Did you know that most people who have sleep problems have an inactive lifestyle?
Researches reveal two findings about exercise (applicable to insomniacs).
Insomniacs have more inactive lives than high-quality sleepers. The absence of physical activity can promote insomnia by inhibiting the daily rise and fall of the body-temperature rhythm. As a result, many people get caught in a cycle of insomnia, less energy and physical activity, and worsened insomnia.
Exercise enhances sleep by creating a significant rise in body temperature, followed by a compensatory drop a few hours later. The fall in body warmth, which endures for two to four hours after exercise, makes it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Insomniacs can truly profit from a good exercise program. Not only will it encourage good overall health, most notable would be the increased supply of oxygen to our lungs, blood, and entire body; but it will also cause a sedative and soothing effect to the body when we go to sleep at night.
The reason behind all this?
Exercise causes our body temperature to augment rapidly, and it will remain at a high rate even until the end of the day. That means you’ll stay lively and wide awake for a longer period of time.
But when it’s bedtime, the drop in body temperature will also become more intense and will stay that way longer. A decrease in temperature means deeper, additional comfort, and higher quality sleep. That’s why day by day exercise is necessary to prevent our body temperature from maintaining at the same level.
Do not, however, exercise intensely late at night. Try to do it six hours before your assigned bedtime. Your body temperature will not have a chance to decrease low enough when you go to sleep, that’s why it is recommended to exercise in the late afternoon many hours before you go to sleep.
Aerobic exercises are the most excellent exercises in combating wakefulness because these exercises boost the quantity of oxygen that reaches the blood and other parts of our body. Some examples of aerobic exercises are:
Jogging
Swimming
Riding a bicycle
Dancing
Jumping Rope
Step Aerobics
Using a treadmill
Walking
A mild workout for fifteen to twenty minutes a day, four days a week, will be enough for you to feel the benefits. Warm up before doing the exercises and cool down your body after doing it so your muscles will not be stressed nor sprained nor experience any injury.
For a lot of people, the perfect time to work out is early in the morning. But for fighting insomnia, the greatest time to do exercises is at the end of the day or in the near the beginning of evening. If possible, avoid exercise in the late evening or just earlier than going to bed. Exercise is motivating the body which makes it active and it can take sometime for your muscles and circulatory system to relax once more after a forceful workout.
