Old People Don’t Need As Much Sleep, New Study Finds

Old people are known to be lousy sleepers, but a new study suggests it might all be in their heads, at least for many of them.

Medications, poor health, bad bedtime habits (such as watching a movie or drinking coffee or booze), circadian rhythms, and too much or too little in their personal “sleep bank” have all taken the blame for seniors’ common complaints of insomnia.

Elizabeth Klerman of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School set out to clear it up once and for all with a controlled study of 18 subjects ages 60 to 76 and 35 younger subjects, ages 18 to 32, all healthy and not on medication that might affect sleep.

Even people who had crossed more than one time zone in the past 3 months were disqualified, as well as those who had worked night or rotating shifts in the past three years.

After monitoring their sleep at home, the subjects were regularly instructed to lie quietly with their eyes closed and to try to sleep, for as much as 16 hours daily for several days in a row. They had all the time in the world.

The bottom line was that the seniors simply needed less sleep — about 1.5 hours less.

Circadian rhythms and preferences

Younger subjects slept for an average of 9 hours compared to 7.5 for older people, said Klerman and her colleague Derk-Jan Dijk of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre in England.

The age-related decline in sleep included an even split between rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, associated with dreaming, and non-REM sleep, Klerman said.

Read more information at LiveScience