According to their internal body clock, most older adults need to go to sleep around 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and wake up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Many people fight their natural inclination to sleep and choose to go to bed several hours later instead.
The Best Time to Sleep Is Between 8 p.m. and Midnight
To align our sleep schedules with our body's natural cycles (our circadian rhythms), adults should go to bed when it's dark out, after 8 p.m. We also get deeper, more restorative sleep when our sleep time begins before midnight.
Sleep and Aging
Older adults need about the same amount of sleep as all adults—7 to 9 hours each night. But, older people tend to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier than they did when they were younger. There are many reasons why older people may not get enough sleep at night.
Older adults require seven to eight hours of sleep per 24-hour period. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers less than seven hours per night to be short sleep. View Source , which means for most people, six hours of sleep is not enough.
While sleep requirements vary slightly from person to person, most healthy adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night to function at their best. Children and teens need even more. And despite the notion that our sleep needs decrease with age, most older people still need at least seven hours of sleep.
If your school or work schedule requires you to be up between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m., these are the suggested bedtimes: School-age children should go to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Teens should try to go to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Adults should try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
“There is no such thing as a “fixed or ideal time” to go to bed which will suit all individuals. It is generally advisable to fall asleep between 10 pm to midnight as for most people this is when the circadian rhythm is at a point that favours falling asleep.”
0-2 years old: should go to sleep between 8:00 and 9:00 pm. 3-5 years old: should go to sleep between 7:00 and 8:00 pm. 6-12 years old: should go to sleep between 7:30 and 8:30 pm. 13-18 years old: should go to sleep around 10:00 pm.
Common causes of insomnia and sleep problems in older adults. Poor sleep habits and sleep environment. These include irregular sleep hours, consumption of alcohol before bedtime, and falling asleep with the TV on. Make sure your room is comfortable, dark and quiet, and your bedtime rituals are conducive to sleep.
While a 30- to 90-minute nap in older adults appears to have brain benefits, anything longer than an hour and a half may create problems with cognition, the ability to think and form memories, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
By the age of 80, cerebral blood flow is approximately 20% less than at age 30, which means that the heart has less capacity for physical exertion and may feel fatigued more easily. As a result, we feel a gradual decline in our energy and endurance levels.
Younger people wake up at 8:17 a.m. while the older population gets up at 7:25 a.m. The 55–59 age class rise the earliest at 7:08 a.m. The biggest sleepers are younger with an average of 7 hours and 26 minutes of sleep per night while 45–59 years old sleep the least (7 hours and two minutes on average).
Interestingly, older adults need about the same amount of sleep as younger adults — seven or more hours of sleep per night.
Stick to a routine: Wake up at the same time every morning and go to sleep at the same time each night, weekends included. Put down the screens: Avoid using technology in the several hours leading up to bedtime if possible. The blue light from electronics can affect melatonin levels and make it more difficult to sleep.
The hormones melatonin and cortisol regulate our sleep cycle. The rising cortisol levels around 3 AM or 4 AM with emotional sorting by the brain are probable causes why you wake up around the same time every day.
Yes, there may be benefits to being awake at 4 a.m. when everyone you know is sleeping. But there are also big drawbacks, and they aren't worth it. Instead, figure out how getting up ultra-early might help you. And then find ways to get those benefits into your day while still getting up at a reasonable hour.
Sleeping lowers your blood pressure, resting early can keep your risk of developing serious heart related medical conditions down. Better quality sleep can reduce your risk of stroke and heart attacks later in life. Keep your heart healthy by getting more rest!
How to work out the ideal bedtime. If you need to wake up by 7am then count back 7.5 hours to find that bedtime is around 11.30pm. Make sure you're in bed before then so you're relaxed ready for sleep and allow yourself 15 minutes to drop off.
Drinking water before bed might help ward off dehydration. View Source while you sleep, and it may also help you attain the drop in core body temperature. View Source that helps induce sleepiness.
“Women's brains are wired differently, so their sleep need will be slightly greater. Women tend to multi-task—they do lots at once and are flexible, and so they use more of their actual brain than men do,” Horne says.
This all depends upon how late, and how regular, a person's sleep patterns are. For example, falling to sleep at 4 am and waking at 12 pm will cause a person to miss out on a large amount of daylight, especially in winter. This can be problematic for various reasons, including our physical and emotional health.