The Effect of "Green Exercise" on Improving the Sleep Quality of Female Elderly without Regular Physical Activity in Arak City

The prevalence of insomnia, characterized by persistent inability to fall asleep or maintain sleep, increases with age. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of "green exercise" on improving the sleep quality of inactive female elderly in Arak city. Participants were 45 female elderly, aging over 60 years with poor sleep quality residing in Arak city who voluntarily participated in the research in 2 experiment and control groups. The experiment group participated in the exercise trainings for 10 weeks, 3 sessions per week, and each session 60 minutes. Data was collected using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory (PSQI) and analyzed by dependent and independent t-test with SPSS software (version 16), with significant level 0.05. Results showed that experimental group had significant increase in mean score of sleep quality of post-test than pre-test (p≤0.05).The experimental group had significant increase in overall sleep quality, subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and daytime dysfunction scores than the control group (p≤0.05). However, there were no significant differences between the groups’ sleep disturbance and use of hypnotics mean scores. These results support the effect of green exercises on sleep quality of female elderly with sleep problems.