Deep Sleep and Exercise: Is There a Link?

published by Rhiannon@Zeo on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 11:25
English

Deep sleep--that seemingly elusive state-- is the phase of sleep important for healing, immunity, and physical and emotional restoration;  all good things that we need in order to properly function.  So how can I get more of it?

For a while, one suspected deep sleep booster has been exercise; the more you exercise, the more you’ll need to recharge.  Studies say maybe.  Maybe not.  Some of the recent research is even skeptical.  Since I have a Zeo, I figured why not test it myself?  Even though I'm a good sleeper, an extra boost couldn't hurt.

The Quest for More Deep Sleep

In order to track my physical activity, I created a custom factor called Stimulation 1 in the myZeo Online Sleep Journal.  I kept track of my physical activity using a 0-3 scale:

  • 3 when I did yoga or pilates.
  • 2 when I went to the gym or ran.
  • 1 when I had a regular day of walking around at work.
  • 0 when I was a couch potato.

I’ll be honest:  there where times when I didn’t sleep with Zeo, or forgot to update my journal (hey, I’m human!).  Yet after a year of tracking, the cumulative results are interesting.  (Note: these results are my personal musings and have not been tested for statistical significance).

Gimme Data

Here’s what I found in terms of my ZQ score (scores read 3 to 0, left to right):

Unsurprisingly, being a couch potato doesn’t do much for my ZQ, but it seems like any kind of physical exertion is good. Now what about that sought-after Deep sleep?

 

Just a few more minutes of Deep sleep when I exercise compared to when I don't.  Interestingly, it looks like my yoga and pilates classes correspond to the biggest shift in Deep sleep!

Where This Leads Me

While I’m still not sure that exercise and Deep sleep are causally related, it’s something I’ll continue to track.  I wonder if yoga--which I always do in the evenings--allows my mind and body to relax making it easier to fall asleep.  Maybe my results are thrown off because I tend to exercise during the week when I have a limited amount of time to sleep, rather than the weekends when I can sleep in. 

Perhaps exercise has an effect on quality of sleep rather than quantity--something not measured by most studies.  What I do know is that I feel much better during the day when I exercise, and that alone is a great reason for me to keep it up.

Have you tested the link exercise and sleep?  What have you found?

 

Forums:

Jenny (not verified)

Sat, 07/17/2010 - 07:25

Wow! My first reaction is that you get a LOT of deep sleep. I'm lucky to get 25-30 minutes, which is why I'm really interested in things that will boost it.

The only thing I've noticed (and this isn't a controlled experiment at all) is that after I have acupuncture, my deep sleep bumps to around 40 minutes. The effect lasts for a few days, and then I'm back to my regular pattern.

Mark W (not verified)

Mon, 07/12/2010 - 08:48

I would imagine that since you do Yoga and Pilates that your regular sleep pattern is already attuned to being "exercise-biased". It would help to know how you did this for a year.

Did you spend 3 months being a couch potatoe, then 3 months of just walking, then 3 months of Gym/Running and finshing off with doing only Yoga/Pilates?

Or did you spend each day of the week doing one different activity?

I'm sure someone who has been a couch potato for a long time will spend a REEEAAALLY long time in Deep Sleep those first few weeks until the body adapts to the work and then things will plateau out.

But a great experiment nonetheless.

Rhiannon (not verified)

Tue, 07/13/2010 - 12:39

Hey Mark! Great questions. I started the experiment in March of 2009 from zero: no real exercise in years. So in the beginning, my sleep pattern probably wasn't exercise-biased. I bounced back and forth between types of exercise on different days of the week and recorded them, then I (sadly) hit about a 5 month stretch of being a couch potato. I picked back up with regular exercising around January and continued recording. I hope that helps!

susan aldrich

Mon, 07/19/2010 - 05:02

I doubled my deep sleep when I started walking for an hour a day. When I don't walk, my deep sleep drops to 20+ minutes. It couldn't be more clear.

Robert Stryk

Thu, 09/16/2010 - 16:39

Now that I have over a month's worth of sleep data I thought might be a measure of how much my exercise influences my deep sleep. About once a week I do a routine in a heated pool for my arthritis that works on strength and flexability. In the nice warm water I feel so good that I exercise like crazy and only when back on dry land do I realize just how tired I have become.  I am usually wiped out for the rest of the day and fall exhausted into bed. If this resulted in more deep sleep then the nights after pool should show more deep sleep than the average night. The average for 42 nights of sleeping is 52.1 minutes. The average for the 6 pool nights is 53.2 minutes. Not a significant change. And if perhaps I was too tired to sleep well the first night then how about the next night? The second night average is 52.0 minutes. So much for that hypothesis. No support here for bursts of high exercise increasing deep sleep.

Andrea Castonguay

Wed, 09/29/2010 - 12:45

Hi rastryk and sealdrich,

Great comments about your own levels of deep sleep and exercise.  I myself have noticed that when I spend the weekend using my bike instead of my car, I don't get much–if any–of a deep sleep boost; perhaps the type of exercise matters as much as whether or not one exercised.  As Rhiannon@Zeo said, she got the most deep sleep on days she didn't do aerobic exercise but the boost was not overwhelming by any means.  We'll be featuring several more posts on this correlation in the near future, so stay tuned!

Sheila (not verified)

Thu, 10/13/2011 - 17:59

Fibromyalgia inhibits production og one of the growth hormones that is necessary for deep sleep. My doc said best alternative to produce these hormones is daily exercise

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