. Because walking or jogging did not seem to improve sleep itself, the reduction in the score may indicate that a light aerobic activity helps to mitigate the daytime effects of insomnia.

I am always grateful for research like this, because it reminds me that the exercise is much more than pushing my body to the maximum. I can surprise myself thinking that training does not count if he did not feel physically trying. And it’s just not true! Heck, lowering a level seems to come with its own set of advantages, like better sleep. In addition, deploying my yoga carpet is a little more manageable after a white night than connecting a few kilometers to the treadmill.

Grace Wade is a health journalist for the new scientist based in the United States

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