6 ms·

Plenty of exercise can be enough to offset the negative impacts of poor sleep

151 points by lnyan 5y ago

blakesterz 5y ago
Some interesting quotes: "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."
- reedjosh 5y ago
  While I do think those are the key quotes of the article, I'm not sure I'd call those interesting. Those quotes belie the truth--the article and any inferred conclusions therefrom are meaningless.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Not completely meaningless, in that it might point to a direction for further research. There is certainly nothing actionable here though.
    - sadness3 5y ago
      Further research is actionable. This is useful encouragement, because absence of correlation implies absence of causation, so this is an efficient way of eliminating one disproof early.
  - itsoktocry 5y ago
    When the conclusion is, literally, that there is correlation between these two variables over which people have control, how can you say it's "meaningless"? It's some evidence of what seems like an obvious hypothesis: sleep is healthy and exercise is healthy; if you do more of one and less of the other it should even out in some manner. They looked at the data and saw that this appears to be the case. 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.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      > 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.
pwinnski 5y ago
The 30 minutes my watch insists on are having an even better effect than I'd realized--or rather I now understand why I've been feeling so much better, despite poor sleep the last week or so. Still trying to improve my sleep, but I've been getting to bed early--and then waking up early too.
craftinator 5y ago
Interesting anecdote: 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.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  I've had onset insomnia my whole life, I also workout a bunch. It's just a habit now. 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.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    > 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.
rajin444 5y ago
If you’re going to die soon (from the listed conditions), wouldn’t you be less likely to workout (especially with poor sleep)? I read the article and didn’t see this addressed, but maybe the study did…
- handrous 5y ago
  You do have to watch out for that. IIRC that effect was behind the widely-reported "one drink a day is measurably better for you than never drinking!" thing, which turned out to be wrong—chronically ill people are more likely to teetotal, for obvious reasons, and also way more likely to die young than a healthy, drinks-sometimes peer—the causality was backwards, healthy people are more likely to drink. If anything, the actual results emphasize just how extremely bad drinking more than very occasionally is for your health, given at what low levels it overwhelms that large selection bias. [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.
trey-jones 5y ago
My experience is that plenty of exercise results in an improvement to quality of sleep, most of the time.
- amelius 5y ago
  My experience is that weight-lifting increases my sleep requirements (and also improves quality of sleep).
  - varispeed 5y ago
    Some people do weigh-lifting before sleep as it gets them tired to drift into a bliss easily, but others say if they do the exercise they cannot sleep at all and they actually prefer to do it after sleep. I wonder why such a drastic difference of experience between people?
    - trey-jones 5y ago
      People are different, period
    - vidarh 5y ago
      How you do your lifting can have drastic effects on how pumped up or relaxed you are afterwards. Lifting can be meditative and slow and systematic and leave you tired without being agitated, or you can do the full "Rocky" thing and get all pumped up and adrenaline flowing and grunting like the Hulk, and come out of it not just unable to sleep but unable to sit still. Could be other things as well, of course, but that strikes me as one factor that might well produce those different effects.
      - sdwr 5y ago
        Yeah, exercise tires me out regardless, that's the core. The difference is whether I get amped up at the same time. 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.
boringg 5y ago
Personal anecdote: Plenty of exercise improves the quality of my sleep, therefore requiring not as much sleep.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Another anecdote, I definitely notice a lack of sleep on my rest days. It's annoying.
- tootie 5y ago
  Personal anecdote: I have trouble getting enough exercise because of fatigue. And it doesn't do much for helping me sleep.
  - Zevis 5y ago
    Might just be you're doing too much exercise. If I over-reach too far, I end up not being able to sleep all night.
    - thatcat 5y ago
      Personal anecdote: It seems that some people produce metabolites that disrupt their sleep when they exercise, even at low levels of exercise.
      - version_five 5y ago
        There is the concept of "hypermetabolic" where it is hard to sleep after sustained exercise essentially because your body is so fired up. I have experienced this, but it really has to be an unusually long run, at least 30km usually more. It would not surprise me that you're correct, and the threshold for this state varies by person (and almost certainly fitness level) so for some it could occur at low levels like you say.
      - hnick 5y ago
        I get something like this even from a relatively light exercise (~40 minutes of pilates reformer). If I do it after 6pm my body feels very hot and I have trouble sleeping even 5-6 hours later.
raptortech 5y ago
"We found those who had both the poorest sleep quality and who exercised the least were most at risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and cancer" 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.
- ac29 5y ago
  If sleep is primarily a cognitive repair period, why would you expect it to affect heart disease and cancer?
AlbertCory 5y ago
I hate to be a party pooper (actually, I don't), but if your sleep is poor, you need to look inside yourself and calm your mind down. In the long run, exercising a lot won't compensate. You want to enter another world, not keep processing the daytime world. 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.
- syops 5y ago
  It’s great that you’ve found things that work for you but you should avoid believing that these are universal truths. Our minds are complicated and varied and it seems implausible to think that there are solutions that fit everyone.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bordercases 5y ago
    On the other hand all of what that commenter recommended has a tonne of evidence behind it, some of which was merely taken for granted as true at a time when our lifestyles weren't as buzzed-out or sedentary than they are now.
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    I guess you'd be happier if the last sentence was "YMMV." Of course people will disagree. Some have. Good for them.
    - syops 5y ago
      Your whole post is of the form: “Here’s the solution.” It’d have been much better if it was in the form: “Here’s what worked for me.”
- kccqzy 5y ago
  I've found the opposite effect: on the days when I've exercised minimally, I tend to sleep poorer, not to mention feeling more stress when awake. On the days that I do exercise, my sleep is much better: falling asleep faster, not as easily awaken, etc.
shepardrtc 5y ago
I'm currently going through pretty bad insomnia and sleeping medication withdrawal, so my sleep is absolute garbage (usually < 4 hours). However, every morning I wake up and run 20 to 30 minutes on a treadmill, and at night I go for long walks at a fast pace. Just had a checkup a couple weeks ago and my vitals are all good. My blood work is good as well.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I've averaged about 12-25km per week for the past 3 years, and have been doing about 34km in the past month. 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
- littleweep 5y ago
  12-25k or 34k what? Are those steps?
- sdwr 5y ago
  Is that km/week?
boring_twenties 5y ago
This would certainly explain why I feel great during the winter (aka ski season) and like absolute shit during the summer (when I spend 99% of my waking hours in a chair or on the couch), despite equally terrible sleep habits year-round.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  Roller blades! 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.
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    Unfortunately skiing has spoiled me in that if I fall, I like having a decent chance of falling into something soft. 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.
    - TrevorJ 5y ago
      Feeling like crap for half the year seems like a much worse outcome, no?
      - boring_twenties 5y ago
        Worse than missing one or more ski seasons? I actually don't think so, although I will allow the possibility that I'm actually insane. 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
        TrevorJ 5y ago
mips_avatar 5y ago
I can take a hot bath + cold shower and feel fresh as if I slept 8+ hours. There’s definitely something beneficial to getting your blood pumping.
austincheney 5y ago
> For now it's not clear why more exercise might make up for poor sleep 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.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Sleep involves large-scale slow rhythmic synchrony of the brain — a kind of low information entropy state because of the high degree of coherence. Despite the heat, running also involves a large-scale slow rhythmic synchrony of the body and brain. Hypothetically, high-coherence exercise might have similar cognitive effects as sleep. This is a testable hypothesis. Simply compare low-coherence exercise (say, moving boxes or frenetic dance) with high-coherence exercise (running or rowing).
- TrevorJ 5y ago
  is 'coherence' a scientific term as it's used here? I would love to learn more about this.
- caleb-allen 5y ago
  Subjectively, I appreciate my running routine because it's so meditative. I obviously can't say what the brain waves might look like, but there are so many physical cadences that create a nice synchrony: heart beats, steps, breaths.
drclau 5y ago
Side comment, on the subject of sleep, exercise and plenty more, I strongly recommend checking Huberman Lab podcast [0]. Also, I have no connection to him, other than being a listener who found the information useful. Links: [0]: https://hubermanlab.com https://hubermanlab.com
- dannyr 5y ago
  Indeed. He's got a series on brain and sleep and I'm learning a lot especially that I'm having a lot of sleeping issues.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
IIRC from past studies, early morning exercise improves sleep the most. I prefer late night, but I'll go with the data.

151 points by lnyan 5y ago

Some interesting quotes: "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."

reedjosh 5y ago
While I do think those are the key quotes of the article, I'm not sure I'd call those interesting. Those quotes belie the truth--the article and any inferred conclusions therefrom are meaningless.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Not completely meaningless, in that it might point to a direction for further research. There is certainly nothing actionable here though.
  - sadness3 5y ago
    Further research is actionable. This is useful encouragement, because absence of correlation implies absence of causation, so this is an efficient way of eliminating one disproof early.
- itsoktocry 5y ago
  When the conclusion is, literally, that there is correlation between these two variables over which people have control, how can you say it's "meaningless"? It's some evidence of what seems like an obvious hypothesis: sleep is healthy and exercise is healthy; if you do more of one and less of the other it should even out in some manner. They looked at the data and saw that this appears to be the case. 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.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    > 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.

pwinnski 5y ago

The 30 minutes my watch insists on are having an even better effect than I'd realized--or rather I now understand why I've been feeling so much better, despite poor sleep the last week or so. Still trying to improve my sleep, but I've been getting to bed early--and then waking up early too.

craftinator 5y ago

Interesting anecdote: 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.

bamboozled 5y ago
I've had onset insomnia my whole life, I also workout a bunch. It's just a habit now. 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.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  > 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.

rajin444 5y ago

If you’re going to die soon (from the listed conditions), wouldn’t you be less likely to workout (especially with poor sleep)? I read the article and didn’t see this addressed, but maybe the study did…

handrous 5y ago
You do have to watch out for that. IIRC that effect was behind the widely-reported "one drink a day is measurably better for you than never drinking!" thing, which turned out to be wrong—chronically ill people are more likely to teetotal, for obvious reasons, and also way more likely to die young than a healthy, drinks-sometimes peer—the causality was backwards, healthy people are more likely to drink. If anything, the actual results emphasize just how extremely bad drinking more than very occasionally is for your health, given at what low levels it overwhelms that large selection bias. [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.

trey-jones 5y ago

My experience is that plenty of exercise results in an improvement to quality of sleep, most of the time.

amelius 5y ago
My experience is that weight-lifting increases my sleep requirements (and also improves quality of sleep).
- varispeed 5y ago
  Some people do weigh-lifting before sleep as it gets them tired to drift into a bliss easily, but others say if they do the exercise they cannot sleep at all and they actually prefer to do it after sleep. I wonder why such a drastic difference of experience between people?
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    People are different, period
  - vidarh 5y ago
    How you do your lifting can have drastic effects on how pumped up or relaxed you are afterwards. Lifting can be meditative and slow and systematic and leave you tired without being agitated, or you can do the full "Rocky" thing and get all pumped up and adrenaline flowing and grunting like the Hulk, and come out of it not just unable to sleep but unable to sit still. Could be other things as well, of course, but that strikes me as one factor that might well produce those different effects.
    - sdwr 5y ago
      Yeah, exercise tires me out regardless, that's the core. The difference is whether I get amped up at the same time. 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.

boringg 5y ago

Personal anecdote: Plenty of exercise improves the quality of my sleep, therefore requiring not as much sleep.

xeromal 5y ago
Another anecdote, I definitely notice a lack of sleep on my rest days. It's annoying.
tootie 5y ago
Personal anecdote: I have trouble getting enough exercise because of fatigue. And it doesn't do much for helping me sleep.
- Zevis 5y ago
  Might just be you're doing too much exercise. If I over-reach too far, I end up not being able to sleep all night.
  - thatcat 5y ago
    Personal anecdote: It seems that some people produce metabolites that disrupt their sleep when they exercise, even at low levels of exercise.
    - version_five 5y ago
      There is the concept of "hypermetabolic" where it is hard to sleep after sustained exercise essentially because your body is so fired up. I have experienced this, but it really has to be an unusually long run, at least 30km usually more. It would not surprise me that you're correct, and the threshold for this state varies by person (and almost certainly fitness level) so for some it could occur at low levels like you say.
    - hnick 5y ago
      I get something like this even from a relatively light exercise (~40 minutes of pilates reformer). If I do it after 6pm my body feels very hot and I have trouble sleeping even 5-6 hours later.

raptortech 5y ago

"We found those who had both the poorest sleep quality and who exercised the least were most at risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and cancer" 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.

ac29 5y ago
If sleep is primarily a cognitive repair period, why would you expect it to affect heart disease and cancer?

AlbertCory 5y ago

I hate to be a party pooper (actually, I don't), but if your sleep is poor, you need to look inside yourself and calm your mind down. In the long run, exercising a lot won't compensate. You want to enter another world, not keep processing the daytime world. 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.

syops 5y ago
It’s great that you’ve found things that work for you but you should avoid believing that these are universal truths. Our minds are complicated and varied and it seems implausible to think that there are solutions that fit everyone.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bordercases 5y ago
  On the other hand all of what that commenter recommended has a tonne of evidence behind it, some of which was merely taken for granted as true at a time when our lifestyles weren't as buzzed-out or sedentary than they are now.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  I guess you'd be happier if the last sentence was "YMMV." Of course people will disagree. Some have. Good for them.
  - syops 5y ago
    Your whole post is of the form: “Here’s the solution.” It’d have been much better if it was in the form: “Here’s what worked for me.”
kccqzy 5y ago
I've found the opposite effect: on the days when I've exercised minimally, I tend to sleep poorer, not to mention feeling more stress when awake. On the days that I do exercise, my sleep is much better: falling asleep faster, not as easily awaken, etc.

shepardrtc 5y ago

I'm currently going through pretty bad insomnia and sleeping medication withdrawal, so my sleep is absolute garbage (usually < 4 hours). However, every morning I wake up and run 20 to 30 minutes on a treadmill, and at night I go for long walks at a fast pace. Just had a checkup a couple weeks ago and my vitals are all good. My blood work is good as well.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I've averaged about 12-25km per week for the past 3 years, and have been doing about 34km in the past month. 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

littleweep 5y ago
12-25k or 34k what? Are those steps?
sdwr 5y ago
Is that km/week?

boring_twenties 5y ago

This would certainly explain why I feel great during the winter (aka ski season) and like absolute shit during the summer (when I spend 99% of my waking hours in a chair or on the couch), despite equally terrible sleep habits year-round.

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
Roller blades! 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.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  Unfortunately skiing has spoiled me in that if I fall, I like having a decent chance of falling into something soft. 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.
  - TrevorJ 5y ago
    Feeling like crap for half the year seems like a much worse outcome, no?
    - boring_twenties 5y ago
      Worse than missing one or more ski seasons? I actually don't think so, although I will allow the possibility that I'm actually insane. 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
      - TrevorJ 5y ago

mips_avatar 5y ago

I can take a hot bath + cold shower and feel fresh as if I slept 8+ hours. There’s definitely something beneficial to getting your blood pumping.

austincheney 5y ago

> For now it's not clear why more exercise might make up for poor sleep 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.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Sleep involves large-scale slow rhythmic synchrony of the brain — a kind of low information entropy state because of the high degree of coherence. Despite the heat, running also involves a large-scale slow rhythmic synchrony of the body and brain. Hypothetically, high-coherence exercise might have similar cognitive effects as sleep. This is a testable hypothesis. Simply compare low-coherence exercise (say, moving boxes or frenetic dance) with high-coherence exercise (running or rowing).

TrevorJ 5y ago
is 'coherence' a scientific term as it's used here? I would love to learn more about this.
caleb-allen 5y ago
Subjectively, I appreciate my running routine because it's so meditative. I obviously can't say what the brain waves might look like, but there are so many physical cadences that create a nice synchrony: heart beats, steps, breaths.

drclau 5y ago

Side comment, on the subject of sleep, exercise and plenty more, I strongly recommend checking Huberman Lab podcast [0]. Also, I have no connection to him, other than being a listener who found the information useful. Links: [0]: https://hubermanlab.com https://hubermanlab.com

dannyr 5y ago
Indeed. He's got a series on brain and sleep and I'm learning a lot especially that I'm having a lot of sleeping issues.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

IIRC from past studies, early morning exercise improves sleep the most. I prefer late night, but I'll go with the data.