Overview
- Flinders University analyzed more than 28 million person-days from over 70,000 people across three and a half years using consumer wearables.
- Better sleep quality and certain durations predicted higher step counts the following day, while greater daily steps did not reliably improve subsequent sleep.
- Roughly six to seven hours of sleep was linked to the highest next-day steps, with sleep efficiency proving more important than time in bed.
- Only about 13% regularly met both seven to nine hours of sleep and at least 8,000 steps, and around 17% slept under seven hours and logged fewer than 5,000 steps.
- Researchers advise reducing evening screen time, keeping consistent bedtimes and creating a quiet sleep environment, while cautioning that tracker-based data may limit generalizability.