We all know how important a good night’s sleep is to living a healthy lifestyle and feeling rested throughout the day. If you don’t get enough sleep, or don’t get a good quality of sleep, you can not only be left dragging mentally, you can also start to suffer physically. As you age, you may find yourself sleeping patterns changing. You may need more or less sleep, or wake more frequently in the night for a number of reasons.
Aging Affects Your Sleep Pattern
Everyone knows that you are supposed to get eight hours of sleep a night, but many people think this does not apply to them. They burn the candle at both ends and think that they are fine without enough high-quality sleep, until the sleep deficit starts to take its toll.
The amount and type of sleep we need changes as we get older. This is fairly obvious by looking at babies, who spend most of the day sleeping. You may also have noticed that we again require more sleep as we hit puberty and become teenagers, but the changes don’t stop there. Alterations in our sleeping patterns continue all the way through adulthood and into our senior years.
Once you hit adulthood, you’ve probably figured out how much sleep you really should be getting. After that, the amount of sleep you need probably isn’t going to change very much. Eight hours is ideal for good health. Any more than 9 hours is considered unhealthy.
Eight hours is rare for many working people. It should be no problem for older people, especially if they retire. he problem is that as we age, our quality of sleep goes down. Older people wake up more often in the middle of the night and simply don’t get as restful a sleep. This may make you feel more tired during the day so you think you need more sleep, or may cause you to wake in the middle of the night, giving the illusion you need less sleep. An older person who is retired might nap during the day, but the find it impossible to sleep at night.
While many people notice changes in their sleep quality as they age, that doesn’t really mean that aging is the cause. As we age, we also develop more physical and mental health problems, which could be the real cause of our loss of sleep quality. Not only can the illnesses themselves wreak havoc on our sleep schedules, but so does the medicine used to treat them. Plus, if you’re not getting appropriate amounts of sleep, you may notice a worsening of your symptoms because you body is too tired to respond appropriately.
Depression and anxiety can alter sleep patterns. Some end up with sleep deprivation and insomnia as a result of changes in health, mood or schedule. Sleep affects your hormones, which could mean you packing on the pounds. And if you or a partner snore, it might be something more serious than just noise-it could be sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea results from people gasping for air in the middle of the night. It means them waking up hundreds of times a night, for miliiseconds at a time, so they never get a good quality of sleep. A doctor has a range of solutions for sleep apnea, but first they will need to give you a sleep study before determining the best course of treatment.
If you are an adult who has noticed changes in your sleep pattern, amount, or quality, take the time to see your doctor. They can run tests to rule our medical reasons for your sleep issues and can even put you in a sleep study to further diagnose the problem. Even if there is no medical cause, there are new non-habit forming drugs that can help you get a better night’s rest. With proper treatment, you will be able to get more high quality sleep and feel rested and ready for every day.
FURTHER READING
The importance of sleep for your health and weight
How to treat insomnia naturally
Sleep to boost your metabolism
Less sleep in infancy linked with excessive weight
