The effects of physical exercise on sleep quality and stress in medical students in the return to presential activities after the covid-19 pandemic

Sleep is a physiological and behavioral essential state to life, playing an essential role in homeostasis, cognitive function and neural plasticity. Thus, the objective was to understand sleep quality, stress and physical activity of medical students after the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a cross-sectional, quantitative and descriptive study which was sent to the Ethics Committee with protocol: 4,678,352/2021. The research had the participation of medical students from the first to the sixth semester of the University, that fulfilled the eligibility criteria and answered the sociodemographic questionnaire and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Data were evaluated using the Graph Pad Prism 9 program, using the nonparametric t-Student test statistic. As a result, it was observed that the COVID-19 pandemic is involved in series of changes in the social sphere, with emotional impact (stress), and repercussions on the practice of physical activity of medical students. In this sense, it can be said that the COVID-19 pandemic must be understood as much more than just a danger of infectious disease, and that its impact on mental and physical health during distance learning and after the face-to-face return to the academic group should not be overlooked.