Sleep quality starts declining far earlier than most people realize — and understanding why could help you preserve it
Perhaps it’s because they’ve seen it all, but elderly people usually aren’t shy about making dark jokes. One of their stereotypical bits doubles as an explanation for why they wake up so early: They’re running out of time.
But in truth, sleeping less as you age is not just about making it to water aerobics at the crack of dawn. It’s a well-documented biological phenomenon.
Studies show that sleep efficiency, REM sleep and slow-wave sleep can decline with age, and experts agree that these issues can start sooner than we think. “Decreased sleep efficiency and deep sleep can begin dropping even in your twenties,” warns Dr. William Lu, a physician and medical director of the digital sleep clinic Dreem Health. For the sleep-challenged, this raises yet another question to keep you up at night: Do I have insomnia, or am I just old? The two are connected — and it’s complicated.
Your sleep tracker isn’t broken — you’re just getting older Oscar Wong/Getty Images
The Hormonal Havoc of Aging
There are a number of overlapping factors that influence sleep and aging, which scientists are still figuring out how to separate. What they do know is that hormones play a big role. For instance, our pineal glands produce melatonin, a hormone that’s crucial for maintaining your circadian rhythm. But this gland becomes calcified as we get older, causing it to release less of the hormone.
Likewise, human growth hormone, which is produced by the pituitary glad throughout childhood and peaks during puberty, is “tightly linked” to deep sleep, according to the research. "As we age, there’s less natural production of growth hormone and in turn less deep sleep,” Lu says. This potentially accounts for studies that suggest less deep sleep puts people at an increased risk for dementia — a risk that elevates as we age.
As for whether aging causes sleep issues, or sleep issues exacerbate the effects of aging, it’s less a chicken-or-egg issue and more of a two-way street. The bad news is that both of these things can be true at once…and likely are. Lu and other specialists believe that sleep loss makes health problems related to aging worse. “The effects of poor sleep can lead to neurologic, cardiac and psychological issues,” he adds. At the same time, sleep disorders that may have been present from a young age, such as insomnia and sleep apnoea, “can definitely be worsened by advancing age as well.”
Due to this inseparable nature of aging and sleep, though, experts also suspect that quality sleep could delay the effects of aging — similar to the way fasting and exercise have been found to do the same. The challenging part? Figuring out how to rediscover that quality sleep in the first place.
Good Sleep Habits Are Anti-Aging
“I can’t stress enough the importance of maintaining healthy habits,” Lu notes. These include the “avoidance of alcohol prior to sleep, exercise, diet, getting sunlight during the day and healthy sleep habits such as maintaining bed and wake times daily.” Deep breathing and relaxation techniques such as the military sleep method and autogenic training can similarly induce sleep.
Of course, there are always going to be aspects of aging that complicate sleep. Beyond hormonal shifts, issues like chronic illnesses and musculoskeletal pain can make it difficult to get comfortable and unwind. Plus, retirement can alter your schedule in a way that disrupts your sleep and wake times; and the grief that normally accompanies old age — from the death of a spouse, a friend or other loved ones — can cause stress and sleepless nights. On top of all that, you can’t force your glands to make more melatonin, and studies have found that the efficacy of supplementation “remains marginal.” That said, if you already have insomnia, sleep apnoea or other sleep issues in your twenties and thirties, realize that your body is primed to only make them worse with time. That’s why Lu emphasizes the importance of getting a handle on these problems sooner than later.
Finally, since sleep is connected to hormones, it’s worth noting that men and women experience age-related sleep loss differently. Women may have sleep declines related to menopause, whereas men can experience insomnia from low testosterone. As a result, the appropriate treatment could differ. “For men, it may be worth it for them to also speak with their primary care providers to talk about symptoms that may result from sleep loss,” Lu says. “Tailored therapies can be recommended.”
One such therapy — backed by strong evidence and useful across genders — is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy designed specifically for insomnia. This treatment helps reframe the thoughts and anxieties that often prevent people from falling or staying asleep.
Whatever you do to get your sleep under control, it’s important to put the realities of rising and grinding in your twenties and thirties into perspective. While late nights and early mornings seem important for your professional and personal development, the notion that you’ll sleep when you’re older is a false promise. So don’t be afraid to spend a little more time in bed — you might find the fountain of youth in there.
Insomnia is not a grievance made by difficult women. It’s a life-threatening condition that often stems from a physical issue many doctors refuse to see
In February, I taught memoir writing at a conference in Mexico where the faculty is traditionally put up with local hosts. Mine was especially communicative in the months leading up to my arrival, going out of his way to indicate affordable rooftop bars, the finest locations to view murals, and general best practices for the city he’d adopted as his own.
So when I told my host that I have chronic insomnia, I felt he’d take me seriously, given how generous he’d been in his emails. “I’ve travelled a lot throughout Mexico,” I wrote him. “And the one thing I can’t deal with as an insomniac is roosters.”
There was a rooster in the vicinity, my host admitted, but it was way off in the distance and shouldn’t be a problem; his home had thick walls and was well insulated against noise.
Colour me surprised when I arrived, a few hours shy of midnight, to the news that the rooster had recently relocated to the tree outside the guest bedroom where I’d be staying for the week. “He starts crowing at 4am,” my host explained, “and he just keeps on going.”
“He’s lucky we’re vegetarians!” joked a visiting friend of his.
I went to bed disheartened and prematurely anxious. In addition to teaching a full load of courses, I had a novel under consideration at several publishing houses, so my week was jammed with high-stakes editorial calls. I can barely sleep with someone breathing next to me, so there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to sleep through a rooster crowing outside my window.
After a sleepless night, I fled the coop on day two, relocating to a poultry-free hotel nearby, which made me feel guilty – the host had been so kind. I was also frustrated, knowing he probably thought I was exaggerating, using the word “insomniac” to stand in for “sensitive”.
When I tell people that I have immense trouble with sleep, what they hear is that I’m difficult, neurotic, a diva with control issues. For nearly 40 years, every doctor I’ve pleaded with has announced that the problem is in my head. That I need to relax, take hot baths, do a lot of yoga. Or, you know, go back and be born a man, because ladies are high-strung.
But last year, at 45, I finally found a doctor who listened to my conviction that there was a physical root to my ailment.
This is the story of how I got through his office door.
‘For nearly 40 years, every doctor I’ve pleaded with has announced that the problem is in my head.’ Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
As anyone trying to get through the day after a sleepless night will know, mental health is strongly linked to sleep satisfaction – and Americans are doing poorly in both of these departments.
A 2023 poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that “one in four adults who were dissatisfied with their sleep also met probable criteria for a depression diagnosis,” with women and the elderly suffering from insomnia, depression and a reliance on sleeping aids more than any other demographic. Last year, a fresh survey by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine announced that 12% of Americans had been diagnosed with chronic insomnia, the very condition I’m up against.
The message that I was overly sensitive, persistently hormonal and ‘keyed up’ was drilled into me so many times by doctors of both genders
My struggles with disordered sleeping started far younger than the national average. By age nine, I had entered the pattern I’m currently entrenched in – I could fall asleep but couldn’t stay asleep, usually waking up at about 4.30am, exhausted and disgruntled, unable to lure the sandman back.
I don’t think I knew the word “insomnia” at the time, but I knew something had shifted inside me for the worse. My home life was in shambles – my younger brother was suffering frequent, terrifying seizures and the stress of his undiagnosed illness was crumbling my parents’ already fractured marriage. When I complained to my mother about my sleep troubles, she gave me a “join the club” look. She brought home a pack of Sleepytime tea, but it only made me jealous of the narcoleptic brown bear on the packaging who could fall asleep wherever: in a lounger, in a hammock, in a field of chamomile.
The tea was the extent of my mother’s efforts to “deal” with my insomnia. My father doesn’t do emotions, so I stored up my complaints for the doctors I saw annually, giddy with the knowledge that they’d know how to “fix” me. My paediatrician, my dentist, the gynaecologist I started seeing as a teen, even the health counsellor the school sent in for sexual education – I told everyone in a lab coat that I was unable to stay asleep at night, that I was developing debilitating canker sores from sleep loss, that I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stay asleep like my healthy friends.
“It’s because of hormones,” was the common answer. “We see this in good students,” was another observation. “You should play more sports.” Then there was the MVP of answers: “It’s just a woman thing.”
The message that I was overly sensitive, persistently hormonal and “keyed up” was drilled into me so many times by doctors of both genders, I eventually turned my disorder into a point of pride. Throughout my youth and well into my 20s, I hid my broken mental health by presenting a sharp and willing mind to my employers, colleagues, friends. By day as a copywriter, I was known as a fixer, someone who could deliver website copy for a luxury hotel chain on a moment’s notice. At night, I went into author mode – someone able to brightly chat about her latest novel at book signings even though she felt costumed in the body of someone no longer alive.
When I added “mother” to my growing list of responsibilities, the train went off the rails. By the time my daughter turned two, I stopped sleeping completely – even sedatives couldn’t turn off the neon light constantly buzzing in my head. I started shedding weight, developed irritable bowel syndrome, and was too out of it to drive. The canker sores that had always plagued me turned into mouth ulcers so painful I couldn’t speak or eat.
Most pointedly, I couldn’t “show up” and “power through” professionally as I’d been doing for so long. I missed the deadline for my second novel. There were mistakes in all my emails. Squiggles in my sight path. I was hearing voices, seeing things in corners. I’d always been told that my brain was the problem – that I alone was responsible for my inability to sleep. Therefore, I had to eradicate the problem. I started to fantasize about driving off the road in my rural, wooded town. Straight into a tree.
My husband put his foot down. Neither he nor my daughter could continue living with the human shell I had become. Either I got myself into therapy, or we talked divorce.
Cue a montage of fresh intentions. I found a talented therapist and a psychiatrist generous with her scripts. I started anti-depression medication and was prescribed an entire pharmacy aisle of sleeping pills. I went to a nutritionist, dropping a small fortune on new-agey supplements including valerian root and lion’s mane. I started acupuncture, hypnosis, reiki, and I took a lot of baths. I gave up coffee and tried to exercise more even though I was so sleepy, I didn’t register my limbs moving until they already had. I drank less alcohol; I ate my weight in food.
I also did the sleep hygiene thing, becoming even more rigid around the act of sleeping, which frankly made things worse. I bought expensive sheets. I bought expensive pillows. I enrolled in two sleep clinics to test for sleep apnoea; I failed both so was denied the CPap machine that I thought might help me rest.
These efforts – laborious, expensive – lasted nearly 15 years. And then, at 45, a new development occurred: I started snoring so loudly that my husband decamped to the guest room. How could I be snoring if I was barely sleeping?
After nasal strips failed to quell my honking, I posted to Facebook for snoring solutions, and a friend suggested that I see an an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor. Doctors and acquaintances have recommended everything under the sun – including the sun itself – for my insomnia, but no one had ever recommended this specific specialty, so I drove to the ENT Institute of Connecticut with something close to hope.
After asking me to perform a series of challenging jaw and tongue exercises, the ENT asked if I’d had braces as a child. Here we go again, I thought, slumping in my chair. “I had braces, yeah. Early, like age nine.” I held on to the information that this is also when my insomnia started and my family fell apart. If I admitted that, the consult would end like all the others – the problem was my brain, the problem was my gender; I needed to chill out.
“You have an anterior nasal valve collapse and upper airway resistance syndrome,” the doctor said instead, holding up a laminated poster of different mouth and throat types. “When you got braces, your jaw wasn’t done growing. Your tongue kept growing, but your jaw’s growth was stunted and now you can’t breathe properly, especially at night where you’re basically choked by your own tongue. This isn’t a mental thing; you have a real, physical problem. You haven’t been breathing properly for over 30 years and no CPap is gonna fix that. I’m recommending you for surgery.”
I cried when I got to my car, but not out of relief. After decades of medical gaslighting, hearing that my problems weren’t invented didn’t feel liberating or validating. I felt robbed of time.
I mourned the years where I could have been more comfortable, happier, healthier and rested; a better writer, better mother, a better friend and human. All those doctors, for all those years, declaring that my canker sores were unfixable and linked only to my menses? In the space of five minutes, my doctor had explained it all: my mouth wasn’t able to properly sanitize itself because I couldn’t breathe right. He also explained why my face turned beet red when I did the slightest amount of exercise (a tendency I’d been bullied for as a middle schooler): I wasn’t getting the oxygen I needed to run around the gym.
I got braces in the 1980s when American orthodontics was excessively focused on cosmetics. Today, there’s more awareness around orthodontics and otorhinolaryngology, countless articles, some podcasts; there’s even a 2024 documentary called Open Wide that explores the teenage rite of passage that is – or was – getting braces young. Accordingly, when the New Hampshire-based writer Sarah Canney was told by a dentist that her eight-year-old son’s overcrowded mouth, constant migraines and sleep troubles would be remedied by orthodontics, she had a tool that wasn’t available to my family: the World Wide Web.
“There’s an unseen trickle-down effect of doing so much to a young mouth,” explains Canney, who researched extensively to find a doctor who wouldn’t force tooth extraction on her child’s overcrowded mouth, because she’d learned this practice can detrimentally affect mouth size, causing considerable problems as the patient ages. She says she went into that first appointment with her guard up, ready to protect and advocate her son, but she didn’t have to. The practice Canney chose takes a holistic approach to dentistry, looking at neck curvature and body alignment before anything else. Canney’s son is in phase two of what is looking like a successful orthodontic program, where the patient’s quality of life is prioritized over having perfect teeth.
The poet Christina Stoddard is the person who originally told me to see an ENT in the comments of my Facebook post, because she was saved from debilitating sleep issues by an ENT herself. For years, Stoddard was getting the recommended amount of sleep but was waking feeling like she hadn’t slept at all. Given that her father has sleep apnoea, she was certain she’d leave her ENT appointment with a prescription for a CPap – a continuous positive airway pressure machine that uses a combination of water and suction to help its user breathe. Instead, Stoddard was recommended for five different surgeries to correct nasal and laryngeal issues that were affecting her ability to breathe correctly, especially lying down.
Stoddard underwent the recommended operations, and though the recovery was gnarly, within a month she said the results were transformative. “I didn’t know what I’d been missing,” she told me on the phone. “I went to sleep. I stayed asleep. I woke up in the morning feeling like I wanted to belt out a Broadway song.”
I had three surgeries for my own breathing issues: a nasal valve repair, a septoplasty and a turbinate reduction, all of which I underwent in May of 2024. Unfortunately, the cartilage graft inserted to prop my nostrils open didn’t take on one side of my nose, so in November of 2024, I went under the knife again for revision surgery.
A lot of things have improved for me since my second operation. The headaches that used to plague my waking hours have completely dissipated, and my canker sores have gone from being a daily burden to a monthly one. My face no longer turns bright red when I exercise and I feel generally calmer, happier and more poised. For months after the second surgery, I was sleeping better than I have in decades, but at the time of writing, I’m experiencing a relapse: I haven’t slept more than four hours a night for three weeks.
Though I’ve finally identified and treated the physical cause of my sleep issues, I now have to go back and course correct my mind. After researching the benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (shorthand, CBT-I), I was given a list of local providers by my therapist, but I’m having a hard time finding a human being to treat me, given that most programs are online and self-paced.
The novelist Lara Prescott is currently enrolled in such a program, the Harvard-designed Stellar Sleep mobile app. Having tried every solution in the book for her lifelong insomnia, she’s sceptical that CBT-I will provide the life-changing breakthrough that she’s desperate for.
“Right now, I’m in a really cranky I-don’t-want-to-do-this mode,” Prescott admits. “Insomnia is such a lonely condition. You’re up and you’re so lonely and you can’t get back to sleep, and all you really want is for doctors to say, hey, let’s drop everything and help this person out. But most of the time, you can’t even get anyone to return your calls.”
While I wait for human CBT-I practitioners to return my own phone calls, I’m trying out new rituals to regulate my circadian rhythm and establish healthier thought patterns around my sleep performance. First thing every morning and last thing every night, I go outside and take in the sights, the sounds, the light. I’m supposed to do this for 20 minutes a sitting. (I don’t.) But even with modest time I give to outdoor meditation, I can see and feel the benefits of choosing to rise and set with the sun and moon, instead of my phone’s screen. I ordered a demonic acupressure mat that I endure nightly while listening to Ayla Nova yoga nidra podcasts. I’m slowly trying to replace my Ambien and Trazodone with edibles and tinctures, but I’m not quite off the pharmaceutical sauce.
Until a full night’s rest comes to me (which won’t be for a while, thanks to perimenopause), I find relief in connecting with people who understand that insomnia is not a grievance made by difficult, whiny women but rather a life-threatening condition that frequently stems from a physical issue many doctors refuse to see.
My complications were identified later in life than I’m comfortable with, but better late than dead. If you’re reading this as a fellow insomniac, I hope you find someone who hears and sees you, too.
Courtney Maum is an author who wrote about her sleep issues and related mental health struggles in her memoir The Year of Horses
A massive new study suggests bedtime screen time could be seriously damaging your sleep.
Researchers found that even one extra hour of screen use after going to bed raises the chance of insomnia and shortens overall sleep. Contrary to expectations, social media wasn’t worse than other screen-based activities — all types had the same effect. Scientists believe it’s not the content but the lost sleep time itself that’s causing the problem, adding weight to the idea that cutting off screens before bed could be a simple step toward better sleep.
Screen Time in Bed Linked to Sleep Disruption
Using screens in bed could be hurting your sleep more than you think. A large-scale survey of 45,202 young adults in Norway found that just one hour of screen use after going to bed was linked to a 59% increase in the risk of insomnia and an average loss of 24 minutes of sleep per night.
Interestingly, it didn’t matter what people were doing on their screens — whether scrolling social media, watching videos, or reading. According to Dr. Gunnhild Johnsen Hjetland of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, the biggest factor wasn’t the type of activity, but the total time spent on screens in bed.
“The type of screen activity does not appear to matter as much as the overall time spent using screens in bed,” said Dr. Gunnhild Johnsen Hjetland of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, lead author of the article published today (March 31) in Frontiers in Psychiatry. “We found no significant differences between social media and other screen activities, suggesting that screen use itself is the key factor in sleep disruption — likely due to time displacement, where screen use delays sleep by taking up time that would otherwise be spent resting.”
How Screens Mess with Sleep
Sleep plays a vital role in both mental and physical health, yet many people struggle to get enough — especially young adults. One increasingly common habit that may be interfering with sleep is screen use in bed.
Researchers believe screens can affect sleep in several ways:
Notifications can interrupt or delay sleep.
Screen time can replace time that would otherwise be used for sleeping.
Engaging content can keep the brain alert, making it harder to fall asleep.
Light exposure from screens may shift circadian rhythms and delay sleep onset.
“Sleep problems are highly prevalent among students and have significant implications for mental health, academic performance, and overall well-being, but previous studies have primarily focused on adolescents,” said Hjetland. “Given the widespread use of screens in bed we aimed to explore the relationship between different screen activities and sleep patterns. We expected that social media use might be more strongly associated with poorer sleep, given its interactive nature and potential for emotional stimulation.”
(Getty Images)
Digging into the Data
To investigate, the scientists used the 2022 Students’ Health and Wellbeing survey, a nationally representative study of Norwegian students. They reached 45,202 participants in full-time higher education, aged between 18-28 years old.
They first asked participants to say whether they used screens after going to bed and for how long. Then they asked participants to identify their chosen activities: watching shows or movies, gaming, social media, surfing the internet, listening to audio like podcasts, or reading study-related materials.
Participants were also asked to report their bedtime and rising time, as well as how long it took them to fall asleep, how often they had trouble falling or staying asleep, how often they felt sleepy during the day, and how long their sleep problems persisted. Insomnia was defined as trouble sleeping and daytime sleepiness issues at least three times a week over at least three months.
The scientists then sorted responses into three categories: one where participants said they only used social media, one where participants did not mention social media, and one where participants selected several activities, including social media.
The Screen-Sleep Tradeoff
The scientists found that increasing screen time after bedtime by one hour increased the odds of insomnia symptoms by 59% and lowered sleep duration by 24 minutes. However, using social media wasn’t more detrimental than other screen activities. There was no significant interaction between the time spent using a screen and the choice of activity, suggesting that the activity itself didn’t affect the amount of time people stayed awake. This indicates that screens reduce sleep time because they displace rest, not because they increase wakefulness: different activities would be expected to affect wakefulness differently.
Practical Advice and Caveats
“If you struggle with sleep and suspect that screen time may be a factor, try to reduce screen use in bed, ideally stopping at least 30–60 minutes before sleep,” suggested Hjetland. “If you do use screens, consider disabling notifications to minimize disruptions during the night.”
The scientists cautioned, however, that their study focuses on a single culture. There could be notable differences in the relationship between screen use and sleep globally. Additionally, to compare social media use with other screen activities, some activities which could have different effects on sleep — such as listening to music or gaming — were included in a single category.
“This study cannot determine causality — for example, whether screen use causes insomnia or if students with insomnia use screens more,” noted Hjetland. “The study also did not include physiological assessments, which could provide more precise insights into sleep patterns.”
Reference: “How and when screens are used: Comparing different screen activities and sleep in Norwegian university students” 31 March 2025, Frontiers in Psychiatry. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1548273
