Is There an Association between Physical Activity and Sleep in Community-Dwelling Persons with Dementia: An Exploratory Study Using Self-Reported Measures?

Abstract

Sleep disturbances are common in persons with dementia (PWD). While pharmacotherapy is widely used, non-pharmacological interventions are beginning to surface as first-line management strategies. This study sought to investigate if physical activity was associated with more favourable sleep patterns in PWD, and to compare the sleep quantity and quality between active and inactive PWD. We conducted an exploratory study to tackle these research questions. Self-reported telephone questionnaires were administered to 40 caregivers of PWD, who answered questions as proxies on behalf of their care recipient. Just over half (55%) of our participants met the criteria for being active. Walking was the most popular form of physical activity for both active and inactive PWD. Active PWD also preferred exercise classes and gardening, whereas inactive PWD favoured chair exercises. Compared to their inactive counterparts, active PWD were more likely to experience appropriate sleep quantity (p = 0.00). The active group also reported significantly better overall sleep quality (p = 0.003). Together, our findings suggest that physical activity may be associated with improved sleep in PWD. Future studies are warranted to investigate whether physical activity can be promoted as a safe and effective means to improve quality-of-life in this population.

Parental and Familial Factors Influencing Physical Activity Levels in Early Adolescence: A Prospective Study

“…Physical activity (PA) represents an important segment of physical and mental health status [1][2][3]. Irrespective of the importance of PA in all periods of life, reaching the appropriate PA level (PAL) is particularly important in childhood and adolescence, since regular PA is essential for healthy growth and development during this life period for a number of reasons.…”

Mediterranean lifestyle patterns are associated with cognition in older adults

“…Furthermore, a detailed clinical and neuropsychological evaluation was conducted by dementia experts, allowing for a classification of the participants’ cognitive status and enabling us to exclude participants with dementia from the analyses. What is more, all the questionnaires used for the assessment of the lifestyle factors have been previously used in the older population 38–40 . Another important strength is that both a priori and approaches were used for the extraction of the patterns.…”

Do Daytime Activity, Mood and Unit Tumult Predict Nighttime Sleep Quality of Long-Term Care Residents?

“…Current evidence of the relationship between physical activity and sleep remains inconsistent. While some studies demonstrated that objective sleep quality of nursing home residents with dementia was significantly improved by being physically active [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ], other studies did not find a relationship [ 13 , 40 ]. Possible explanations for these mixed results are the differences in the individuals and environments, as well as a lack of consistency of sleep and activity measures across studies.…”