Deep sleep–that seemingly elusive state– is the phase of sleep important for healing, immunity, and physical and emotional restoration; all good things that we need in order to properly function. So how can I get more of it?
For a while, one suspected deep sleep booster has been exercise; the more you exercise, the more you’ll need to recharge. Studies say maybe. Maybe not. Some of the recent research is even skeptical. Since I have a Zeo, I figured why not test it myself? Even though I’m a good sleeper, an extra boost couldn’t hurt.
The Quest for More Deep Sleep
In order to track my physical activity, I created a custom factor called Stimulation 1 in the myZeo Online Sleep Journal. I kept track of my physical activity using a 0-3 scale:
- 3 when I did yoga or pilates.
- 2 when I went to the gym or ran.
- 1 when I had a regular day of walking around at work.
- 0 when I was a couch potato.
I’ll be honest: there where times when I didn’t sleep with Zeo, or forgot to update my journal (hey, I’m human!). Yet after a year of tracking, the cumulative results are interesting. (Note: these results are my personal musings and have not been tested for statistical significance).
Gimme Data
Here’s what I found in terms of my ZQ score (scores read 3 to 0, left to right):
Unsurprisingly, being a couch potato doesn’t do much for my ZQ, but it seems like any kind of physical exertion is good.
Now what about that sought-after Deep sleep?
Just a few more minutes of Deep sleep when I exercise compared to when I don’t. Interestingly, it looks like my yoga and pilates classes correspond to the biggest shift in Deep sleep!
Where This Leads Me
While I’m still not sure that exercise and Deep sleep are causally related, it’s something I’ll continue to track. I wonder if yoga–which I always do in the evenings–allows my mind and body to relax making it easier to fall asleep. Maybe my results are thrown off because I tend to exercise during the week when I have a limited amount of time to sleep, rather than the weekends when I can sleep in. Perhaps exercise has an effect on quality of sleep rather than quantity–something not measured by most studies. What I do know is that I feel much better during the day when I exercise, and that alone is a great reason for me to keep it up.
Have you tested the link exercise and sleep? What have you found?
Rhiannon (ZQ: 101) is our Sr. Research Analyst and the only person in the company to give Kuji a run for his ZQ. She really likes data.
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I would imagine that since you do Yoga and Pilates that your regular sleep pattern is already attuned to being “exercise-biased”. It would help to know how you did this for a year.
Did you spend 3 months being a couch potatoe, then 3 months of just walking, then 3 months of Gym/Running and finshing off with doing only Yoga/Pilates?
Or did you spend each day of the week doing one different activity?
I’m sure someone who has been a couch potato for a long time will spend a REEEAAALLY long time in Deep Sleep those first few weeks until the body adapts to the work and then things will plateau out.
But a great experiment nonetheless.
Hey Mark! Great questions. I started the experiment in March of 2009 from zero: no real exercise in years. So in the beginning, my sleep pattern probably wasn’t exercise-biased. I bounced back and forth between types of exercise on different days of the week and recorded them, then I (sadly) hit about a 5 month stretch of being a couch potato. I picked back up with regular exercising around January and continued recording. I hope that helps!
Wow! My first reaction is that you get a LOT of deep sleep. I’m lucky to get 25-30 minutes, which is why I’m really interested in things that will boost it.
The only thing I’ve noticed (and this isn’t a controlled experiment at all) is that after I have acupuncture, my deep sleep bumps to around 40 minutes. The effect lasts for a few days, and then I’m back to my regular pattern.