Should you exercise at night?

During her recent Q&A with Mammoth, Dr Nicola Barclay, Sleep Scientist and Psychologist, explains the relationship between sleep and exercise and whether the time you exercise can impact your sleep quality…

“There have been lots of studies that have shown that exercise is great for boosting slow-wave sleep. So it really enhances that stage of sleep that helps us feel restored and replenishes energy and is great for cellular repair and bodily and brain repair. So it increases slow-wave sleep, but there have been some questions about the timing of activity and whether performing a vigorous activity is actually bad for you in the evening, which it isn’t. So, there has been lots of contradictory research, but I think ultimately the conclusion, at the moment at least, is that moderate to vigorous exercise in the afternoon and evening doesn’t necessarily disrupt your sleep. Unless it’s in that hour before bedtime, but very rarely are we really performing vigorous activity in that last hour before bed.

But the reasoning behind this is related to temperature, so the brain and the body need to be cool in order to get to sleep, and actually if we’re too warm it’s very difficult, we can all imagine that on a hot summers night it’s very hard to get to sleep and that’s because the optimum temperature, the core body temperature to get to sleep is very cool. So, so long as we have enough time after our evening exercise period to cool down, then it’s not going to disrupt our sleep and actually be more beneficial. There have been some studies that have shown that adults that exercise and perform a vigorous activity at least three times a week are less likely to experience insomnia and find it much easier to get to sleep quickly”

Looking to improve your sleep quality? Start by getting the sleep surface right. Explore the Mammoth Perks range today here.