Getting older means you sleep better, not worse, study shows

Older people often complain about sleeping poorly as a sign of aging. Turns out that sleep improves during an adult’s lifetime. A new study in the March edition of SLEEP analyzed 150,000 responses to questions about sleep issues. The adults with the least complaints about sleep disturbances and daytime tiredness were in their 80s. Sleep complaints in general declined over the years, with a slight uptick in middle age.

Researchers said the results challenge conventional beliefs. They said physicians tend to ignore sleep complaints among older adults as a normal part of aging. Granted, there are contributing factors like illness and depression that affect slumber. But those things aside, older folks should be feeling good about their sleep, the study said. If not, they need to talk to their doctor.

Read more blog posts about sleep issues with older adults. Or learn more about sleep and growing older.

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Chemo patients need more sleep, but quality doesn’t change

Women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer seem to require more sleep during treatments, a new study reports. However, the quality of their sleep stays the same during the procedures. Researchers said most women preparing to undergo chemotherapy already may be sleeping poorly.

The authors of the study observed 97 women with newly diagnosed stage I-III breast cancer. Sleep and fatigue were measured seven different times during three weeks of cycle 1 and cycle 4 chemotherapy. The patients slept longer in the night and napped more by day during the cancer treatment. Researchers suggested additional sleep is needed to cope with fatigue and other side effects of chemotherapy.

The women's quality of sleep did not change during chemo treatments. Researchers said it was likely that the women already experienced poor sleep before their diagnosis, and that the cancer could be causing sleep disturbances. The study appeared in the February edition of the journal SLEEP.

Read more about insomnia due to medical condition and about sleep disorders in women. More blogs about sleep issues particular to women also are available.

Image by Aglie

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Loneliness Could Be Disrupting Your Sleep

How lonely you are may affect how well you sleep. A study in the November issue of the journal SLEEP looked at 95 adults living in rural South Dakota. The volunteers were asked about any loneliness, such as feeling left out or isolated from others. These same residents also had their sleep cycles measured. When researchers compared the two, they found that the lonelier a resident felt, the more they woke up during the night.

Why is this important? Data show that loneliness has a negative effect on health. Things like high blood pressure, depression and the risk for dying early have been linked to loneliness. Researchers wanted to see if one of the causes was a poor night’s sleep. Sleep is key in helping the body heal itself and stay healthy. Poor quality sleep has been associated with various negative effects on the body, including declines in physical and mental health.

The study results show that all the participants slept for the same amount of time every night. What differed was the quality of sleep. Those feeling lonely had sleep that was broken-up during the night. The greater their feelings of loneliness, the greater the disruption to their sleep.

The results of the South Dakota study are similar to a 2002 study comparing the loneliness of college students to their quality of sleep. The studies suggest that loneliness can disrupt the sleep of anyone, from college kids at a major university to adults living in a rural community. The challenge is finding a way to feel secure in your individual social group.

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All types of traffic noise likely to disturb sleep, harm morning work performance

Buyers beware: living in a home near the airport, a busy road or train tracks will likely translate to a lot of groggy mornings at the office. An abstract presented Tuesday at SLEEP 2010 in San Antonio exposes the tolls of sleeping in an environment with a lot of nighttime noise.

The study found subjects exposed to recorded traffic noise while sleeping reacted slower during a psychomotor vigilance task the next morning. Reaction times tended to slow when the researchers increased the frequency or volume of the noise.

The sound of passing trains most often caused subjects to wake, followed by auto traffic and airplane noise. Each type of noise caused about the same level of impairment the following morning. Combining the three kinds of noise did not lead to worse symptoms.

The lead author of the study said the risk of being awoken by nighttime noise is highest among those who are susceptible to sleep disturbances, including children, shift workers, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions.

72 study subjects slept in a laboratory as recorded traffic noises from airplanes, cars and trains played for 11 consecutive nights. Sleeping participants heard 40 to 120 sounds in any combination or volume per night. After waking up the subjects completed a psychomotor vigilance task, memory search task and unstable tracking task to measure neurobehavioral performance.

Traffic noises are one of the many causes of the form of insomnia called “environmental sleep disorder.” A common solution is drowning out the traffic sounds with white noise, produced by a fan or sound machine.

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