Generally, old age is associated with poor sleep quality along with other health disturbances. Contradicting this popular belief, scientists at Penn Medicine have revealed that sleep patterns apparently improve with growing age.
As part of the trial, rates of sleep disturbances of almost 155,877 individuals were inspected. They were surveyed via phone calls on their sleeping habits and daytime fatigue along with other medical details. This national telephonic survey was a randomized trial, where the responses were part of the US Census data.
“Even if sleep among older Americans is actually worse than in younger adults, feelings about it still improve with age. Once you factor out things like illness and depression, older people should be reporting better sleep. If they’re not, they need to talk to their doctor. They shouldn’t just ignore it,” commented Michael Grandner, PhD, research associate at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology and lead author of the study.
The outcomes showed that poor sleep quality apparently signified depression and other health complications. Moreover, women seemed to be affected more by sleep problems and tiredness. Though middle-aged women reported fatigue, the overall sleep quality improved steadily with increasing age, according to the reports.
Though there is no scientific explanation to this finding, the team asserted that older people reported better sleep patterns in the study. The article is published in the journal, Sleep.