I have often heard people say “the older you get the less sleep you will have,” or “with age comes lack of sleep!”
Well, I guess I have reached that plateau, because I cannot remember the last time I actually had a good night sleep, or even managed to sleep through the whole night!
But then anyone who knows me knows that I am quite a light sleeper and one who does most of her thinking when everyone else is asleep!
But is it true that as the number of candles on your birthday cake grows, you notice that you wake up throughout the night, get fewer hours of shut eye and you fall asleep during the day?
The reasoning behind this phenomenon is poorly understood. Do older adults sleep less because they need less sleep, or because they simply can’t get the sleep they need?
In a review in the journal Neuron, a group of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley argue the latter – that because of certain brain mechanisms that change as we age, we are unable to get a necessary amount of sleep.
Every animal on Earth needs some kind of sleep, says lead study author Matthew Walker, head of the sleep and neuroimaging laboratory at Berkeley.
This means sleep likely evolved right alongside life itself.
While you are sleeping, you are rendered useless: You are unconscious, you are not foraging or socialising and you’re vulnerable to predation.
“Sleep is vital to life itself. In humans, every major organ and regulatory system needs sleep in order to function properly,” says Walker.
However, what is interesting and quite comforting to hear is that sleep deprivation does not only occur once we reach ‘senior years!’
Sleep decline often begins in the late 20s and early 30s and continues on a steady downhill track as time goes on. In fact, by the time a person hits 50, they will only have about 50 per cent of the deep sleep that they were getting in their early 20s.
By 70, individuals have little, if any, high-quality deep sleep. Instead of going through the proper sleep cycles that ensure a well-rested night’s sleep, they wake up throughout the night, constantly inhibiting the deep sleep that’s essential to proper brain function.
“It’s probably one of the most dramatic physiological changes that happen with aging,” says Walker.
The study also suggests that while we used to think that sleep deprivation was a consequence of aging, scientists now think that insufficient sleep is perhaps actually a contributing factor to aging itself!
Oh boy, I really should get some beauty sleep!