Cause of Insomnia in Elderly DiscoveredAbout half of people over 50 suffer some kind of sleep problems. You may have trouble falling asleep, wake up throughout the night, or rise too early.

But researchers from the University of Chicago recently tested 727 elderly people and recorded their sleeping pattern.

This revealed a very surprising finding regarding sleeplessness, which holds the key to reap long, restful sleep, every night, without using sleeping pills.

The study was split into two parts. In the first part, the patients were asked to record their sleep experiences in a diary and answer questions related to quality and duration of their sleep.

In the second part, they wore a wrist actigraph for 72 hours, which automatically tracked when they were asleep and awake; therefore calculating total sleep hours as well as patterns of waking up in the middle of the night, time it took to fall asleep, and when they woke up.

The real surprise was how big of a difference there was between the individuals reporting and scientific measurements.

Those who said they rarely or never got enough sleep actually only got 4 minutes less sleep on the average than those who said they most often or always felt fully rested in the morning.

Even stranger, those who said they most often had trouble falling asleep, only had to wait 4 minutes longer (30.53 minutes) than those who said they had no problems falling asleep (26.37 minutes).

How about waking up in the middle of the night? That’s a big problem for many elderly, right?

It was measured true that those complaining about waking up in the night actually did wake up more than those who didn’t report that problem. But they slept longer and ended up getting on the average 19 minutes more sleep total than those who slept through the night.

In the same way, those who report problems with waking up too early, did in fact wake up earlier than those not reporting this problem. But they also tended to go to sleep earlier so they ended up getting just as much sleep.

In fact, no matter what problems people tended to report about their sleeping, on the average they got between 7-8 hours of sleep total, which is considered a full night sleep for people over the age of 25.

So should we just write off what people say about their sleep? Are sleeping problems just all in their heads?

Absolutely not. First of all, the numbers we talk about are average. So there were individuals in the study who actually did suffer mild to severe insomnia.

The measurements used in this study also only tracked when people were awake and asleep. Not the quality of their sleep.

One person may wake up refreshed and energized after 6 hours of deep, quality sleep, while another will sleep lightly for 10 hours and wake up unrested and tired.

The key point is not how much you sleep but rather how well you sleep.

I’ve noticed this throughout the years while working with many people suffering insomnia. I found, however, that almost everyone could easily train themselves to fall into the deepest sleep and then sleep throughout the night without problems.

This is a simple technique that anyone can do and really doesn’t take any time to learn. If you’re need to sleep better, learn this simple deep sleep technique here…