Everyone’s been there: A poor night’s sleep (or no sleep at all) has left you feeling horrible in the morning. You might be inclined to guzzle coffee or even have a quick siesta to combat the foggy haze. But a new study finds that a quick trip to the gym may be even more effective for combatting sleep deprivation. It might seem counterintuitive to try and squeeze in an intense workout after failing to get a proper night’s rest, but if you can force yourself to get active, even for just 20 minutes, you’ll be better off for it.
What does the study say?
Led by researchers from McGill University, the study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those who engaged in 20 minutes of vigorous activity fought memory loss just as well as those who took a 90-minute nap.
For the study, researchers took 54 healthy young adults and had them stay awake for 30 consecutive hours. They were broken up into three groups: one that did a 20-minute cycling session, others that took a 90-minute nap, and a third that was a control group. Afterwards, they participated in a memory test, and those who took a nap or exercised did significantly better than those who did neither.
How does napping and exercise affect the brain?
According to Madhura Lotlikar, a doctoral candidate in McGill’s Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery who is one of the study’s authors, both napping and exercise have a beneficial effect on the brain—just in different ways. She explains that when you stay awake, you start to develop “sleep pressure,” or a desire to go to sleep. That pressure goes down when you eventually do snooze, but as the pressure goes up, your brain goes into overdrive and experiences damage due to sleep deprivation. After a 90-minute nap (the duration was chosen based on existing studies that says its length resulted in more restorative sleep than shorter naps, she says), the brain’s ability to learn new things was improved because the sleep pressure was able to decrease.
On the other hand, the 20-minute cycling group never decreased their sleep pressure, but the exercise “facilitated the usage of available brain resources in an efficient manner.” The two differing actions activated different brain pathways, but resulted in a sleep-deprived person being able combat fatigue and get their brain to work better.
Does the type of exercise matter?
This particular study put its participants in a 20-minute cycling session, but Lotlikar says that any form of aerobic exercise should spark the same neural processing.
“We tested for biking, but anything that’s going to raise your heart rate to the intensity that we tested, which was moderate to vigorous intensity of exercise, will work,” she says. “So 70 to 75% of your heart rate max should suffice—if you have an idea of what your maximum heart rate is.”
Is napping or working out better for sleep deprivation?
If you didn’t get a good night’s sleep and have something important to do the next day,” you should be “doing something instead of nothing,” Lotlikar says. She adds that both are effective for combatting sleep deprivation, but choosing which option depends on the situation.
“If time permits, you can nap,” she says. “But if you do not have enough time, or it’s in the middle of the day when there’s a lot of light and you’re not able to fall asleep, you should exercise for 20 minutes.”
Sleep deprivation can have some seriously bad effects on your health (and appearance), so don’t think of this as some sort of hack to get more time out of the day by staying awake.
“I’m not saying that you can repeatedly do this and not sleep and then replace your sleep with acute bouts of exercise or napping,” she says. ‘Your first goal should be actually getting enough sleep.”
