Associations of endurance, muscle strength, and balanced exercise with subjective sleep quality in sedentary workers: A cross-sectional study.
Tomoo Hidaka, Takeyasu Kakamu, Shota Endo and 7 others
PMID 38160388WHAT IT FOUND
Sedentary workers who exercised only for endurance or balance, or both, reported better sleep than those who did not exercise.
Muscle strength training was not associated with better sleep. This is an association, not proof that exercise improves sleep.
Key findings
01Workers doing endurance-only, balanced-only, or endurance-and-balanced exercise had significantly higher odds of good sleep quality compared to those with no exercise habits.
02Patterns involving muscle strength training alone or in combination were not significantly associated with good sleep quality.
03Total weekly energy expenditure from exercise was not significantly associated with sleep quality after adjusting for other factors.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that exercise causes better sleep; people who sleep well may be more likely to exercise. Sleep quality was measured with a single self-report question about feeling rested, which may not capture detailed sleep disturbances. The timing of exercise was not recorded, although the authors note that night-time exercise can negatively affect sleep. Other sleep-related health conditions like sleep apnoea were not accounted for in the analysis.
Declared interests
Three authors were employees of the Koriyama Health Promotion Foundation, the organization that collected the data used in the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lack of association between muscle strength training and sleep quality as evidence that strength training is harmful or useless for sedentary workers. The study only looked at sleep; strength training has other known health benefits, and this design cannot rule out that it helps sleep in ways the single question missed.