The Correlation between Night Sleep Duration and Physical Activity with Cardiorespiratory Fitness Test Results in Healthy Medical College Students: a Pilot Study

Abstract

Lack of sleep is the risk factor for a cardiovascular event and low cardiorespiratory endurance. Medical college students are more frequent in experiencing a lack of sleep due to their duty. This study evaluated the correlation between lack of sleep and cardiorespiratory endurance test results in medical college students. This cross-sectional study involved sixty-two males, medical college students. Sleep duration of two weeks was assessed using a validated questionnaire. Queen College Step test was employed for a cardiorespiratory endurance test. Spearman rank test was employed to evaluate the correlation between variables, while logistic regression was applied to assess the possibility of having a good VO2max. SPSS version 19 was used to process the data and perform a statistical test. Significance was set at p<0.05. The mean sleep duration was 6.2 hours, with more students having insufficient sleep duration (51 participants). The mean VO2max was 50.4 ml/kg/min, with more students having good VO2max (50 participants). Spearman rank test indicated the weak correlation between age and sleep (r=0.2, p=0.04) and a moderate correlation between physical activity and VO2max (r=0.43, p<0.01). No correlation between sleep and VO2max result (p=0.07). Logistic regression showed sufficient physical activity is associated with 14.5 times possibility of having good VO2max (95% CI 2.7-77.8, p=0.02). The correlation between sleep and the VO2max result was not evident. Instead, sleep was associated with students’ age while VO2max with sufficient physical activity.