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This week I already mentioned how exercise can relieve anxiety; now there’s even more good news on exercise (like we needed any). This latest New York Times article examines a recent study that examined children and assessed whether more exercise meant better sleep. Here’s a good quote:
…physical activity during the day and sleep onset at night were closely linked: every hour of sedentary activity during the day resulted in an additional three minutes in the time it took to fall asleep at night. And the children who fell asleep faster ultimately slept longer, getting an extra hour of sleep for every 10-minute reduction in the time it took them to drift off…
The same results were found in other studies with adults. Here is yet another reason to get your kids out to play more, or for you to dust off that treadmill…
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Interesting, but my experience is a little different. I find that when I exercise intensely, I don't sleep particularly well that night, ESPECIALLY if I work out in the evening. I think I read something about how its like you need to give your body a few hours to cool down before you can sleep well at night. But I've also found that even when I exercise during the day REALLY intensely (5 hours of biking for example), I don;t sleep as well as people might imagine.
Interesting; I also don’t prefer to work out in the evening, thinking it may wire me too much. Perhaps it’s just psychological and not physiologic?
For me it's physical. If I do cardio, then it disrupts my sleep pattern. Interestingly my and my friends will go out on an all-day bike ride over Xiangshan, 5-6 hours of intense work out on a Saturday and then after a 1-2 hour recovery we can still go out and stay out quite late. The juices seem to still be flowing or something.