Waking up at the crack of dawn? Blame your body clock…
No longer able to lie in, Gavin Newsham discovers that middle age can trigger a ‘sleep debt’
When I was a teenager, I used to walk past the local post office on my way to school and wonder why there were queues of pensioners waiting for it to open. It baffled me why, given they were all retired, they weren’t enjoying a lie-in. It is, after all, one of life’s luxuries.
But now I know why. Aged 50, it seems like the lazy days of the lie-in are behind me. Even after a late night, I’m still unable to sleep in the following day. Yes, I might steal a nap in the afternoon, but those days when I could just roll over and emerge when everyone else in the house had been up for hours are long gone.
At university, I once went to bed after a Friday night on the tiles and didn’t really wake up until Monday. Throughout my 20s, I would nearly always start my Saturdays and Sundays with the most important meal of the day – lunch. Even when I had young kids to look after in my 30s, I’d still be able to sleep through the bawling and the puking (when it was my turn, obviously).
But no longer. Over the past year, and especially during the lockdown, I seem to be surviving on around five or six hours of sleep each day, sometimes less. Yesterday, for example, I woke at 5.15am and rather than struggle to get back to sleep for an extra hour or two, I just got dressed and took the dog for a walk. I’m not sure she approved.
While Covid-19 has had a marked effect on the nation’s sleeping patterns – a recent study by King’s College and Ipsos MORI found that 63 per cent of people said their sleep had been worse since the crisis began – it’s nothing new for those in middle age and beyond. And there’s a good reason for that. As we age our body clocks drift backwards and we tend to wake roughly 30 minutes earlier for every decade we live which, at the rate I’m going, should mean I’m out of bed by 3am when I get to 80.
It’s all down to your circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle that helps regulate everything from blood pressure to sleep. “The older we get the earlier we wake and go to sleep with waking up times between 5am and 6am becoming the norm for those over 65,” says Dr Kirstie Anderson, consultant neurologist and sleep specialist. “But we also have less deep, slow-wave sleep and also have a higher rate of sleep disorders or other things that disturb our sleep too, like aches and pains or bladder issues.”
Waking early can be caused by a range of factors, from excess levels of stress to anxiety and depression but, for middle-aged people, it’s often the result
‘Menopause is a recognised trigger for insomnia and other sleep disorders’
of the body’s sleep patterns changing with age, something that can be compounded by more serious issues of insomnia and sleep apnoea.
That said, the issue is less about what time you are getting up but whether or not you are feeling sufficiently refreshed. If you’re not, then it’s likely you’re suffering from “sleep debt” and that can have a variety of consequences. “If you’re going to live long and live well, you need to avoid sleep debt,” says Dr Anderson.
Research shows that sleep debt can not only trigger anxiety, alter your mood and reduce your productivity but it might even play a part in developing dementia. Studies on sleep-deprived animals have suggested a link between sleep and dementia and while we can’t say yet that extending sleep decreases the risk of developing dementia in humans, you can take solace from the fact that there’s also growing evidence that exercise, especially aerobic exercise, can help to ward it off as it helps to lengthen and deepen sleep.
But it’s not just middle-aged men like me that rise early. Menopausal and perimenopausal women are also susceptible to early rising, assuming, that is, they’ve slept in the first place. “Menopause is a key moment for a woman in her lifespan where many physical and psychological changes are happening,” says Dr Anderson. “It’s also a recognised trigger for insomnia and other sleep disorders.”
But while some of the symptoms, like night sweats and hot flushes, can be treated effectively with hormone replacement therapy, the problems might require cognitive behavioural therapy to make constructive and effective changes to your behaviour.
If you’re concerned that early rising may be causing longer-term problems, it’s always worth remembering that you require less sleep the older you get and realising what you really need is one of the first steps to addressing any issues.
“If you’re under 50 then 7-8 hours each night is normal but studies have shown that older people, between 50 and 70, it dips to around 6.5 hours.
“Remember, waking early isn’t an issue in itself, but it is if it’s affecting the rest of your day,” says Dr Anderson.
And that’s when I steal a short afternoon nap.