Evaluation of the effect of sleep quality and physical activity on perceived stress level in 45-64 year-old population

Tolga Gençer, Funda Yıldırım Baş, Gökçe İşcan

Keywords: Sleep quality, perceived stress scale, physical activity

Background:

Exposure to intense stress affects sleep patterns. Physical activity and exercise should be done for better sleep and sleep quality. Exercising for more than an hour a day increases sleep duration and low-intensity exercise also positively affects sleep.

Research questions:

Do perceived stress level, exercise status and physical activity affect sleep quality in individuals aged 45-64 years?

Method:

As a data collection tool; in addition to the sociodemographic information form created by us by reviewing the literature, the questions in the “International physical activity scale”, “Perceived stress scale” and “Pittsburgh sleep quality index” will be applied in an isolated room by face-to-face interview by the person conducting the study between 01.12.2022 - 01.06.2023. The minimum number of participants was 480 in the power analysis performed with the G-power program and 487 participants were included in the study.

Results:

60.4% of the participants (n = 294) were female. 58.1 percent (n=287) were college graduates, and 78.1 percent (n=385) were married. Only 38% (n=185) of the participants regularly engaged in sports, and of those, 23.4% engaged in walking. There was no statistically significant difference between stress level and participation in sports (p=0.871), but those with depression had substantially higher stress levels (p<0.001). In addition, those with inadequate sleep reported substantially higher levels of stress (p<0.001). In general, those who participated in sports slept better, but this was not statistically significant (p=0.420). Stress decreased marginally as the duration of sports practice increased (r=-0.124; p=0.006), whereas there was no correlation between sports practice and sleep quality (r=-0.032; p=0.482). Nevertheless, sleep quality deteriorated moderately and modestly as perceptions of inadequacy (r=0.292; p<0.001), stress (r=0.479; p<0.001), and stress scores (r=0.447; p<0.001) increased.

Conclusions:

Our study found that doing sports significantly decreased stress, while stress affected sleep positively, but sports were ineffective.

Points for discussion:

What kind of practice can be used to explain the importance of exercise and stress levels to people with sleep problems?

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