Exercise and Sleep: How is Workout Beneficial for Your Sleep?
No matter how healthy you eat or how intensely you workout, your body won’t be fit and healthy without enough sleep. But here’s something you might not know: for a truly fit body, you need both proper sleep and enough workout every day.
That’s right. Exercise and sleep go hand in glove and are both essential for your overall health. While it might seem counterintuitive to pair something high-energy like exercise with restful sleep, hundreds of studies over the past few decades have demonstrated how the two are related.
A good workout can help you sleep better by reducing the risks of diseases like sleep apnea and making you more tired so that you fall asleep quicker. It also has several other benefits for sleep.
Sarah Wagner at SweetIslandDreams.com explains this relationship between sleeping and working out to educate you better about proper sleep and how to achieve it. Check out the full article below!
Ways a Good Workout Can Make You Sleep Better
Reduces the Time to Fall Asleep
People often struggle with sleep because it takes them a lot of time to actually fall asleep. There may be a host of reasons why this happens, but one of the commonest of them is lack of tiredness. You won’t be sleepy unless you’re tired or low on energy.
When you exercise, your body loses energy. And while you might not feel tired right after an intense workout, you will feel sleepy shortly afterward. Moreover, such workouts can also reduce the time you lay awake in bed.
Workouts also make you feel more energetic during the day. This will prevent you from falling asleep when the sun is up. So when you actually go to bed at night, you will be too tired, and that will cause you to fall asleep soon.
Reduces Your Odds of Getting Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea is an incredibly common sleep disorder that makes people restless, preventing them from achieving sound sleep. With exercise, however, even this condition can be avoided.
OSA is a disease very highly associated with obesity. Overweight or obese people are at a higher risk of suffering from this condition. Workouts help reduce weight, which in turn prevent conditions like OSA.
Additionally, workouts are possibly also responsible for reducing the risk of restless leg syndrome or insomnia.
Releases Adenosine
Adenosine is a hormone associated with better sleep and resting. During exercise, this hormone is released in abundance. Once it starts coming into effect a few hours later, you’d automatically feel sleepier.
Also, exercise releases endorphins, which make the body energetic. Even so, their effect wears off in a few hours, leaving you with a tired and relaxed body.
Controls Circadian Rhythm
Circadian Rhythm is your body’s own clock. It learns how and when your body does what and makes sure you repeat it everyday, including sleep. The circadian rhythm and its accuracy can be improved greatly by simply ensuring more daylight exposure.
Exercising outdoors, especially activities like running, walking, etc., in an open space can help you overcome any sleep issues arising due to a poor body clock schedule. Again, as the rhythm learns how the body stays alert frying specific hours of the day, it will automatically make you feel sleepy once the daylight vanishes.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that exercising regularly can have a stunning impact on not just how well you sleep but also how much sleep you get. Remember, while the two activities do not seem related at all, sleeping and working out are both super important and complementary.
So, the next time you feel like you’re having sleepless nights, simply start small, low-intensity workouts and increase your exercising bit by bit. And remember to workout a few hours before your bedtime because if you exercise right before leaving.
