Short-term insomnia symptoms are associated with level and not type of physical activity in a sample of Indian college students

Abstract

Objective: There is diverse results on the association between physical activity and sleep. So this study investigated association of level and type of physical activity with short term insomnia among college students.

Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among college students in India. The sample was 662 students with 359 males and 303 females. The predictor variables were type and level of physical activity and predicted variables were sleep complaints.Physical activity components were aseesesed through international physical activity questionnaire and sleep complaints using Pitsburg sleep questionnaire. The binary logistic regression models were used for data analysis. Level of significance was set at p ≤ 0.05 for all the analysis.

Results: The age (mean + SD) of the participants were 23.2 ± 3.5 years. The self reported symptoms of short trem insomnia such as global sleep quality (adjusted odds ratio(AOR) = 15.58), subjective sleep quality (AOR = 6.01), sleep latency (AOR = 5.09), sleep duration (AOR = 0.13), sleep disturbances (AOR = 4.88), day time sleep dysfunction (AOR = 5.59) had shown association with level of physical activity. There was no association of type of physical activity with any other predicted variables.

Conclusions: The findings of the present study supports that level of physical activity is a key predictor of short term insomnia symptoms among college students. There should be Interventions to maintain and improve the level of physical activity among students.

Keywords: Behaviour; Exercise; Insomnia; Physical activity; Sleep.