Objective. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effects of an exercise intervention on fatigue and sleep quality in perimenopausal women.
Methods. Fourteen Spanish (54 ± 3) perimenopausal women from a health centre of Granada were enrolled to participate in a 9 weeks (60 minutes/session, 3 sessions/week) moderate-intensity (i.e. 12-16 rating of perceived effort) exercise intervention. We assessed fatigue severity by means of a Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI) with 5 domains: general fatigue, physical fatigue, mental fatigue, reduced activity, and reduced motivation. Each domain consists of 4 items and has a potential score range from 4 to 20, where higher scores indicate a high degree of fatigue. The sleep quality was assessed trough the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire with 7 “component” scores: subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleeping medication, and daytime dysfunction before and after the exercise intervention. Because fatigue and sleep quality variables were not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were used (Wilcoxon test for paired samples).
Results and discussion. We observed an 18% decrease in reduced motivation fatigue and a 12% in the use of sleeping medications after 9 weeks of exercise intervention (both, P < 0.05). No differences were found in the remaining variables. Despite the results displayed, an improved tendency in all the MFI and the PSQI domains after 9 weeks of exercise program was observed. However, due to the small sample size and the length of the exercise program we cannot confirm this approach significantly.
Conclusion. Overall, a moderate-intensity exercise intervention for 9 weeks (3 sessions/week) might improve motivation-related fatigue and reduce the pharmaceutics cost average per habitant in Spanish perimenopausal women. The small simple size and the duration of the exercise intervention might have influenced the present results. Therefore, future studies with larger sample size are needed in order to corroborate our hypothesis.
Corresponding author. dcamiletti@ugr.es
