Sleep quality is believed to decrease as you age
Getting older is unlikely to hinder our chances of getting a good nights sleep, it may in fact help us to get a better one, according to new research.
A survey of more than 150,000 Americans shows, that subjective sleep quality seems to improve over a lifetime, with the fewest complaints coming from people in their 80s.
According to the researchers' findings, both sleep disturbances and tiredness declined with age.
Sleep problems seemed to increase slightly in middle age, from around 40 to 59 years old - particularly in women - but then decreased after that.
"This flies in the face of popular belief,” Dr. Michael Grandner, a research associate at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and lead author of the study, said in a release. "These results force us to re-think what we know about sleep in older people - men and women."
Health problems and depression were associated with poor sleep, and women reported more sleep disturbances and tiredness than men. But except for an uptick in sleep problems during middle age – more pronounced in women than men – sleep quality improved consistently over a lifetime. Or at least that's how people reported their sleep.
Tagged in Health Sleep University