THE IMPACT OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY ON SLEEP QUALITY AND DAYTIME SLEEPINESS IN STUDENTS

Abstract

For a medical student, chronic sleep deprivation is practically a professional habit. Huge volumes of complex information, long night vigils over anatomy textbooks, and liters of coffee inevitably disrupt our internal clock (circadian rhythms). As a result, we cannot fall asleep normally at night, and then suffer from sleepiness during important lectures. In the student environment, one can often hear the opinion that sports with such exhausting studies are an unaffordable luxury that only takes away the last strength and precious time. A natural question arises: does physical activity against the background of mental fatigue really exhaust the body, or does it, on the contrary, help it to recover better? The objective of our study was to objectively evaluate how regular sports activities affect the quality of night sleep, falling asleep time, and daytime sleepiness in medical students compared to their peers who lead a predominantly sedentary lifestyle.

Material and methods: To find this out, during the semester we conducted a survey among 52 second-year students of the medical faculty of the Pacific State Medical University. The average age of the participants was 19-20 years. To assess sleep quality, we used an adapted version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and to understand how much the students want to sleep during the day, we used the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). We divided the participants into two groups: "Active" (22 people who consistently train 2-3 times a week) and "Sedentary" (30 people whose activity is limited to the road to the university and everyday chores).

Results: The data obtained clearly showed the difference between the groups. It turned out that with the same sleep duration (on average about 6-6.5 hours per night), the quality of rest differs greatly. Students from the "active" group fall asleep quite quickly — in about 15-20 minutes. At the same time, students from the "sedentary" group often lie awake for 35-40 minutes and wake up in the middle of the night twice as often, complaining of anxious thoughts about their studies. As for daytime sleepiness, 75% of physically inactive students have difficulty staying awake during classes (high score on the Epworth Scale). Among those who train, only 30% complained of severe fatigue during the day.

Conclusions: The results of our study convincingly show that moderate physical activity does not take away energy from students, but helps to qualitatively restore it. Sport acts as a natural remedy for stress: it helps to utilize the anxiety hormones accumulated during the day and gives the body a healthy physical fatigue. Thanks to this, the nervous system calms down, we fall asleep faster, sleep more soundly, and wake up more rested, ready for a new study day.