Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>, takes advantage of the evolution of wearable fitness trackers, which provided daily sleep and activity data for nearly 20,000 Americans who logged about 6 million person-nights over the course of a year.<\/p>\nResearchers used anonymous data provided by WHOOP Inc., a Boston health tracker technology company with roots at Harvard. The WHOOP results were verified by a second study, All of Us, run by the National Institutes of Health, in which a cohort designed to be demographically representative was given a free Fitbit device to participate.<\/p>\n
Czeisler said the All of Us study showed similar patterns between sleep and physical activity, but the effect\u2019s magnitude was smaller. That is likely due to differences between the study populations, he said, with the WHOOP population more likely to be self-selected for interest in fitness and athletic performance.<\/p>\n
The work, which did not receive outside funding, helps bring clarity to an area where previous studies were mixed.<\/p>\n
Some failed to show any connection between sleep patterns and levels of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Others, meanwhile, do show a connection, but point in different directions. Experimental studies that control how much sleep the subjects get showed lower next-day physical activity for those who slept less than usual, while epidemiological studies \u2014 often conducted via questionnaire to those living freely under normal circumstances \u2014 indicated the opposite.<\/p>\n
One advantage of the current study is that collecting longitudinal data from two large-scale samples across several months and up to a year allows for both between-participant comparisons and \u201cwithin participant\u201d analysis of an individual\u2019s tracker data under different circumstances.<\/p>\n
It also helps, Czeisler said, that the tracker data is objective, reducing problems of bias or difficulty with recall that may be present in questionnaire-based studies.<\/p>\n
Though both sleep and physical activity have been studied previously, Czeisler said the current work is among the largest in sample size and longest in duration to examine the relationship between the two in the setting of everyday life. That\u2019s important because physicians and public health officials often make separate recommendations about how much sleep is optimum and how much physical activity is ideal for good health, but there\u2019s little public health messaging about how one might influence the other.<\/p>\n
Busy adults might choose, for example, to get less sleep, rising early to work out. Or they may choose to stay up late with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, which may impact weekend workouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf one of the takeaways is that people are sacrificing sleep for exercise or exercise for sleep, the question becomes what amount of each behavior maximizes health span and lifespan?\u201d Czeisler said. \u201cThere are only 24 hours in a day; what is the optimal balance?\u201d<\/p>\n
Leota said an important next step is to use the findings to design experiments to determine cause and effect, with the aim of providing a solid foundation for future public health recommendations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to test whether encouraging earlier bedtimes directly leads to more physical activity the next day, within an experimental paradigm,\u201d Leota said. \u201cThis would provide strong evidence for updating public health messaging to improve population physical activity levels.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proverb says, early to bed and early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy, and wise. Wealth…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[4465,1728,1198,210,1183,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-85331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-brain","9":"tag-exercise","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-research","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114901344776749993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/071425_SleepMove_039.jpeg\")
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