France – According to the National Institute of sleep and alertness, sleep changes with age: its cycles change and dreams are less numerous.

The benefits of sleep for health and morale on a daily basis are likely to all ages. The quality and duration of sleep change during the life: for example, the sleep of a child is different from that of an adult or an older person.

As recalled by the site E-health, one night of sleep breaks up into five approximately ninety minutes cycles, drowsiness, the light sleep, the deep sleep, the major slow sleep and the paradoxical sleep, the time of the dreams. With the age, the last two cycles of sleep change and the requirements in sleep are distributed in a different way over one whole day.

A person over 60 years of age will have more difficulty falling asleep, and sleep will be shorter. Shots of fatigue and napping during the day will be more because the days of falling asleep is easier. An elderly person will also wake up more often and be awake for a long time during the night. Sleep disorders, syndromes such as sleep apnea and restless legs are also more frequent for elderly people contributing to awakenings during night.

All these factors combine together and make the night sleep decreased. The “sleep debt” was recovered in the day during naps. But sometimes the difficulty of falling asleep and awakening at night often may also be related to real insomnia. 25 to 40% of elderly people suffer from it, which may be related to a medical condition.