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'?



Source

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.

@mindhunter