Study - Healthy adults need less sleep as they age
February 2, 2010 |13:45 | Other By : Team X
A new study on sleep indicates that healthy older adults without sleep disorders need less sleep than healthy young adults and are less sleepy during the day. The study, appearing in the journal SLEEP, finds that during an eight-hour stretch in bed, total sleep time decreases significantly and progressively with age.
Older adults sleep about 20 minutes less than middle-age adults who, in turn, sleep 23 minutes less than young adults. It also finds that while older adults awaken more often at night as they get older, and their deep, slow-wave sleep decreases, they show less need for a nap during the day.
"Our findings reaffirm the theory that it is not normal for older people to be sleepy during the daytime," said principal investigator Derk-Jan Dijk, Ph.D., professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey in the U.K.
"Whether you are young or old, if you are sleepy during the day you either don't get enough sleep or you may suffer from a sleep disorder," he says. The study involved 110 healthy adults without sleep disorders or complaints.
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