The myth that you sleep worse as you get older is not true according to a study published in the journal "Sleep". (Talk about your niche publications. Is there a sister journal titled "Eat" and another titled "Breathe" all under the "How I Know I'm Alive" mast head?)
The study examined sleep quality in 150,000 Americans. People 80 and older reported the soundest slumber. Oh, really? In my experience at age 64, if it isn't the old enlarged prostate getting me up to urinate every four hours or so, it is the slipped disc causing agony when I flip over the wrong way or the dull throb from my shoulder that doesn't seem to go away. It is definitely lower quality sleep than those 10 to 12 hour slumber marathons that followed all-night study sessions or celebrations in my college days. "A healthy mind in a healthy body" can be extended to "Better sleep when your aged body is not disintegrating".
How can a validated scientific study have reached such a false conclusion? How could Al Gore have lost the 2000 election in Florida with those "hanging chads"? Old people, myself included, do not take well to technology. Surely, the Sleep Study did not invite 150,000 folks to sack out in a single controlled environment. Participants had to log on to their computers each morning and fill in a no-doubt confusing questionnaire on how they slept the night before. Computer literate young folks pointed and clicked on the proper little circles. Like the chads on the Florida ballot, we old-timers missed the mark repeatedly.
The end results were that G.W. Bush became president and old folks became known as champion sleepers. The benefits of technology stop as we age.
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