Want to dramatically improve the quality of your sleep and boost your daytime effectiveness? Get up and move! A wonderful report that carefully and accurately measured the study subject’s daily physical activity found a striking relationship between physical activity levels and sound, effective sleep.

Specifically, those who engaged in 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity weekly reported overall sleep quality 65 percent higher than inactive participants. Other noted benefits included less night time leg cramps (68 percent less) and less daytime fatigue-related poor focus and concentration (45 percent decrease). (Mental Health and Physical Activity, December 2011)

I am 100 percent convinced that good quality sleep and optimal mental health are simply unattainable unless the body gets a certain threshold amount of daily physical activity (I would say that 30 minutes of moderate activity is the bare minimum). In other words, if you are not physically fit, you have likely never experienced just how restfully you could be sleeping and just how happy and “alive” you could feel.