Research paper
Protecting Sleep, Promoting Health in Later Life: A Randomized Clinical Trial
Study answer
What this study found
SLEEP did not improve sleep continuity or depth and reduced total sleep time by about 30 minutes per night over 18 months. Compared with NUTRITION, SLEEP was associated with a decline in physical health-related quality of life and an increase in medical burden (cardiovascular illness); inflammation markers, BMI, and exercise did not explain these changes. Authors conclude that in healthy adults aged ≥75 without sleep complaints, modest time-in-bed restriction may be detrimental; allowing about 7.5 hours of sleep nightly was associated with better maintenance of physical health-related…
- Study & population
- Single-blind, randomized clinical trial conducted at a university-based sleep center; 64 healthy elderly adults aged ≥75 years (mean age 79; 34 men, 30 women) without sleep/wake complaints or psychiatric or sleep disorder; eligible with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale ≤7 and Mini-Mental State Examination ≥24; randomly assigned to SLEEP or NUTRITION for 18…
- Key limitation
- Absence of a noninterventional control group limits causal interpretation of nutrition versus sleep restriction effects; lipid profiles were not measured; CIRS-G data were not collected at 30 months; CPAP use in a subset of participants; results unchanged when excluding those participants; participants were healthy…
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Open PDFOriginal abstract
Objectives: To determine in healthy people aged ≥75 years 1) if restricting time in bed and education in health sleep practices are superior to an attention-only control condition (i.e., education in healthy dietary practices) for maintaining or enha…