Millions of over aged people of this world feel that their life would be beautiful if they could get a little sleep.

The problem of sleep disorder can be easily observed in older people. In the older people changes in the sleeping pattern can be a usual thing, but several other factors in this age contribute to sleep disorders. These factors may include physical factors like illness, medicinal side effects; changes in the activities of social life; sudden death of a family member or any other near and dear. Sleep disorders in older people also deteriorates the quality of their life by causing tiredness, lack of energy, sleepiness in the day time and like more other ways. Sleep disorders can also results in perplexity, poor concentration and bad performance of the task handled. Premature death can be the worst effect of sleep disorder.

The most prevailing sleeping disorder in old aged people is ‘Insomnia’ in which a person feels restlessness and not able to take sufficient sleep. Mostly the following factors create the feeling of insomnia in the old aged people.

• Many older people take more time to get asleep as compared when they were young.
• In fact, the sleep of elderly people is just equals to or somewhat lesser than the sleep of younger people, however they have to give more time on bed than the normal, so as to get that much amount of sleep.
• Sometimes frequent awakening in the night time also becomes the reason for insomnia. Elderly people often get awaked easily by the sounds or noises than the younger people.
• Older people usually take more sleep in the daytime as compared to younger people. So day time napping becomes another cause of their nighttime awakening. But it is to be noted that excessive sleeping during the daytime is not the usual part of normal aging.

There are different stages in the normal sleep those cycles all through the night. Sleep experts categorize these stages as Rapid Eye Movement Sleep and Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep.

• Rapid eye movement sleep in which our muscle get complete relaxation. Dreaming is also a normal part of this stage.
• Non-Rapid eye movement sleep is further subdivided into four stages. Stage one and two are the stages of light sleep, however stage three and four are called the stages of deep sleep. Stage three and four are more revitalizing.

Our sleep pattern changes according to our age. Sleeping pattern of elderly people varies from the sleeping pattern of younger people and they are inefficient sleepers too. There sleeping patterns is differ in the following ways.

• As the age increases the period of rapid eye movement sleep decreases.
• In most of the elderly people, the duration of stage one increases and the duration of stage three and stage four decreases noticeably with the growth in age. Mostly it happens in the cases of men. And when the person crosses the age of ninety, stage three and four totally disappear.

Insomnia is a very common reason in case of elderly people for a medical visit. Almost fifteen percent of these cases are so severe that require medical attention. Elderly women are more prone to insomnia then elderly men. Almost more than fifty percent of the people who are above the age of sixty four have such a kind of sleep disorder.

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