Sleep and its disorders in aging populations

Most Surveys confirm that older adults report sleeping about 7h a night. While sleep architecture does change with age, most age-related sleep architecture changes occur in early and mid-years. Nevertheless, the incidence of insomnia is higher in older adults than younger adults, but is most often associated with other age-related conditions, rather than age per se. The consequences of poor sleep in older adults are substantial and include poor health, cognitive impairment and mortality. Sleep difficulties are significantly associated with medical and psychiatric comorbiclities and the presence of multiple medical conditions has been found to be detrimental to sleep quality. Careful health assessment is necessary to screen out sleep complaints and disorders in older populations. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.