Exercise can combat the negative effects of not getting enough sleep

It is known that sleeping less than six hours a day can have a series of negative effects on our body and mind. However, in China, a search which indicates that practicing physical exercise can neutralize the consequences of not getting enough sleep.

In this sense, the study was carried out with Dr. Jihui Zhang, from the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, with more than 90 thousand people, aged between 40 and 73 years, who were followed over a period of 10 years.

In this way, the research results were published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiologyfrom the European Society of Cardiology. The interesting thing about this research is that it was also discovered that sleeping too much (more than 8 hours) is not positive for our health.

How can exercise improve the lives of those who don’t sleep enough?

According to Zhang, “the study demonstrated that increasing physical activity levels weakened the mortality risks associated with either short or long sleep duration.”

Therefore, the doctor concluded that exercising together with healthy sleep contributes to increasing life expectancy. However, it is still unclear how physical activity can interact with sleep duration to promote health.

However, research has examined the effects of physical activity and sleep duration together on the risk of mortality using accelerometer, that is, the data was collected through the accelerometer bracelet.

The scientist classified the duration of sleep per night as short (less than 6 hours), normal (between 6 and 8 hours) and long (more than 8 hours). Physical activities were classified by intensity, which could be low, intermediate or high.

Over the years, death records were collected and it was observed that most participants died from any cause, however, a large number of them died from cardiovascular disease or cancer.

From this, it was possible to understand that those people who did not exercise or had short or long sleep have a risk of between 16% and 37% of death from any cause.

In this sense, participants with short sleep and intermediate physical activity have a 41% chance of death from all causes. In the case of those with a high level of physical exercise frequency, sleep duration was not associated with the risk of death.