Want to sleep longer? Do these exercises at night, new study says
NY Post
It turns out that squats are better than diddly-squat in the evening.
New research finds that taking a break from the couch-potato life to do simple exercises before bed can help you sleep about a half hour longer.
The age-old thinking is that vigorous exercise before bedtime will raise your heart rate and body temperature, making it difficult to fall asleep. So the researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand focused on short bursts of light activity.
“These results add to a growing body of evidence that indicates evening exercise does not disrupt sleep quality, despite current sleep recommendations to the contrary,” the study authors wrote in their findings, published Tuesday in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine.
Here’s the catch, though: The three-minute circuit of exercises — meant to be a break from sitting — should be completed every half hour over four hours in the evening.
The study authors recruited 28 non-smoking adults up to 40 years old. The participants clocked more than five hours of sedentary time at their day job and two hours in the evening.
