Senior insomnia is a common problem, because the older we get, the more we have trouble sleeping. Half of people over fifty complain about them, of which 15-20 percent. suffers from chronic insomnia, meaning insomnia lasting more than a month. What are the causes of senior insomnia and how to deal with it?

Senior insomnia- where does it come from? Sleep demand after the age of 60 may be the same as in middle age, provided that the level of daily activity, especially physical activity, is not reduced. Unfortunately, most often it is significantly lowered and therefore the body no longer needs 7-8 hours of sleep to regenerate, but only 6 or even less. The cause of insomnia among seniors may also be a change in the rhythm of the day. The body, accustomed to certain times of waking up and going to bed, can react to such a change with sleep disturbances.

Contents:

  1. Senior insomnia: reasons
  2. Senior insomnia: ways to help you fall asleep

Senior insomnia: reasons

One of the causes of insomnia in old age is chronic diseases. Joint and spine pains do not let you sleep well. It awakens a burning sensation behind the breastbone accompanying heartburn (lying down increases its symptoms) and pressure on the bladder.

Painful calf cramps, shortness of breath associated with respiratory system diseases and heart diseases can break dreams.

Resting leg syndrome (involuntary movements) and other ailments also make it difficult to rest at night. However, it is not only various medical conditions that make sleep quality unsatisfactory.

  • Insomnia is often the first symptom of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and addiction (e.g. to alcohol).
  • It can also signal the development of somatic diseases.
  • It is a symptom of inflammatory diseases, especially rheumatoid, autoimmune and endocrine diseases.

What to do to sleep better?

Nightmares

Reader question: I am 66 years old, I have been sleeping badly for several months. There are nights when I scream. I even hit my husband who is sleeping next to me. I dream of a dark forest, I am calling for help, the dog attacks me, the thief is sneaking into the house. What is the reason for this?

Replyexpert dr. Marcin Florkowski from the University of Zielona Góra:

The behaviors you write about indicate sleepwalking (somnambulism). It is not a disorder, but rather a condition that does not have any particular psychological significance. It can be a symptom of, for example, stress or magnesium deficiency.

On the other hand, the "films" that your brain produces are disturbing - they contain a fairly high level of threat. This may mean that you perceive the world in a specific way - in terms of danger. Thinking about the world in this way and interpreting various events as potentially dangerous can become a problem (but not necessarily).

To sum up: if your problem is only that you are screaming in your sleep, saying something and hitting your husband, who was trying to wake you up then, please do not worry about it. It is best to give your husband instructions so that he does not wake you. However, if you begin to perceive a threat around you, if various events cause you fear, anger - it would be worth considering and taking a closer look at why this is happening. I advise you to talk to a psychologist about this.

Senior insomnia: ways to help you fall asleep

The problem of seniors is poor sleep hygiene. To improve sleep quality, avoid eating heavy foods in the evening, drinking coffee and strong tea, increasing physical activity during the day, e.g. going for walks, and avoiding watching programs that evoke bad emotions in the evening.

It is important to ventilate your bedroom, keep windows closed and lie down when you feel sleepy. Shortening the sleep time in an elderly person is not a disease. Therefore, without consulting your doctor, you should not take sleeping pills, because this leads to addiction, i.e. reaching for ever larger doses of the drug. Elderly people can be given melatonin if they have trouble falling asleep.

If insomnia is short-term, related to some life situation, stress, it is worth reaching for sleeping pills or sleep promoting drugs. The former are primarily used to break the vicious cycle of insomnia, when the bed is associated with the agony of falling asleep.

Drugs of the latest generation allow you to quickly leave the dreamland and do not adversely affect your activity during the day. However, they should not be taken for a long time (you can get addicted to them).

Therefore, in the case of chronic insomnia, drugs that act indirectly on sleep are used. These are primarily herbal preparations with a calming and relaxing effect, as well as appropriately selected antidepressants. These types of measures can be used for a long time because they are not addictive. However, therapy for chronic insomnia does notit relies only on drugs. They only support her.

It is extremely important to follow the rules of sleep hygiene, limit its duration, or use an stimulus control technique designed to establish a consistent rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. In the case of chronic insomnia, it is worth visiting one of the sleep disorders treatment clinics.

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You must do it
  • Do not change your daily routine after retirement, especially when you get out of bed.Also, do not extend your sleep time. If you used to take 6-7 hours to get a good rest, stick to that. But when you were drowsy the next day, feeling tired, it was a rule to sleep longer on weekends, you can extend your sleep by half an hour.
  • Increase physical activity.Walk or walk vigorously for at least half an hour every day, because exercise improves sleep quality.
  • At night, spend as many hours as you can sleep in bed at night.If it's only 5 hours, go to bed for as many hours. Rolling from side to side for 2-3 hours, getting frustrated that you can't squint, only exacerbates insomnia.
  • Don't go to bed too early.If you do this at 9 p.m. and only sleep 6 hours, you wake up in the middle of the night. Set the time you intend to wake up and use this to calculate the time to go for a night out.
  • Try to get out of bed always at the same time , because this regularity of waking up greatly strengthens sleep.
  • If you find that your circadian cycle is out of balance and you find it difficult to sleep at night for a long time, but waking up during the day is not easy, choose one of the two options: get a short sleep at night (for 4-5 hours) andtake a half-hour nap during the day or sleep for 6 hours at night and avoid naps.
This will be useful to you

Sleep phases

Sleep consists of cycles of about 90 minutes each. Each of them has two types of sleep: Non-REM and REM. The first one, during which the activity of the brain decreases, is divided into 3 stages.

The first one resembles a nap, the second is a fairly light sleep (it accounts for 50% of the night rest), and the third is a deep sleep, the best regenerating the body. We don't have much time, young people 90-120 minutes during the night, and older people - several dozen minutes.

Third stageoccurs in the first hours of sleep. During REM sleep, the brain increases its activity. It organizes information, activates the connections between neurons that we do not use during the day so that they do not disappear. The result of these brain activities is dreams. The closer to morning, the more stage two and REM sleep there are.

In the first half of the night, the body mainly cares about biological rest, while in the second half of the night it focuses on the intellect and memory.

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Category:

Psychology