Sleep or Exercise: Which One Is More Important?

This is the question that I am constantly asking myself as my alarm goes off in the morning. Do I sleep longer, or do I exercise?

When I was getting 5 hours of sleep a night I regularly chose sleep over exercise as every minute was oh so precious, but now that I am getting more sleep, about 6-7 hours a night, I am much less convinced that I should get some extra sleep instead of doing a 30 - 40 minute workout in the morning.

This really is a viable question for me most mornings as I am not a good sleeper which means I am usually a little tired throughout the day. I usually wake up a couple times during the night and then fall back to sleep, but I rarely fall into a deep sleep (probably because of my overactive brain hehe). ;)

So what do the experts say? If you have to choose, do you sleep or do you exercise? Well, let's find out.

According to a TIME Magazine online article on the subject written by Markham Heid, both sleep and exercise are important to optimal health. This seams like a no-brainer but actually many sleep researchers and doctors are very hesitant to pick one over the other as more important. In this same article Edward Laskowski, MD, a resident and professor of physical medicine at Mayo Clinic, compares sleep and exercise to food and water, basically saying they share the same level of importance and necessity.

Dr. Phyllis Zee, a professor of neurology and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Northwestern University in Chicago, is featured in a New York Times article written by Gretchen Reynolds and states that a good night's sleep leads to better exercise, and that exercise can lead to better sleep. She believes that you really cannot rob your body of one over the other.

Yet, when pressed for a definite answer some doctors, like Cheri Mah, a sleep medicine researcher at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, might pick sleep, though hesitantly.

Now don't get too excited and think you never have to exercise again when you are tired.

In the same TIME article referenced above, Mah explains that according to most scientific literature, adults need a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night and that if you are functioning on less hours of slumber you are most likely not performing at your very best (even if you feel like you are). Because of this, Mah would pick sleep over exercise as sleep directly enhances or takes away from your everyday performance. 

So sleep might be more important if you are not a good sleeper, but what about what Laskowski said about sleep and exercise being like food and water? 

Dr. Baron seams to have a good solution to the sleep versus exercise predicament: better to rearrange your schedule to make both fit. A very practical answer. Dr. Kelly Glazer Baron is the director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Northwestern and is also quoted in The New York Times article referenced above. For Dr. Baron both sleep and exercise are so important that she does not condone giving up one for the other. Instead she suggests to make certain lifestyle changes if you are having difficulty fitting both into your schedule. 

She suggests looking through your day and figuring out where you can give something else up in order to make time for your exercise while still keeping your sleep in the morning. And in order to get more sleep without missing your workout time in the morning, she suggest going to sleep 20 - 30 minutes earlier than you normally would and waking up 15 minutes later, which actually comes out to an extra 600 - 800 minutes of sleep every month. Not so shabby eh?

For me, Dr. Baron's solution of changing a few things around to make exercise fit while still getting precious sleep seems more doable. If you think about it, setting 30 minutes aside for exercise is just a little more than 2% of your day! 

The hard part is figuring out what to give up to make those 30 minutes available. 

Will I choose sleep over morning exercise on the days I do not sleep well? Most likely. :) But I will also feel much more obligated to find another time to exercise during the day now that I know what the experts have to say. With knowledge comes responsibility! 

Here's to getting enough sleep and exercising while I'm fully awake. ;)

~Hannah