I have a Facebook account where I see some senior friends posting about their problem of sleeping. There are 2 who seem to have insomnia, they both say that after sleeping for 2 to 3 hours at night, they wake up and couldn't sleep anymore. I remember my mother when she was still well and living with us, I would waken to noises coming from the adjoining room to our bedroom. It was my mother, rummaging on her things at 2 am. I'm 53 and still quite active, I guess. Or maybe my work in the office gets me so tired that I conk out at 10 pm for my waking up hour before 5 am. So I get more than 6 hours of sleep which is sufficient. My husband is 61 and he's just like me, going to sleep at the appointed time of 10 pm but he wakes up later than I do. Do you have issues with your sleeping hours?
I usually do not have any trouble sleeping at night, and get around 8 hours sleep at night on a regular basis. Possibly one of the reasons that seniors do not sleep as well as they did when they were younger, is just exactly the reason that you mentioned, @Corie Henson . They are retired, and they do not have the long hours of working that we had when we were younger and still worked each day. Although some seniors are still very active , even though they do not have a regular job, other retired people spend a lot of time just sitting around, watching television, and also napping during the day. If we don't work or use up any of our physical energy, then it is harder to be tired at nigh and fall asleep easily. If we don't exercise, we lose that energy level, and that causes people to be even more inactive; so it is kind of a cycle that keeps people awake at night. We go to the fitness center every other day and exercise for almost 2 hours. This is not the same as doing physical work all day long; but since I am 71 and not able to do physical work all day long anymore, even those few hours of working out and swimming help me to use up my physical strength, and my body then uses my sleeping time to recuperate. I also take natural sleeping aids as well. Every night, I take melatonin, which is a natural hormone that our body makes when it gets dark, and helps us to go to sleep. Since we now have artificial lights on after dark, people do not make melatonin like we would under normal daylight/dark conditions. I take a cal/mag/zinc tablet that helps with the minerals of calcium, magnesium, and zinc, all of which relax us at night and promote good sleping.
If I don't get 8 hours I'm miserable the next day. I feel like I have a hangover. Sleep is crucial to me to the point when I know for some reason I won't get my sleep I panic. I go to bed early and get up early. I always get up early no matter how late I go to bed so if I'm tossing and turning then I'm already counting how many hours of sleep I'll get if I fall asleep now. An hour later, I do the same but now I'm more anxious because another hour of sleep will be lost. I don't think I've ever slept past 6:00am...usually get up at 4:00am.
Right now, as I type, I fell asleep around 9:30pm and woke at 11:58pm. And, made coffee and here I am now, at 1:15am. That's only 2 1/2 hours sleep, so far. Most likely i'll go back to sleep around 3am, for an hour or two.
I don't have any problems sleeping - unless I go to bed too late and get overtired. I go to bed about 11pm, read for a short while, asleep by 11.30pm and wake at about 8am. Sometimes i go back to sleep ....