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Aging News & Information
Risk of Death Doubles from Too Little or Too Much
Sleep Says British Study
NIH says senior citizens should know sleep problems
not a normal part of aging
 Sept. 24, 2007 – Most senior citizens seem to
wrestle with sleep problems at one time or another. But getting it right
– the right number of hours of sleep – is critically important,
according to a new study that says your risk of death from
cardiovascular disease more than doubles if you don’t get enough sleep,
of if you sleep too much.
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By
National Institute on Aging
September 18, 2006
Read more
Aging News & Information |
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The results of the study being presented today to
the British Sleep Society show the results how sleep patterns affected
the mortality of 10,308 civil servants in the “Whitehall II study”. It
focused on the mortality rates and sleep patterns on the same group of
civil servants at two points in their life (1985-8 and those still alive
in 1992-3).
Professor Francesco Cappuccio from the University
of Warwick’s Medical School will make the presentation.
The researchers from the University of Warwick, and
University College London took into account other possible factors such
age, sex, marital status, employment grade, smoking status, physical
activity, alcohol consumption, self-rated health, body mass index, blood
pressure, cholesterol, other physical illness etc. Once they had
adjusted for those factors they were able to isolate the effect that
changes in sleep patterns over 5 years had on mortality rates 11-17
years later.
Taking those who had not made any change in their
sleeping habits between 1985-8 and 1992-3 as their baseline (7 hours per
night being the figure normally recommended as an appropriate period of
sleep for an adult) they were able to see what difference having reduced
the amount of sleep over time made to mortality rates by 2004.
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Many Seniors Do Not Have Sleep Problems
Many people believe that poor sleep is a
normal part of aging, but it is not, according to Senior Health,
a Website by the National Institutes of Health.
In fact, many healthy older
adults report few or no sleep problems. Sleep patterns change as
we age, but disturbed sleep and waking up tired every day are
not part of normal aging.
Unfortunately, many older adults often do
get less sleep than they need. One reason is that they often
have more trouble falling asleep. A study of adults over 65
found that 13 percent of men and 36 percent of women take more
than 30 minutes to fall asleep.
Also, older people often sleep less deeply
and wake up more often throughout the night, which may be why
they may nap more often during the daytime. Nighttime sleep
schedules may change with age too. Many older adults tend to get
sleepier earlier in the evening and awaken earlier in the
morning.
Older adults may also have other medical
and psychiatric problems that can affect their nighttime sleep.
Researchers have noted that people without major medical or
psychiatric illnesses report better sleep.
Seniors having trouble sleeping should see
their doctor or a sleep specialist. There are treatments that
can help, according to the government Website.
NIH
Senior Health, click for more on senior sleep problems
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Those who had cut their sleeping from seven to five
hours or less faced a 1.7 fold increased risk in mortality from all
causes, and twice the increased risk of death from a cardiovascular
problem in particular.
“Fewer hours sleep and greater levels of sleep
disturbance have become widespread in industrialized societies,” says
Cappuccio.
“This change, largely the result of sleep
curtailment to create more time for leisure and shift-work, has meant
that reports of fatigue, tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness are
more common than a few decades ago. Sleep represents the daily process
of physiological restitution and recovery, and lack of sleep has
far-reaching effects.”
Surprisingly, the researchers also found that too
much sleep also increased mortality. They found that those individuals
who showed an increase in sleep duration to 8 hours or more a night were
more than twice as likely to die as those who had not changed their
habit, however, predominantly from non-cardiovascular diseases.
“Short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor for
weight gain, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes sometimes leading to
mortality but in contrast to the short sleep-mortality association it
appears that no potential mechanisms by which long sleep could be
associated with increased mortality have yet been investigated,”
Cappuccio said.
“Some candidate causes for this include depression,
low socioeconomic status and cancer-related fatigue.”
“In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that
consistently sleeping around 7 hours per night is optimal for health
and a sustained reduction may predispose to ill-health.”
Editor’s Notes: The research paper entitled: “A
prospective study of change in sleep duration; associations with
mortality in the Whitehall II cohort” will be published in the Journal
SLEEP.
The full list of the authors is: Jane E. Ferrie,
Martin J. Shipley, Francesco P. Cappuccio, Eric Brunner, Michelle A.
Miller, Meena Kumari, and Michael G. Marmot
>>
All about senior citizens and sleep at the National Institutes of
Health’s Senior Health Website, click here
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