Associations Between Daily Activities, Stress, and Sleep Among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced lifestyle changes that appeared to impact adults’ engagement in health-promoting activities. Researchers observed increased stress, sleep problems, and sedentary activity, and decreased physical activity during the pandemic. This secondary analysis examined the frequency that adults engaged in different daily activities and links between activity types, stress, and sleep during the pandemic. Fifty-three adults completed a single online survey in January 2021 where they reported demographics, COVID-19 pandemic experiences, daily activities, stress, and sleep. Sum scores were calculated to indicate total frequency of different activity types. Regressions were used to examine whether the frequency of different activity types predicted sleep duration and stress. There was a trend-level relationship between the frequency of activities done outdoors and stress scores, such that doing outdoor activities more often was linked with less stress (P = .098). Higher income also tended to be linked with more stress (P = .053), as did younger age (P = .028). When restricting the outdoor activity variable to physical outdoor activities only, the relationship with stress became significant (P = .013). These results suggest that engaging in physical activity outdoors may reduce stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lifestyle Medicine and Sleep

“…4 In addition, in one of the articles published in the current issue of AJLM, further emphasis is made about the value of exercising outdoors which may bring additional stress relief. 5 Lifestyle physicians should also be prepared to help individuals create an optimum environment for healthy sleep. This has often been summarized under the rubric "sleep hygiene."…”