The impact of physical activity on objective sleep of people with insomnia

The aim of our study was to investigate if physical activity has a beneficial impact on insomnia. A systematic literature review was conducted in PubMed database using the terms "Physical activity" and "Insomnia" and 591 records were retrieved. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines were followed and fifteen articles were considered eligible for further analysis. Participants were mainly female, between 40 and 60 years; design studies were variable and most studies involved long-term interventions; insomnia definition was mainly based on diagnostic criteria or considered a specific cut-off point of well-known insomnia questionnaires; sleep was mostly assessed with polysomnography (PSG) or actigraphy; physical activity interventions included different methodologies (predominantly treadmill exercise). A beneficial effect of physical activity on insomnia was observed in most studies when sleep was evaluated with PSG or actigraphy. Sleep efficiency was the objective sleep parameter that mainly provided statistically significant results, as expected, followed by sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset and, less frequently, total sleep time. Using objective methods to assess sleep in insomnia might be useful to support subjective insomnia complaints and to evaluate the efficacy of physical activity interventions in ameliorating sleep of people with insomnia.