Why Does Our Quality Sleep Decrease With Age?
Sleepless nights ahead
I remember my grandfather who aged 92 only required 6 hours sleep a night and had full mobility until his recent death in 2015. It always puzzled me when he said that his hours of sleep were much less than his younger years. Only recently did I dig a little deeper into the issue as to why?
After some research there appears to be 2 modes of thinking on this. The first is that older people simply require less sleep. Simple really. The second is not how long we sleep, but the quality of that sleep. How much of it is 'deep sleep'?
According to researchers at Berkeley the older that people get , the more aged the physiology of the body becomes, hence 'deep sleep' becomes a more difficult task for the aging body. This is a vicious circle of aging as we are denied this deeper sleep.
The denial of deep sleep can cause all kinds of ailments from cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc etc, and this in turn weakens the immune system which has a knock on effect on brain cognitive function.
It's estimated that older people have around 1 hour less 'deep sleep' than their younger counterparts. Much more of their time is spent in REM sleep where the repairs are harder to carry out.
Of course there are certain routines we can get into to aid more 'deep sleep' like avoiding caffeine before bed, having a dark bedroom, getting plenty of light in the day etc. but what we can say is that none of this will make you sleep like you were younger. The fountain of youth does indeed not apply here. Apologies for that.
Sweet dreams.
An interesting short post on the science of sleep and some recent research findings. Nice job!
As a bonus, and in addition to resteeming for exposure, we are awarding you a small 10 Steem Power deposit as a thank you for creating quality STEM related postings on Steemit. We hope you will continue to educate us all!
Thanks guys. This was a lovely surprise. Thank you. Thank you :) @mindhunter
Yes. My sleep is already becoming much less over this past year at my middle age however. Am working on getting some good nights in here and there though.
Pour moi! I'm down from 9 hours to 7-7.5 hours ... more time to Steem on now @virtualgrowth! Ha ha!
Interesting, the same applies for protein. The older you get the less protein intake your body needs.
As your body slows with age it need less calories for movement @markush ;)
Ive been sleeping 3-4 hours max most days since forever.. Becoming an immortal lol
Since I started Steeming Mr Wong it's 6-7 hours a night for me now! I need to get my ass over to your blog soon - I'm getting soft in old age with all these minnows!
Of course the better option is to practice meditation and mindfulness.
With these tools your mind needs much less sleep, because you are dealing consciously with the crap that you need to process.
So many old people sound like broken records to me.
Their minds and life are so stuck in a rut, that they cannot escape it, and just go round and round. New things are sometimes debilitating.
20 mins candle meditation done here daily @builderofcastles ... it's where I get all my ideas from ... floating up from the deep ocean within ;)