Apollo Neurologist Says Phone Habits, Not Busy Schedules, Are Eating Into Exercise and Sleep

A senior neurologist at Apollo Hospitals has put forward a plain explanation for why so many people say they cannot find time to exercise or get enough sleep: the phone. Dr. Sudhir Kumar, MD, made the argument in a recent post on X, and The Economic Times reported it on December 9, 2025.

Kumar's starting point is a familiar complaint. People say their schedules are too packed to fit in a workout, or that they end up sleeping fewer hours than they need. In his view, the shortage of time is not really the problem. The time is there, and it is being lost to screens without people noticing.

He begins with the morning. According to Kumar, early hours offer the most favourable conditions for physical activity, because the body's natural hormones support movement then. But a growing number of people, he observed, start the day by scrolling on their phones. That eats into the window best suited to exercise and, in his words, moves the body away from its ideal rhythm. By the time the browsing is finished, he said, the productive morning window has already closed, and what looks like a tight schedule is really time slipping away to unnecessary screen use.

The evening, he said, works the same way in reverse. Prolonged phone use at night pushes bedtime later and later. He also pointed to the blue light that screens emit, which affects the release of melatonin, the hormone needed to start sleep. The result, as he described it, is poorer sleep quality and less recovery, even for people who eventually log the same number of hours.

Kumar framed the two habits together: what people do at the start and end of the day is shaping their health more than they realise.

His prescription is deliberately modest. In the post he wrote, "If we truly value our health, the simplest 'medicine' we can prescribe ourselves is this: Protect your mornings for exercise and your nights for sleep." He closed with a line that has the ring of a slogan: "Your phone can wait; your body cannot."

The message, as the report reads it, is that small and consistent habits can do more for health than complicated interventions. People do not need elaborate routines, only a willingness to guard the hours that matter most and stop letting screens take priority over physical and mental well-being.

It is worth being clear about what this is. The claims come from a social media post by a physician, not from a clinical study, and the report cites no new data. For readers, the practical question is whether the advice holds up in their own mornings and evenings; for researchers, whether the links he describes between screen use, exercise timing and sleep are borne out by supporting evidence.