Associations of Sleep Duration, Quality, and Timing With Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors Among High School...

Insufficient physical activity (PA) is associated with obesity, cardiovascular disease, and mortality, yet only 26.1% of US high school students report meeting the 60-minute daily PA guideline. Adolescents' sleep may contribute to their activity patterns. However, findings in this area have been inconsistent, and few studies have used both objectively measured sleep and PA.

Two hundred and sixty ninth-grade students (mean age = 14.7, SD = 0.5) in Minnesota wore wrist actigraphs for 7 days to assess weekday and weekend sleep duration, midpoint, efficiency, latency, moderate to vigorous PA, light PA, and waking sedentary time. Multiple regression analyses, controlling for demographics, assessed whether sleep features were associated with activity levels.

Weekday and weekend sedentary time decreased by 25.86 and 19.21 minutes per each additional hour in weekday and weekend sleep duration, respectively. A later weekend sleep midpoint was associated with 8.09 fewer minutes of weekend sedentary time. Sleep duration related to less daily time spent in light PA (8.66 and 9.64 min per every additional hour slept on weekdays and weekends, respectively). Each hour of advancement in weekday sleep midpoint was associated with 14.22 additional minutes of light PA and 3.06 more minutes of moderate to vigorous PA. For each additional percentage point in sleep efficiency, 2.11 minutes less weekend light PA was observed.

If sleep can influence activity, modifying sleep could be a path to promoting healthful activity levels. Further, given that PA and sleep may be mutually reinforcing, targeting both behaviors concurrently could provide comprehensive health promotion.