Effects of physical exercise on heat dissipation and nocturnal sleep in young adult women

Abstract

【Purpose】This study examined women’s physiological heat dissipation and sleep characteristics and the effects of physical exercise on heat dissipation, nocturnal sleep structure, and subjective evaluation in women in the follicular phase (FP) and luteal phase (LP). 【Method】Twelve young-adult female subjects participated in the experiment for a total of four days：1) FP-non-exercise, 2) FP-exercise, 3) LP-non-exercise, and 4) LP-exercise condition. Exercise consisted of 40 minutes of resistance training (RT) at 70% intensity of maximum repetitions during the day. Electroencephalogram (EEG), skin-temperature, and core-body-temperature were measured simultaneously at the subject’s home at night, and DPG (distal-proximal skin temperature gradient) was calculated. 【Results】In both FP and LP, RT promoted heat release and stage N3 sleep increased during nocturnal sleep, especially in LP. Furthermore, in the distribution of the duration of deep sleep, we observed the persistence of stage N3 sleep from mid-to-late sleep especially in LP-exercise condition and heat dissipation responses was also enhanced in LP-exercise condition compared to the non-exercise conditions. 【Discussion】RT enhances not only increase of deep sleep in the FP of women, but also promotes heat dissipation and deep sleep at night in the LP, when the body temperature is high and the body temperature rhythm is not well balanced.