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Regular Exercise Can Be a Natural Sleep Aid for Seniors
from: Pat MoauroFor a number of reasons, exercise is considered the most positive sleep aid for seniors. The exercise is particularly effective if performed at the right time of day. Most significantly, exercise is an aid that's completely natural.
Before exploring sleep as a natural sleep aid, let's examine the definition of insomnia and why people suffer from this affliction. Basically, insomnia involves: Difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep; experiencing sleep that seems inadequate or fails to produce the refreshing feeling that sleep normally provides, despite the length of time spent sleeping.
Insomnia isn't considered a disease. Instead, it's a symptom that's thought to have numerous, different causes. Although insomnia isn't a disease, physicians note that the following can lead to patterns of insomnia: physical disorders, drinking large amounts of alcohol in the evening, emotional problems, and stress.
Most often, emotional issues caused by stress are at the heart of sleepless nights. Anxiety, nervousness, depression, or fear will cause restlessness at night, preventing people from falling sleep, and often causing them to awaken early. Research has also shown that sometimes the failure to sleep soundly is simply due to a lack of fatigue.
It's important to note that difficulty falling asleep is common among all age groups, from the young to the elderly. Data indicates that about 10% of adults have chronic or regular bouts of insomnia, while about 50% experience insomnia when in fact they're not.
Seniors often think they're suffering from severe insomnia when they're not. As we age, we in fact tend to sleep less at night, and begin to catch a catnap during the day. Perhaps most significantly, the period of deep sleep known as REM sleep generally becomes shorter as we age and eventually disappears. Because of this, seniors awaken far more during night time sleep. This is normal and doesn't indicate a sleep disorder.
Unfortunately, many seniors search out a drug related treatment to insomnia. The intermittent use of drugs as a sleep aid can be helpful, provided they're used as described, intermittently. Most of these drugs suggest that their impact is for up to a week at most. Since any drug has specific side effects, taking a drug to induce sleep may lead to some other less than desirable issue for the patient. Most sleep aid drugs require a prescription, adding a doctor's appointment and the cost of the prescription to an often already tight budget.
Because exercise affects the body in so many positive ways, it's clearly the most natural option for helping to address sleep related issues. Regular exercise will help to tire the body physically, ensuring a natural form of fatigue that the body will deal with by getting appropriate rest. The only negative research on physical exercise is that exercising late in the evening can often stimulate the heart and brain too much just before people are getting ready for bed. Such exercise has been known to keep people awake.
Perhaps the greatest impact from physical exercise on the body's sleep patterns is the effect that working out can have on a person's emotional state. Because stress and worry are often the key impediments to sleep, efforts to reduce such stress are critical in eliminating the symptoms that are at the root cause of insomnia.
Activity is shown to improve a person's self-confidence and sense of well being. In turn, this helps improve a person's overall mood and attitude about life. The natural endorphins that are produced when we exercise help us to feel better emotionally and actually reduce feelings of sadness and depression. Therefore people who exercise regularly sleep better. Their positive emotional state helps them fall asleep more quickly, while their body fatigue level allows them to sleep more deeply and awake less often during the night.
Yet one other way that people who work out regularly bring to the reduction of insomnia is the notion of
Scheduling regular exercises can also help to reduce insomnia. People who are serious about exercise will ensure that time is available in their daily routine for this important task. These people also realize the importance of developing a sleep routine that includes regular bed time hours as well as regular morning routines. By following a regular sleep schedule and getting up at the same time each morning, even on a weekend your body will respond by developing regular sleep habits. Because total nighttime sleeping time tends to decrease with age, older people may sleep better if they go to bed later, get up earlier, or nap less during the day.
Older people experiencing age-related sleep issues are likely to find more long-lasting relief through regular exercise than by using drug-related sleep aids.
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