When I taught language arts, knew school work or meetings would keep me in school until supper, and my workout schedule called for a bike ride, I’d do it before school indoors by fastening a road bike to a wind trainer.

That meant I’d miss more than the pleasure and comfort nature provides while I’m pedaling along in the light of day and occasionally creating their opposites. It also meant I’d forfeit an hour of sleep or more.

And during the six weeks following Christmas vacation when my students would submit rough and final drafts of research papers, I’d stay at school until supper most every night - and wake up before 4:00 a.m. most every day. Eventually, the cumulative lack of sleep would cause me to doze off at times while reading research papers and most times I read at home for enjoyment.

But it didn’t seem to adversely affect those early-morning workouts.

Still, when my cycling buddies learned that even my most intense weekday rides between New Year’s and Valentine’s ended before they started breakfast, they busted my chops. The running joke became riding all out that early in the morning would eventually get me great racing results . . . as well as a really good turn out at my funeral.

I had no clever comeback back then. Thanks to 11 Chinese researchers, though, I can now justify those rides.

They published a study in the September 2022 issue of the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology that shows not sleeping enough does indeed lead to early funerals, well-attended or not. But only if you’re not exercising enough.

Two of the 11, Yannis Yan Liang and Hongliang Feng, analyzed data available through the UK Biobank on over 92,000 people (average age 62.4) who wore accelerometers for a week sometime between 2013 and 2015. Accelerometers can keep track of both sleep time and exercise time, which makes this study superior to many prior ones that relied on self-reporting by participants for that information.

Liang and Feng divided the participants into thirds, first based on sleep duration and then exercise time. A follow-up about 7 years later revealed 3080 had passed away prematurely.

And that those participants who had slept 6 hours or less a night during the week they wore the accelerometers were 250 percent more likely to be part of the early departed. Unless, that is, they had also met or exceeded the World Health Organization’s recommended amount of weekly moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

Then the likelihood of an early death, according to Lou Schuler in a WebMD article about the study, was “virtually eliminate[d].” Following the more conservative writing style of the research world, the study’s author, Jihui Zhang, opted to call it “potentially diminished.”

Either way, it’s important news for you if at times, or most times, you shortchange your shuteye.

Since the WHO’s weekly exercise recommendation is the same one that’s found in the current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans and used by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and the American Heart Association, it’s quite possible you already know it. In short: that each week adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity along with two days of muscle strengthening activity.

What’s not possible for you to know though, since even the science world is less than sure, is why following that advice increases the lifespan of sleep skimpers when they are compared to other sleep skimpers who get less exercise or none at all.

The science world, however, is sure that exercise at any time of the day “fights inflammatory and metabolic dysregulations and abnormal sympathetic nervous system activity” Zhang tells Schuler. Both conditions can result from a lack of sleep and both have been linked to cardiovascular disease, as well as other potentially fatal conditions.

Which brings us back to another situation where you may be less than sure: how to do today’s title.

How can you exercise enough to help your health while you’re hurting your health by not sleeping enough?

Schuler’s solution, to use the former to fix the latter, strikes me as an insufficient answer. But that could be his intention - if he believes as I believe.

That the research and the articles you read should not provide answers but the impetus for you to experiment intelligently on yourself.

And while we all agree exercising when you’re feeling sapped from a lack of sleep, whether you do it after you wake up or finish work, is certainly tough, the conclusion reached by the Chinese researchers and featured in Schuler’s article should provide the incentive for you to find a way to do so.

Because doing so does more than just add to the bounty of exercise’s health benefits. It works longterm to add years to your life.