A recent study suggests that healthy older adults need less sleep than younger adults and, of course, far less sleep than babies. I have a theory about why that is and my thoughts are not just as a chiropractor, but as a baby boomer. I think that the “older and wiser” adage applies: As we get older we realize that our time on the planet is limited, so why would be want to waste any of it sleeping beyond what we need, just because some folks continue the ole “eight hours a night!” mantra. Even if the urge is solely subconscious, we seem to want to stay awake and enjoy as much of life as we can…or at least get as much done as we can. Young adults often live in the kind of “magical thinking” that keeps them from saving money, for instance, or living a healthy lifestyle, and they have no problem sleeping ’til noon when they can. They think that they have “all the time” in the world, but we, boomers, know how quickly all that time passes!
The study, published in SLEEP (the official journal of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society), revealed that out of eight hours in bed, the time spent actually sleeping declined progressively and significantly with age. Adults aged 66-83 slept 20 minutes less than 40-55 year-olds who, in turn, slept 23 minutes less than young adults aged 20-30.
Okay, you’re probably thinking that a few minutes a night isn’t really going to give you all that much more time to do things. But, the interesting thing is that even though deep ( slow-wave) sleep, which is thought to be the most restorative phase of sleep, decreased with age as well, and even though older adults slept less deeply and less overall, and their sleep was less continuous than their younger counterparts, they also showed less need for a nap during the day.
Add those extra minutes at night to the time saved “not napping” and it adds up to a whole lot of time to not only daydream, but to live those dreams!