Best type of exercise to combat insomnia in the elderly: Study

About 50% of the elderly people try to fall or stay asleep, and up to 75% of the elderly experience symptoms of insomnia.

In addition to being disappointing, insomnia can increase your risk of heart disease, dementia, anxiety and depression – and can also make you much more likely to fall down, which can be serious for the elderly.

Now, a new study published in Family Medicine and Community Health has found an impossible treatment for this sleep disorder.

Researchers analyzed data from dozens of previous studies, representing a sample size of over 2,000 adults aged 60 and older from around the world.

They explored the impact that five different types of exercises had on their sleep problems: aerobic exercises such as swimming and fast walking, combined exercises such as yoga, balance exercises on staying on one foot, flexibility exercises such as gymnastics and strength drill or resistance drills such as weight lifting weights.

While the combination and aerobic exercises were found to be “effective in improving sleep quality at a clinically important level”, researchers concluded that strength training worked better.

“Strengthening the exercise has the highest efficiency among others,” they said.

The findings match previous research, such as a 2022 study that showed that resistance training had a slight advantage in increasing sleep efficiency in older adults who had problems to sleep compared to aerobics.

Scott Kaiser, Director of Cognitive Geriatric Health at the Pacific Brain Health Center at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute, told medicine today that this new study highlights an important issue in a rapidly aging population.

“For the first time in human history, we have more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18,” he said.

“And when you consider all the profound effects of insomnia and poor sleep quality on the overall health and well -being of the elderly, and associating with increased risks of dementia and other chronic diseases, this is simply critical.”

Kaiser also noted that since “older adults have more important insomnia than young people”, it is important to do more research on how to help prevent old insomnia before it begins to affect society as a whole.

“If we don’t invest in this type of study now, it would be easy to say,” Oh, well, who cares? “Or be disappointing,” he warned.

“But if we do not increase our investment in this type of study now, there will be significant social, health and economic consequences for the following decades.”