For thousands of years, humanity has been suffering from insomnia: in ancient Egypt doctors prescribed honey and warm milk to patients to get the sound sleep; in modern times the pharmaceutical companies produce innumerable types of drugs, trying to soothe our tired brain and body so that we could have a good sleep. Meanwhile, almost all of these drugs have undesirable side effects. U.S. researchers have asked all those people who suffer from insomnia to go for a simple, affordable and, most importantly, safe method for getting sleep – aerobics.
Scientists from Northwestern University in Illinois have experimentally demonstrated that regular aerobic exercise significantly improves sleep in elderly patients. The experiment involved 23 elderly persons of both sexes aged 55 years and older, who complained difficulty in falling asleep and sleep disturbances (frequent awakening during the night, and the like). After several pilot training programs, the participants started doing simple physical exercise – aerobics. One session lasted 30-40 minutes, and pensioners did the aerobics 4 times a week for 16 weeks.
Members of the other control group did not engage in physical exercise, they were given lectures on art and cooking courses for up to 45 minutes each, 3-5 times a week, also for 16 weeks.
After the experiment all the participants of experiment were adjudged for the quality of sleep as per a special scale – ‘Pittsburgh’s Sleep Quality Index’. In the group which was engaged in aerobic exercise, the index decreased by 4.8 points (the lower the index the better sleep).
In a previous experiment, participants performed exercises as per the Chinese school of martial arts of Tai Chi, but then the decline in sleep quality index was only 1.8 points.
“Insomnia increases with age. Around middle age, sleep begins to change dramatically. It is essential that we identify behavioral ways to improve sleep. Now we have promising results showing aerobic exercise is a simple strategy to help people sleep better and feel more vigorous”, said Phyllis Zee, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Northwestern Medicine and senior author of the paper.
