Thumbs down for late work-outs
Experts are warning against the growing trend of doing workouts late at night as it could do more harm than good because of the effect on sleep patterns.
As people become more and more health-conscious, gyms are springing up everywhere to meet the demand for physical exercise venues that suit urban lifestyles. The gyms compete furiously to draw in new customers with dog-eat-dog marketing strategies. "Exercise is undoubtedly good for health, but only if it is done properly and at the right time, too," said Dr Pichet Udomratn, a professor of psychiatry and head of the Prince of Songkla University's Sleep Disorders Service and Research Centre. Humans have a so-called biological clock that controls their bodies, telling them when it is time to sleep or to wake up in a pattern called the wake-sleep cycle, said Pichet, who is also president of the Psychiatry Association of Thailand. When it is time to sleep, the body's core temperature, for example, gradually begins dropping which manifests in people feeling sleepy and wanting to go to bed. But doing physical exercise interrupts this natural process, he said. Physical exercise causes the core-body temperature to rise, meaning that people needed some hours to cool down after a gym session, Pichet said. Many people exercise late at night after work and then go to bed shortly afterwards, he said, adding they faced difficulty in getting to sleep or took a considerably longer time to fall asleep. Normally, it should not take a person more than 30 minutes to go to sleep, said Assoc Prof Naiphinich Kotchabhakdi, a sleep-medicine expert with Mahidol University's Neuro-Behavioural Biology Centre. People should allow at least three to four hours to lapse after exercise before going to bed as this gives the body time to calm down and be ready for a good night's sleep, he said. If the body is not fully ready to rest, the quality of sleep would not be as good. Playing hard with small children before their bed time, as many parents who go home late at night are tempted to do, harms their sleep quality like the effects of late night exercise in adults, said Dr Nittaya J Kotchabhakdi, a sleep-medicine researcher with the National Institute for Child and Family Development. "We tend to underestimate the impact of lack of sleep," said Naiphinich, adding local studies had found about half of the Thai population had sleeping problems to some extent. About 10 per cent had severe problems. Moreover, lack of sleep was found to contribute to 20 per cent of road accidents that killed or caused disabilities, he said.
Arthit Khwankhom The Nation
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