Flouting conventional wisdom that sleep quality deteriorates with age, a new study published in the journal Sleep found that the quality of sleep actually improves with age. A survey of more than 150,000 Americans found that subjective sleep quality improves over a lifetime with the fewest sleep complaints coming from people in their 80s.
"This flies in the face of popular belief," said Michael Grandner, Ph.D., lead author of the study. "These results force us to re-think what we know about sleep in older people — men and women." In fact, the study's original intent was to confirm that sleep problems increased with age. Instead, the results indicated just the opposite.
For the study, 155,877 people were interviewed about their sleeping habits, including sleep disturbances and daytime tiredness, in a random telephone survey. They also answered questions about age, income, education, race, daytime fatigue, depression, general health, and the time of their last medical checkup.
Women reported more sleep problems and daytime fatigue than men, and health problems and depression were associated with poor sleep in both men and women. But in general, except for an increase in sleep problems during middle age, the quality of sleep improved consistently over a lifetime.
"Once you factor out things like illness and depression, older people should be reporting better sleep," said Grandner, Research Associate at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "If they're not, they need to talk to their doctor. They shouldn't just ignore it."