A literature review: Understanding the effects of high and moderate intensity aerobic exercise on sleep quality in adults

Background: One of the essential aspects in maintaining physical and mental health is sleeping, yet many adults experience sleep disturbances that can further impact their well-being. Exercise, which includes physical activities such as running, cycling, and swimming, is known to offer numerous health benefits, including cardiovascular improvement and weight management. This literature review aims to thoroughly examine the effects found in a number of previous researches of aerobic exercise in both high and moderate intensity on sleep quality of adults.

Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted across PubMed, Google Scholar, and JSTOR using specific terms of "exercise AND intensity," "aerobic exercise AND sleep quality," and "sleep quality in adult" as keywords by using the Boolean operator. The result shows a total of 20 studies were deemed relevant for a full-text review, and, upon applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 7 studies were included in the final review. These findings consistently indicate that regular exercise positively influences sleep quality with the intensity of exercise emerges as a significant factor to the outcomes.

Conclusions: This review emphasizes how the correlation between exercise and sleep quality has a complex and multifarious nature, underlining the potential for exercise to serve as a non-pharmacological intervention to enhance sleep quality and overall well-being