In a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers found that less fast food and screen time, more physical activity can help people sleep better.
They found that behaviors directly under people’s control—such as diet, how physically active or sedentary we are, and how much time they spend watching TV, reading, on the internet, and on social media—are associated with sleep health across the lifespan.
In the study, the team examined the sleep, lifestyle and health of 3,284 adults.
They showed that older adults reported the highest amount of sleep health, followed by middle-aged and younger adults.
Across age groups, fast-food consumption, sedentary behavior, daytime activity irregularity, and exposure to media—including daily TV minutes, social media usage and internet usage—correlated negatively with sleep health.
The finding that sleep health was highest in older adults as compared to young and middle-aged adults also was notable. it is in contrast to decades of research showing that older adults have higher rates of virtually all sleep disorders.
Another interesting finding is that some lifestyle factors, such as being physically active or sedentary, varied in how closely they were linked to sleep health among older, middle-aged and younger adults.
The study results imply that eating less fast food, watching less TV, spending less time on the internet (broadly) and social media (specifically), along with living a regular lifestyle all may help promote high-quality, healthy sleep.
The study builds on a related paper that explored the association between social media use and sleep and whether the association differed by age.
It found that greater social media use was associated with poorer sleep quality and shorter sleep duration, and that association increased with age.
If you care about sleep health, please read studies about risk factors and treatments of sleep apnea everyone should know and findings of popular sleep and anxiety drug may cause addiction.
For more information about sleep and your health, please see recent studies about this sleep problem could mean high risk of Alzheimer’s disease and results showing that this sleep treatment could protect heart health in people with prediabetes.
The study is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. One author of the study is Joseph Dzierzewski, Ph.D.
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