Dont get enough sleep? A pre-bed routine can help you the next day
Forget counting sheep.Across the country, roughly one in three American adults get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep each night, leaving millions to muddle through the next day on fumes.But new research suggests adding a surprisingly simple activity to your nighttime routine could help keep your brain sharp — even when you haven’t gotten enough shut-eye.You might just have to break a sweat before hitting the hay.
In the study, scientists at Concordia University in Montreal recruited 88 healthy young adults to see whether physical activity could help counter the effects of sleep deprivation on memory.First, everyone completed a computer task in which they memorized 80 face-name pairs.When researchers tested them immediately afterward, all of the participants performed equally well.The volunteers were then randomly split into four groups.
Two groups pedaled a stationary bike for 30 minutes, including five-minute warm-up and cool-down periods.One of those groups was then allowed to sleep for 8.5 hours, while the other got just 4.5 hours.The other two groups followed the same sleep schedules, but sat quietly in a chair for 40 minutes instead of exercising before bed.
The well-rested groups slept from 11 p.m.to 7:30 a.m., while the sleep-deprived groups snoozed from 2 a.m.
to 7:30 a.m.As they slept, electrodes attached to their heads tracked their brain waves, eye movements and heart activity.After waking, the participants were tested on the 80 face-name pairs they had studied, along with 40 new ones, to see how much they could still remember.Normally, cutting sleep nearly in half, from 8.5 hours to 4.5 hours, comes with a significant drop in memory performance.
But the participants who pedaled a stationary bike for 30 minutes before their short sleep performed significantly better than those who skipped the workout.In fact, the scientists found that those who exercised before bed performed statistically as well on the memory test as participants wh...