A new study confirms what many already suspect: exercise, especially resistance training, can help lull you to sleep.
The study specifically found that incorporating resistance training to build muscle is helpful for older adults who have insomnia. According to the authors, upwards of 48% of seniors complain of sleepiness, while up to 20% report insomnia. A lack of restful sleep, say the authors, has been tied to depression, anxiety, and metabolic syndromes.
The researchers produced the findings by examining more than two dozen studies between 1996 and 2021. They also assessed exercise and sleep data from 2,170 people at least 60 years old.
“The outcome of this study indicates that strengthening exercise has the highest efficacy among others, followed by aerobic exercise and combination exercise,” reads the findings published in BMJ Family Medicine and Community Health on Tuesday.
Exercise is beneficial for falling asleep and can also help wake you up. In 2022, The Dallas Express reported that vigorous exercise is part of an effective protocol that can help you avoid grogginess the following day.
The latest study, however, points to resistance training as the best type of exercise for aiding sleep. Dr. Jade Wu, a sleep psychologist and founder of Thrive Sleep Clinic in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the research, theorizes that the wear and tear resistance training promotes might be driving better rest.
“Sleep is essentially recovery for wear and tear on the body that has occurred during the day… Resistance training puts literal wear and tear on muscles, so sleep is needed to repair and grow those muscles,” said Wu, per CNN.
“Learning new movements also builds new pathways in the brain and encourages sleep, because we rehearse new things we learn during certain stages of sleep,” said Wu.
“In short, resistance training very effectively ‘earns’ sleep.”