Does Regular Physical Activity Protect Sleep and Mental Health of University Students: A Systematic Review

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood places increased social and academic demands on university students; hence, we aimed to review the role of regular physical activity in moderating subjective sleep quality, sleep duration, depression, anxiety, and stress in university students.

Observational studies conducted before December of 2022 having healthy university students as population were included. Studies assessing the effect of subjective or objective measure of physical activity on sleep and mental health (depression, anxiety, and stress) were included. After critical analysis of the included studies a meta-analysis was attempted with subgroups made wherever possible. We further corroborated our results by estimating the heterogeneity present with and between each of the available sub-groups.

Eight studies were included in the review, with an overall sample of 93,819 and mean age of 19.9 ± 0.882. Physical activity weakly reduced the risk of poor sleep quality, anxiety, and depression by 0.75 times (95% CI 0.59, 0.91), 0.91 times (95% CI 0.83, 0.99), and 0.99 times (95% CI 0.89, 1,09) respectively with marked heterogeneity.

Qualitative analysis revealed PA was majorly not a protective factor for sleep duration and strongly protective for sleep quality. While performing regular physical activity did reduce the risk of being stressed and depressed but qualitatively the findings for anxiety were ambiguous to comment; however, due to high heterogeneity, meta-analysis could not be presented in our review.