A late workout won’t wake you up.

You were planning to work out.

But, alas, it’s too close to bed time for that… right?

Yep, you heard the pill pusher in the pimp spectacles correctly:

Indeed, those pre-sleep exercise excuses have been nullified… by science.

I remember when I was first getting into jogging (around age ten) and my mom would say, “You shouldn’t do that so close to bed time. It’ll just wake you up again!” This has been a long standing belief I’ve had. As I heard it reiterated, that made it an ingrained belief. (Those are the hardest to change.) And, to be fair, it made sense at the time – and for several years after. I mean, when I ran to make the bus or sprinted suicides for volleyball by day, it woke me right up. Why wouldn’t it do the same at night? And why is science now saying that it doesn’t matter when you exercise – just so long as you do it?

Probably ‘cause our bodies’ levels aren’t static all day long.

You during the morning has a different cocktail of fluctuating blood running juices than you during the evening hours. Certain hormones rise and fall and dictate when it’s time to deactivate your awake state. And, evidently, exercise doesn’t interfere with that. Other things, like chemicals or blue light exposure, can. But exercise? Not so much. Not on a general level, at least. As human creatures, we evolved to move – not remain sedentary. So whenever we can do that, we’ve gotta fit it in. For instance, I personally found that the only way I could fall asleep was if I ran for 20 to 30 minutes no less than four hours before bedtime. (Protip: I also found that I woke up better and had a better work day if I system activated with an A.M. run of the same amount.) It seems that on nights I don’t at least hit the elliptical for 15 minutes, I’m wide awake and flailing about like a junkie going through withdrawal. “Maybe that’s because you’re addicted to exercise, Ashley…” Fair enough. But maybe it’s also just because my body needs to burn all the good energy I feed it instead of the food Propofol you can find on your local value menu drive through. Who knows. The point is, according to the experts, there’s nothing detrimental about pumping up your heart rate so close to powering down. In fact, per Barbara Philips (a sleep specialist from U. Kentucky) that fable about the crack-like ramifications of PM cardio we were all believing before wasn’t even founded in research of any sort:

“The timing of exercise ought to be driven by when the pool’s lap lane is open or when your tennis partner is available or when you have time to get away from work, not by some statement that has never been validated.”

In fact, Phillips worked on a poll which showed that only 3% of people (out of 1,000 total) exercising close to bedtime complained about having a bad sleep. The rest of them said it didn’t change the amount or quality of the time they spent not being awake. Now, I only got an A in statistics, but if memory serves me correctly, 97% is pretty effing significant.

Alright. So, exactly how close to bed is too close?

Apparently, not much, according to another specialist who worked on the poll. Shawn Youngstedt ran an experiment where he had dudes ride stationary bikes just 30 minutes before bedtime – and they slept like babies. Granted, this is the point where I’d be remiss and irresponsible as a reporter if I didn’t point out that the subjects were on those bikes for three hours. And that three hours of any exercise is basically tantamount to sudoriferous Lunesta. However, you’re fortunate enough to have yours truly to provide the other side of that variable. I’ve pushed it right up to the last minute before, and my verdict remains the same: Just half an hour – even half an hour before bed gets a good-as-melatonin five star slumber review from me.

In fact, it makes for such a good sleep that I don’t want to make those excuses by time evening number next rolls around. But you want to know what’s weird? Some people totally do. Even after hearing the results, some subjects in the study above maintained that they’d refuse to let something like reality get in the way of their favorite childhood myth (Lightly paraphrased.)

Which just goes to show that we tend to deify our own belief systems more than we do actual evidence.

We’re perfectly content to crush up and snort lines of the blue pill even though we get constant previews of what the transcendent red pill has to offer. And that’s fine. I get it. As I mentioned, I was there for a chunk of time too. But should you get tired (literally) of the mind-made fallacies you’ve been ingesting like some beer bong running from your misinformed brain, fear not. You can always run on over to the fact pharmacy for the crimson tablet of truth. Better late than never.

(In fact, I hear running late makes for a great sleep.)