Efficacy of physical activity counseling plus sleep restriction therapy on the patients with chronic insomnia

OBJECTIVE Lack of physical activity (PA) is common in patients with chronic insomnia. Studies to increase PA and decrease sedentary behavior in those patients are limited. Therefore, we investigated the efficacy of "PA counseling combined with sleep restriction (SR) therapy (PASR)" vs only SR in the patients with chronic insomnia. METHODS Seventy-one outpatients were assigned to either PASR (n=35), consisting of four weekly PA counseling sessions based on 5A model (assess, advise, agree, assist, and arrange) + SR, or SR (n=36), consisting of four weekly SR. International Physical Activity Questionnaire (Chinese version) and pedometer-based daily steps were evaluated as the primary endpoints. Insomnia Severity Index, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Fatigue Scale-14, and Sleep Diary were evaluated as the secondary endpoints. RESULTS The results showed that the patients in the PASR group gained more benefits than the SR group in terms of PA level and pedometer-based daily steps (all P<0.05). Better improvements of the study group were also shown in Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Fatigue Scale-14, and Sleep efficiency (all P<0.05). CONCLUSION We conclude that PA counseling based on 5A model combined with SR cannot only effectively increase the PA levels but also improve the sleep quality for patients with chronic insomnia.