6 Things People Over 50 Should Know About Optimising Sleep

From everydayhealth.com 

If getting a good night’s sleep seems harder than it used to be, you’re not imagining it. 

Adults over 50 frequently report getting less sleep — and often find themselves waking earlier, sleeping more lightly, or getting up several times throughout the night.

Although these changes become more prevalent with age, experts caution against accepting them as inevitable. Despite the common misconception that older adults require less sleep, most still need seven to nine hours nightly to support overall health and well-being.

“While older adults may find it harder to obtain adequate sleep, the biological need for sleep does not significantly decrease as you age,” says Saema Tahir, MD, a board-certified sleep medicine physician and pulmonologist with a private practice in New York City. “Changes in sleep duration and quality are common with age, but should not be considered simply ‘normal’ or ignored — they carry real health consequences.” Poor sleep has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease, cognitive decline, and mental health conditions like depression.

Fortunately, understanding age-related biological changes — including shifts in metabolism, hormones, and the body’s internal clock — can help you take steps to improve your sleep and support healthy aging. 

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1. Metabolism Changes Can Interfere With Sleep — Support Both With Healthy Daily Habits

As you age, your metabolism naturally changes. Muscle mass tends to decline, fat distribution shifts, and age-related changes in fat tissue can contribute to insulin resistance, which makes it harder for the body to regulate blood sugar efficiently.

Your metabolism is also closely linked with sleep. Poor or insufficient sleep can disrupt blood sugar regulation, appetite hormones, and other metabolic processes — potentially contributing to insulin resistance and weight gain. In turn, metabolic conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes are commonly linked to sleep disorders like obstructive sleep apnoea. Over time, this can create a cycle in which poor sleep contributes to poorer metabolic health, which may further interfere with healthy sleep.

Healthy daily habits can support both sleep and metabolic health. Regular physical activity, for example, supports healthy aging and may also help improve sleep quality and sleep efficiency in older adults.

“What I really emphasize is that no hack, pillow, or supplement will fix sleep,” Dr. Tahir says. “Eating your last meal at least three hours before bed, reducing refined carbohydrates and alcohol, and maintaining physical activity all have evidence supporting improved sleep quality through metabolic pathways.”

2. Melatonin Naturally Declines With Age, but You Can Still Strengthen Your Body’s Sleep Signals

Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate your body’s internal clock by signalling when it’s time to feel sleepy. Its production is closely tied to light exposure, rising in response to darkness to promote sleepiness and falling with morning light to help you wake up.

Beginning around age 40, the body gradually produces less melatonin at night, and the timing of its release may also shift — making it harder to fall and stay asleep.

Rather than relying on melatonin supplements alone, which can interfere with medications and cause daytime drowsiness in older adults, experts recommend strengthening your body’s natural sleep signals through light exposure and daily routines.

“Get bright outdoor light during the day, especially in the morning, and keep your evenings dim and relaxing by reducing bright screens and overhead lights close to bedtime,” says Junxin Li, PhD, RN, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, who researches the impact of aging on sleep. “A regular sleep-wake schedule, consistent meal timing, and limiting alcohol near bedtime can also support the circadian system.”

3. Addressing Hormonal Changes Can Help Relieve Sleep Issues in Menopause and Beyond

Menopause affects more than reproductive health.

For many women, declining oestrogen, which helps regulate body temperature, and progesterone, which has sleep-promoting effects, can contribute to night sweats, night-time awakenings, and difficulty falling asleep. Mood changes and other menopause-related symptoms can further disrupt sleep. And these sleep issues may persist years after your final menstrual period.

“Often what happens is that hormonal changes and other symptoms, like hot flashes, first cause insomnia to develop during menopause,” says Philip Gehrman, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology in psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and a behavioural sleep medicine research expert who has researched sleep disorders in older adults. “But then the insomnia takes on a life of its own, persisting into the postmenopausal period.”

Dr. Gehrman suggests tailoring sleep strategies to symptoms. For night sweats, consider tactics like keeping your bedroom cool, choosing lightweight bedding and sleepwear, and discussing persistent symptoms with your healthcare provider. Treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) involve working short-term with a healthcare professional to work on your bedtime routine and other sleep-related behaviours and can help improve sleep over time.

Hormone therapy (HT) may also promote better sleep for some women during perimenopause or menopause by reducing sleep disruptors like hot flashes and night sweats.

4. If You’re Getting Less Deep Sleep Than You Used to, Focus on Sleep Quality

The structure of your sleep naturally changes with age. Beginning in midlife, adults gradually spend less time in deep, slow-wave sleep — the sleep stage most associated with physical recovery and feeling refreshed — and may wake more often throughout the night.

This shift is thought to stem, in part, from age-related changes in the brain’s sleep-regulating neurons, Tahir explains. Research suggests that aging can weaken the body’s internal clock and its ability to build up the pressure needed to sleep, which contributes to earlier and more fragmented sleep. As a result, even spending enough hours in bed can leave you feeling tired the next day.

Although researchers haven’t identified an evidence-backed way to restore the deep sleep lost with aging, healthy habits can help you get more restorative sleep. Exercise may promote deeper sleep, while limiting alcohol near bedtime and treating sleep disorders can prevent disruptions that fragment sleep.

Many older adults can train their brains for more effective sleep. Gehrman says CBT-I uses behavioural strategies to train the brain to associate the bed with sleep rather than wakefulness and establish a more consistent sleep-wake pattern.

“Cognitive behavioural strategies can help reduce time spent awake — including keeping a regular sleep and wake schedule, winding down before bed, and getting out of bed to do relaxing activities if you’re unable to sleep,” he adds. 

5. Cortisol Level Shifts Can Be Managed With Stress Relief Techniques

Cortisol, a main stress hormone, normally follows a daily cycle — dropping at night to promote sleep and rising in the morning to wake you up. For some, this rhythm may become altered during menopause, prompting higher evening cortisol levels that can contribute to difficulty falling asleep or night-time awakenings.

To support a healthy cortisol rhythm for sleep, Li underscores the importance of sticking to a set bedtime and prioritizing stress management in your daily routine.

“A calming wind-down routine before bed — such as slow breathing, meditation, gentle stretching, reading, or other relaxing activities — can help signal safety and reduce night-time alertness,” Li says. “It’s also helpful to avoid stressful work, intense conversations, news, TV shows, or problem-solving right before bed.”

6. Bladder Changes Can Be Mitigated by Tweaking Your Fluid Intake

Getting up to use the bathroom more than once, known as nocturia, is a common reason adults over 50 wake up during the night.

Age-related changes in the bladder and kidneys can increase night-time urine production, making bathroom trips more frequent.

Shifts in hormones that regulate fluid balance, along with medical conditions that are common with age, like an enlarged prostate and obstructive sleep apnoea, can also contribute to nocturia.

Waking once or twice a night to pee definitely interrupts sleep, but simple lifestyle tweaks and treating underlying medical conditions can provide relief.

“Nocturia is one of the most common causes of sleep fragmentation in this age group,” Tahir says. “Evidence-based strategies include restricting fluids after 6 p.m., reducing caffeine and alcohol intake, treating underlying contributors like prostate or bladder issues, and timing any diuretic medications to the morning rather than evening.”

The Takeaway

• Sleep tends to get lighter and more fragmented with age, but adults older than 50 still need seven to nine hours per night. 
• Several age-related biological changes — including shifts in metabolism, hormones, melatonin production, sleep architecture, and bladder function — make it harder for older people to get restorative sleep.
• Experts advise small daily habits like consistent bedtimes, exposure to daylight, physical activity, smart meal timing, and a comfortable sleep environment, and urge older people to address underlying health conditions with guidance from your healthcare provider to support healthy sleep and aging.

https://www.everydayhealth.com/sleep/tips-to-improve-sleep-over-fifty/ 

8 facts about sleep you probably didn’t know and why shut-eye affects every aspect of life

From scmp.com

From the science behind sleep paralysis to lucid dreams and memory making, experts help us understand little-known but vital aspects of sleep 

Little was known about sleep until modern science revolutionised our understanding. It turns out that what happens while you are unconscious dictates almost every aspect of your waking health, mood and brainpower.

While knowing how to get better sleep and why you need it is vital, the nocturnal world holds some interesting secrets. Here we look at eight things you probably did not know about sleep.

1. Testy times

If young men don’t get enough sleep, they have a level of testosterone that is equivalent to that of someone 10 years older, says British neuroscientist and renowned sleep expert Matthew Walker. That is because a big chunk of testosterone release happens while sleeping. Low testosterone levels affect energy levels and mood – and sperm production.

In women, too little sleep changes the way reproductive hormones are regulated, although the science is more complicated than a simple “less sleep equals less oestrogen” formula. They may experience a breakdown in the delicate monthly timing system that keeps their reproductive health and moods stable. Those who get fewer than six hours of sleep can see up to a 20 per cent reduction in ovulation-inducing hormones.

Lack of sleep disrupts our metabolic systems quickly. Getting only five hours of sleep for four nights in a row can negatively affect blood sugar levels, reducing insulin sensitivity to the extent that one could be classified as pre-diabetic, Walker says.

The immune system is also affected: restricting a healthy person to just four hours of sleep for a single night results in an alarming 70 per cent drop in the activity of natural killer cells – cytotoxic white blood cells that act as the immune system’s first line of defence.

2. Justice for owls

Some sleep scientists feel that modern society discriminates against those whose circadian rhythms – or internal clocks – make them night owls rather than larks who are up at the crack of dawn and go to bed early in the evening.

Since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, work has started early, and those who find it difficult to be in top form in the morning are looked down upon. This is considered unfair, as it is not possible to change your circadian rhythm.

A change in perception could be positive for businesses, Dr Stefan Volk of the University of Sydney Business School told this writer in a 2018 interview. Volk’s paper, “Chronotype Diversity in Teams: Toward a Theory of Team Energetic Asynchrony”, published in the Academy of Management Review, argued it would be productive to introduce a shift system so larks start work early and night owls start later, enabling everyone to work at their peak capacity.

Sadly for night owls, that is not on the horizon.

3. Memory making

Sleep is essential for forming memories; in deep sleep, bursts of activity in the hippocampus, which stores short-term memories, send information to the cortex, which stores long-term memories. Photo: Dreamstime/TNS

An important function of sleep is to consolidate memory; it turns short-term memory into long-term memory and stabilises new memories so that they stick.

In deep sleep, bursts of activity in the hippocampus, which stores short-term memories, send information to the cortex, which stores long-term memories.

The brain also cross-indexes memories and links them together during sleep, and adds new information gained in the day to what we already know by replaying recent experiences.

After a good night’s sleep, your memories will seem clearer and more coherent.

Sleep also consolidates learning by connecting facts into knowledge, notes Dr Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, in the US state of Michigan, in her course “Learning How To Learn” on the online learning platform Coursera.

That is why a good night’s sleep before an exam is better than staying up all night cramming. Simply reading over your notes before going to sleep can be beneficial.

4. Connecting with the past

Dreams play an important part in our mental well-being. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed the cause of a patient’s neurosis – usually a repressed traumatic childhood experience – could be determined by analysing their dreams.

That idea has generally been discredited, but sleep researchers still think dreams play a big role in our state of mind, changing our emotional relationship with our memories in a way that makes us feel better about them when we wake up.

The late sleep researcher and psychologist Rosalind Cartwright – known as the “queen of dreams” – said dreams are an important part of grieving and can take away the pain associated with the memory of a loss.

Through dreaming, we can gradually come to think of a deceased loved one more objectively, without the pain that comes with grief.

The same is true when something shocks us. If we see someone injured, or worse, in an accident or as the victim of a violent crime, dreaming will help us eventually be able to replay the event in our minds without the accompanying horror we felt when it occurred.

5. Dreams as therapy

The brain knows it is good for you to wake up in a calm mood, and uses dreaming to achieve that goal – dreams act as a kind of internal therapy.

“When all goes well, we awake refreshed with a modified strategy for guiding our behaviour,” wrote Cartwright in her 2010 book, The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives.

Dreams help the mind work through the emotional business of the day, away from the stress of waking life.

6. Fright night

During the transition between wakefulness and sleep, some people see ghosts and demons – or think they see them. While falling asleep, some become paralysed and sense an evil or macabre intruder in the room watching them.

Sometimes things get physical, and there are reports of women feeling like they are being sexually assaulted by a strange creature – an “incubus”, as they are called in mythology – while being physically unable to flee.

But as “anomalistic psychologist” Professor Chris French explains in his 2024 book The Science of Weird S***, there is nothing supernatural in play; it is a well-documented scientific phenomenon called sleep paralysis.

This occurs when the mind is awake but the body is sleeping. Dreams occur mainly in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the body is paralysed to stop the sleeper physically acting out those dreams – a state that is called REM atonia.

Due to a biological glitch, the paralysis can occur while the mind is awake.

Psychologist Chris French explains the science of sleep paralysis in his book The Science of Weird S***. Photo: gold.ac.uk

Researchers suggest the demons appear because we have evolved to subconsciously monitor the outside world for threats at all times while we are awake. Our brain is still focused on this task during sleep paralysis, but it becomes confused by the situation and invents the demons.

French says that few doctors are aware of sleep paralysis, and many people suffer unnecessarily because they think they are going mad – or really seeing evil intruders.

7. Living the dream

It is possible to control your dreams and influence their direction. This is called “lucid dreaming”, a term coined by Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in 1913 in the journal Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

The ability comes naturally to some people, although others have to practise by keeping dream journals to train the brain. Essentially, sleepers become aware they are dreaming, and some then consciously take control of the dream.

As with sleep paralysis, it is believed to be made possible by the interplay between REM sleep and wakefulness, although scientists are still figuring out how that works.

Some enjoy lucid dreaming and find it useful in inspiring creativity. It may even have been a factor in The Beatles’ classic song “Yesterday”. Paul McCartney is reported to have composed the melody for it after hearing it in a dream. Upon waking, he immediately played the tune on a piano next to his bed to capture it before it faded.

8. Moving for better sleep

Research suggests that tai chi and yoga can help you sleep and stay asleep for longer.

Tai chi practitioners can extend their nightly sleep by more than 50 minutes and can fall asleep 25 minutes faster than non-practitioners, according to a study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

Yoga can add up to two hours of sleep each night and reduce the number of times you wake up.

In a similar vein, a study from the University of Hong Kong found that tai chi may provide as much relief as talk therapy does for those suffering from insomnia. 

The next time you are tempted to stay up a little later when it is time to turn in, remember that sleep is much more than a passive break from reality. It is an active, dynamic state in which our minds heal, memories lock in and bodies reset.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3359982/8-facts-about-sleep-you-probably-didnt-know-and-why-shut-eye-affects-every-aspect-life