Restless and can't sleep? Work out instead
Researchers from McGill University found that short bursts of exercise or a 90-minute nap can significantly improve memory and cognitive function in sleep-deprived individuals. The study suggests that while exercise cannot replace sleep, it helps the brain function more efficiently when rest is unavailable.
Why it matters
Provides actionable health advice for professionals managing cognitive performance under the constraints of modern work-life demands.
Getting too little sleep has increasingly been linked to not only brain fog and sluggishness the next day, but also memory lapses and even cognitive decline later in life.
One way to limit the ill-effects of nocturnal restlessness is to combine or alternate napping and exercise the next day, according to researchers in Canada, publishing their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"People who either completed 20 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise or took a 90-minute nap performed about 22% better on memory tests after 30 hours without sleep than those who did neither,” McGill University said in a summary of the research, which relied on brain scans.
In the PNAS paper, the researchers warned that sleep deprivation "impairs the brain’s capacity to form new episodic memories, which is critical for everyday cognition, future planning, and decision-making.”
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