Is exercising before bed beneficial?

A new study from New Zealand says that exercising before bed won't necessarily ruin a person's sleep, but it can actually improve its quality and increase the amount of time they spend sleeping.

This finding contradicts the popular idea that intense exercise before bed can disrupt sleep by increasing heart rate and body temperature.

But in the new study, the research team from the University of Otago conducted an experiment involving 30 people, aged between 18 and 40 years.

All participants said they typically spent more than 5 hours of sitting time at work, and an additional 2 hours in the evening.

The participants underwent two separate experiments, separated by 6 days, and in one experiment they were asked to sit for 4 hours before bed.

In the second experiment, they were asked to do resistance exercises for 30 minutes in intervals during these 4 hours before bed.

According to "Health Day", the results showed an improvement in sleep time by 27 minutes in the exercise experiment before bed.

The researchers also noted that resistance training did not cause any more sleep or wakefulness disturbances than when people simply sat before bedtime. Resistance exercises included squats in a chair, leg raises and standing knee raises, and other exercises that can be done while watching TV.