2024-04-14 18:49:31
A group of researchers from George Mason University, in Virginia (United States), has published A study in which they manage to establish a relationship between the pace at which we walk and the quality of sleep.
The authors placed motion sensors on a group of young adults and found that people who moved their hips more when walking, slouched more, or took irregularly synchronized steps were more likely to sleep poorly.
The researchers identified these traits using motion detection technology and artificial intelligence to determine the difference between the two groups.
But even these differences can be seen in real life, said Joel Martin, a kinesiologist at George Mason University who led the study. “Most people probably do this daily, sleep-negative walking without thinking about it,” he said.
When someone is sleep deprived, they tend to walk with less stability, for example.
The relationship between walking styles and sleep quality has been established in older people through multiple previous investigations. But this is one of the few studies that looks at this link in young adults.
An earlier study by psychologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences found a similar, but more dramatic, link between students’ walking styles and sleep qualities, Martin said.
In this study, however, “really subtle changes” were found between the two groups that could probably only be seen through computer analysis.
The study, which examined 123 people with an average age of 24, revealed that 59% slept well while 41% slept poorly.
After probing the participants’ sleeping habits, the researchers sent them on a two-minute walk around an oval track with motion sensors attached to their bodies.
They fed the gait data through an AI learning algorithm that was trained to identify 100 different gait characteristics, such as hip and spine position and width between the feet.
The AI detected a difference in walking patterns from the moment the participants took their first step. Poor sleepers had less rotation of the lower spine, which Martin said makes them appear hunched.
Additionally, while walking around the curve of the track, poor sleepers tended to have more changes in the angle of pelvic tilt, meaning their hips moved more.
Finally, poor sleepers had trouble maintaining a constant walking speed and the distance between their feet changed frequently.
These findings also suggest that people who sleep worse have a higher risk of injury while walking, Martin said.
“People who sleep poorly may show very subtle changes in gait typically associated with difficulty initiating and maintaining walking speed. In particular, these gait patterns are similar to those of people who are at increased risk for injury.” in the lower extremities or walk more slowly,” the researchers wrote in the article published in the journal Sleep Science.
Martin said this study would have been more accurate if they could have kept the participants overnight. But that raises ethical questions, since depriving people of sleep is dangerous, so scientists are sticking to more observational methods like this, he said.
These studies may help develop technology that can “identify whether someone is fatigued or not, especially in some occupations or sports, where people could be at higher risk of injury if they are in some type of fatigue or sleep-deprived state.” “.
#study #reveals #relationship #walk #quality #sleep #night