Plenty of exercise can be enough to offset the negative impacts of poor sleep
sciencealert.com
sciencealert.com
At Marine Corps boot camp, and subsequently combat training, not enough sleep and plenty of exercise is the norm. I averaged somewhere around 5 hours a night, but never more than 7, and many times somewhere between 3 and 0. There wasn't a lot of pure exercise, but constant activity based exercise, and a lot of stress based exercise. I was mid 20s when I went through it, and had a couple of guys with me who had to get age waivers (30+). We all agreed it was the most alert we'd ever felt, and that when we slept, we slept hard and felt extremely well rested, even when sleeping on hard ground.
Since exiting I spent many years feeling lethargic and burnt out from work, until I started training for a marathon. Now I have that same feeling, that it doesn't matter how much I sleep, and my body just feels more alive. Exercise, especially aerobic and cardio vascular, does wonders for your health, if you have time to do it right.
I feel the exact same way, I've actually had nights where I've only caught 4 hours sleep, woke up and ran 5kms, hiked mountains, lifted weights, rode bikes and felt as good as new. I only feel good if I workout.
I've also had days where I've had 8 hours sleep, then sat around the house and I feel absolutely horrendous, usually, I end up going and doing some physical activity to feel better.
I've always wondered if we're going to one day find out that the 8 hours sleep thing was wrong and that it's physical exercise we truly need.
Two comments on that: The 8 hours sleep is a population average. It is very unlikely that you will need 8 hours of sleep, very likely your body will need more or less, and this will change as you age. You might very well be a 6 hours type. That would basically invalidate what we know from animals - they are most vulnerable when they sleep, so it's unlikely evolution mad a mistake given all animals sleep, even the ones that don't have brains.
It's jut exercise saves me. At least it feels like it does.
I do a lot of weight lifting and indoor cycling, and they have helped me get high-quality sleep and have much more consistent days.
I think it would be hard to get both get a lot of exercise and not sleep much. Exercise improves sleep, and when you are sleep deprived, it is hard to get energy to exercise.
Professional football players don't deadlift, for instance. They do a lot power cleans and variations. Deadlifting can be very taxing (although it is one of my favorite exercises).
Evening exercise won't do anything and will probably make it worse, e.g., body thinks it needs to stay awake to party / dance / get some lovin. Evolutionary psych basis possibly?
Military, school, work, life in general. Keep those three going, and you are operating at peak performance.
PE recalibrate a lot of things in me, I sleep earlier, fall asleep faster, goes deeper.
Still trying to improve my sleep, but I've been getting to bed early--and then waking up early too.
I do various routines to push that number higher, but it's slow and most of the cycle I'm not at my heaviest weights.
Anyway, now I run and I get those benefits again.
Just weird how the benefits of weight lifting have slowed down with a half decade of experience..
Is there some trade-off to be gained vs. the long term risk or injury?
But as soon as stuff moves that isn't supposed to, I deload. I'm still able to knock out 315lb squats easy.
My original goal was to make thick bones and get muscle while I'm still young. If I can carry lifting into old age, I'm hoping to stay good sized and move around.
Plus all the health benefits until then.
I also shifted my focus away from the largest muscle groups towards hip/core/shoulders, under a similar reasoning that if what I'm up against is mostly recovery capacity, the small muscles can be trained safely at higher frequency and will have the most impact on injury prevention and avoiding the stoop, rounded shoulders, etc. that afflicts the old.
Could be other things as well, of course, but that strikes me as one factor that might well produce those different effects.
Ive found the biggest difference is how much I've used my body in the past few days - working out for the first time in a while leaves me energized no matter what time it is.
Personally, the ideal time for me to lift is my serum caffeine peak, and when I'm done, it takes a half hour to 45 minutes for my heart rate to return to baseline. I'll sweat another 500ml or so during the refractory period, and have no appetite to speak of. I can't even imagine sleeping during this time.
After which my appetite returns with a vengeance, and I'm up for a big meal and a long nap if I can swing it. I sleep very well on lifting nights, which is a blessing because my sleep quality is unfortunately poor in general these days (you can skip the advice, I don't need or want it, thanks).
Lifting weights starting about three hours before bedtime might work, actually, but hasn't really been compatible with gym scheduling for me. I'm about to join one with later hours and might try it, although rallying after supper strikes me as unlikely given my usual energy levels. Worth a shot though!
This is a testable hypothesis. Simply compare low-coherence exercise (say, moving boxes or frenetic dance) with high-coherence exercise (running or rowing).
If we make the (strong) assumption that sleep is primarily a cognitive repair period, then maybe this isn't too surprising? It would be interesting to do the same study, but measuring cognitive ability instead of risk of death.
[EDIT] IIRC it's also the mechanism behind the "people who walk slower have higher mortality rates" thing. It's because people who are already sick or feel bad walk slower, and people who are sick or feel bad are more likely to die, and that wasn't well-controlled-for, not because being a slower walker per se makes you more likely to die, at least not to such a high degree as was reported.
One potential reason is dramatically lower cardio stress. I run about 3-4 miles 4-5 times a week through asthma. I can run through the asthma for a bit but it raises my pulse rate during exercise. Even better than running is long distance speed walking which burns calories just the same but keeps your pulse in your exercise target heart rate. The result is a resting heart rate of about 53 bpm for most of the rest of the day with excellent blood pressure. A couple years ago when I was fast (and far away from my asthma triggers) my resting heart rate was around 44bpm. Not bad for somebody in their 40s.
Out of shape my resting heart rate is closer to low or mid 70s and my blood pressure is about 40 points higher. I also seem to achieve 20 pounds overweight. My heart has to work much harder during the day and I need better sleep to make up the difference.
As a side note I have discovered the muscles that induce asthmatic symptoms fall off after about 45 minutes of continuous intense cardio. I suspect that’s how long it takes for those muscles to reach muscle failure and relax.
The snow here in Northern Tasmania wasn’t real good so I only went up the hill once.
But we bought roller blades in the warmer months, and I go for a run in the morning before work.
Additionally, skiing is much more fun than rollerblading, to the point that if I had to miss an entire ski season due to some silly rollerblading (or mountain biking, which is what most everyone else around here does, or whatever) injury, I'd never forgive myself.
What I probably need is some sort of in-home exercise machine, or maybe just going to the local gym. Last year both of those things were a bit hard to come by, I don't know why I'm still sleeping on it this year though. In fact I'm going to go look into this right now lol
You don’t necessarily have to be inactive, that’s your choice ;)
Also I completely disagree with skiing being way more fun. There are way more areas you can take your mountain bike.
Equipment wise you're not paying much more for a bike than you do for all that ski equipment and you don't need to pay outrageous lift fees.
fwiw I've never gotten injured enough from mtb to miss a ski season. You can definitely tone down your mtb'ing to x-country or something less extreme.
If not at least take up something like hiking or running in the warmer months. It'll make your ski season much more enjoyable if you're in shape when it starts.
I do enjoy hiking but not to the point of waking up at 6am to do it 4-5x a week. I do a few every year, including some relatively intense ones -- there's one near here that has over 4k ft gain in just 3.5 miles.
Curiously, I have no issues whatsoever waking up before dawn during ski season...
Links:
"Those with the highest risk of dying from cancer or heart disease during the study period were those with the worst quality sleep and who didn't meet the WHO recommended guidelines for exercise. That risk went down for people with poor quality sleep but who did meet the exercise guidelines."
"The study isn't enough to prove causation – that more activity causes the reduction in harms from poor sleep – and it's based on self-reporting rather than independent observations. That said, there's enough of a correlation here to interest scientists."
"For now it's not clear why more exercise might make up for poor sleep, as far as our health goes. It could be that the increased activity is counteracting inflammation, or reducing irregularities in glucose metabolism, suggest the researchers."
Those quotes belie the truth--the article and any inferred conclusions therefrom are meaningless.
The "correlation is not causation" crowd who show up in every scientific article being discussed is the worst kind of pseudo-intellectualism. The authors of the paper went out of their way to say it.
2/3rds of the way through.
I'm glad myself and others point this out. I personally read the whole article.
That's time I can't get back. In the interest of keeping HN content worthwhile, people can and should point this sort of thing out.
Plus, the title isn't exercise and sleep correlate with health. The title implies causation.
My sleep is not "better" just cause I exercise. I sleep like normal. I go in spurts of 6 hours of sleep when I'm under stress from like work or life and I never feel rested. I often have 30 minute uncontroable powernaps that I have to entertain once or twice a day. If not I do that head bobbing thing.
When I get at least 7:30-8 hours of sleep I don't have that issue. I can function on 6 but I don't feel better at 6. So take this study with a grain of salt. Your probably alert because you have other issues your brain is concerned about as opposed to actually being relaxed. I can function on 4 hours of sleep too. Running a 10k though isn't going to make the day any easier and offset be having another 4 hours of sleep for the day.
Exercise isn't some sort of panacea for poor sleep. It's much more likely tied to the fact that people who exercise live regimented lifestyles so their circadian rhythm is more in tune with the time of day than the amount of sleep.
Edit: k to km/week
Turn your phone off, do only non-stressful things and don't eat before bed, cover up all clocks in your bedroom, and yes, meditate. That's how you sleep better.
Of course people will disagree. Some have. Good for them.
For those of us that have less control over that situation (I'm a parent of young children; others may struggle with chronic illness or other interferences), more tools in the toolset are welcome.
Just like basically anyone with depression has tried most-to-all of the "if you're feeling down try this!" advice, those of us afflicted with insomnia have tried any "winding down" method you might casually inflict as low effort drive-by advice on the internet.
Yeah it works sometimes. Then some other times I just don't fall asleep that night and it messes up my whole week. So it goes.
Insomnia might be a medical condition, but that doesn't mean your doctor has a prescription for it. If they do, it probably comes with a bunch of advice similar to the conventional stuff you're tired of hearing.
My thoughts never stop.