WE SLEEP LESS IN MID-ADULTHOOD than we do in late adulthood, according to a new study from University College London (England). Today we look at sleep changes and age.
Some people love to sleep.
“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
― Homer, The Odyssey
And others, not so much.
-“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
“I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.” ― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
Sleep and age
University College London (UCL) researchers analyzed over 7730,000 subjects in 63 countries. All the study participants played the Sea Hero Quest mobile game, an app designed for Alzheimer’s disease research using spatial navigational abilities.
The participants also answered questions about their sleep patterns. Here are the findings:
People sleep on average seven hours per night, with women sleeping 7.5 minutes longer than men. The youngest participants (minimum age 19) slept the most, with sleep duration decreasing throughout the 20s and early 30s before plateauing until the early 50s, then increasing again.
The pattern was the same for men and men, independent of geography and education level.
This study is the first large one to identify three distinct phases across the life course. Across the globe, people get less sleep in mid-adulthood. However, the average sleep duration varied between regions. Finally, the reported sleep duration was associated with cognitive function in the third phase of adult life.
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