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The Relaxation Impulse

This column grows out of a conversation I had with some co-workers about exercise and sleep, two essential life forces to keeping your body healthy. I wasn't surprised when I heard them say you need less sleep as you get older. They also thought that exercise was for people interested in running a marathon!

I decided I needed to do some research to debunk these myths.

While it appears that as you mature, you need less sleep, the truth is that we spend fewer hours in bed but the quality of the rest time changes. There is also a greater likelihood that sleep will be disrupted by chronic illness, pain or some other discomfort.

Researchers dealing with two groups, one older and one younger, found that the older group experienced more waking episodes, problems with breathing, and more shifting in their sleep as the night progressed.

The older group of people also was more likely to nap during the day. Those people taking naps during the day experienced the most disruptions in their nightly sleep cycle.

Another set of researchers found that people are never too old to gain great health benefits from exercise. They worked with three groups of volunteers. The first group exercised by walking. Another group did resistance exercise. The third group was the control group. They did no exercise at all.

At the end of 16 weeks of twice-per-week, regular exercise, the first two groups had lower systolic blood pressure, improved upper and lower body strength, improvement in agility, balance and coordination when compared with the third group that did not exercise at all.

The researchers concluded that the exercise and resistance groups experienced significant life improvement. They stressed it was not the type of exercise regimen that made the difference but simply that the person needed to commit themselves to a program twice per week.

Their overall conclusion was that exercise made a difference from the beginning of our lives as well as when we mature.