Do you get better at dealing with sleep deprivation with age?

[surftheiop]

I thought this might be a good place to ask this seeing as sleep falls into psychiatry to some extent and also all of you have been or are medical residents.

I was curious if you get better at handling less sleep as you age? (to a point, obviously elderly people sleep alot).

Im 20 years old and in engineering school and I know my problem solving skills / reasoning vastly decrease if I go three or four days in a row getting less than 7 hours of sleep.

When im doing a problem set on little sleep or at 3am or whatever, I feel like i have no intellectual creativity and "plugging and chugging" into formulas is about all I can hope to accomplish.

It has always been a worry of mine that If i decide to become a physician that I would make uncharectoristic mistakes during internship/residency due to lack of sleep.

Ive heard that 17-21 is one of the periods when people need alot of sleep and in the mid 20's you can get by on much less, but I was curious what you all thought.

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[michaelrack]

I thought this might be a good place to ask this seeing as sleep falls into psychiatry to some extent and also all of you have been or are medical residents.

You could've also asked in the sleep medicine forum.

Sleep deprivation is never good. A person's ability to tolerate sleep deprivation starts to decline in their late 20's.

 

[surftheiop]

You could've also asked in the sleep medicine forum.

Sleep deprivation is never good. A person's ability to tolerate sleep deprivation starts to decline in their late 20's.

This is what I usually have heard and seems to be the conventional wisdom (college kids can get by with no sleep),

but there is a professor here who is supposedly some sort of world-renown "sleep expert" and he showed a bunch of data in a presentation to show that college age students are worse than almost any other age-group at dealing with less than 6.5 hours of sleep per night. I can't find the study at the moment but ill look more for it when im not so busy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Maas

 

[notdeadyet]

I was curious if you get better at handling less sleep as you age? (to a point, obviously elderly people sleep alot).

If I'm not mistaken, the amount of sleep people get traditionally declines with age. The elderly sleep less than the young.

Im 20 years old and in engineering school and I know my problem solving skills / reasoning vastly decrease if I go three or four days in a row getting less than 7 hours of sleep.

I'm in my 30's, and from talking to classmates in med school, the folks in their early 20's are able to get by on less sleep than those of us in our 30's. Odds are pretty good you'll be able to tolerate sleep deprivation less as you get older. At least into your 30's. I don't know what the 40's hold yet.

It has always been a worry of mine that If i decide to become a physician that I would make uncharectoristic mistakes during internship/residency due to lack of sleep.

That's a healthy worry. I read once that someone operating on 24 hours without sleep demonstrates the impairment of someone at a blood alcohol level of 0.1, which qualifies for drunk driving in all states.

 

[Faebinder]

The amount of sleep you get as you age is decreased but the amount of good sleep you need may not necessarily decrease.

 

[masterofmonkeys]

Sleep is complex. And Dr. Maas' son is a rat-fink, who called the cops on a DKE party back in the day (big gray castle with a tower behind the law school). We stuffed 1300 people in there that night. And we paid for it. Bah!

From what I remember of Dr. Maas' class (and other sources), although younger individuals may be more likely to put themselves through sleep deprivation, they don't tolerate it (somatically or psychologically) particularly well. You may have more energy when you're younger, but you also suffer heavier consequences.

Age-related decline in need for sleep is most likely polyfactorial. Less time spent in early stages (I-III) with relative preservation of 'deeper' and more 'critical' sleep stages (IV and REM). In addition, BMR, growth, and cellular activity across all tissues decrease, and energy expenditure in activity decreases, meaning less need for the restorative functions of sleep. A correlate of this is that the more active you are, the greater your need for sleep. As we say in athletics, there is no such thing as over-training, only under-recovering.

Oh and since I'm feeling nostalgic, Nas (the rapper) performed at Bailey (where Maas at least used to lecture). He literally brought the roof down (pieces of it anyway).

And, considering Dr. Maas is an expert in sleep and a psychologist, I found it somewhat odd that he chose to schedule a midterm on the monday immediately following spring break. Yeah, like that didn't predispose us to cramming the night before.

 

[surftheiop]

From what I remember of Dr. Maas' class (and other sources), although younger individuals may be more likely to put themselves through sleep deprivation, they don't tolerate it (somatically or psychologically) particularly well.

I actully havent taken his class, I just saw him give some presentation awhile back. I skipped straight to 300 level psych class, but will try to go back and take 101 if it ever fits my schedule.

And 1300 people in DKE? I walk past it everyday and I know its big castle, but I didnt think it was that big!

 

[masterofmonkeys]

Yeah we didn't think it was that big either lol.

I did mostly 200 and 300 level psych courses too. Took psych 101 at the local uni while i was still in high school. Went back to Maas' class anyway since it had such a huge reputation. It's an easy A if you've already got the psych background and he is a darned good teacher.

 

[michaelrack]

I guess I was sort of wrong; psychomotor impairment with acute sleep deprivation is the same or slightly less with older adults compared to younger adults.

However, from a health standpoint, the ability to tolerate the chronic sleep deprivation from conditions such as shift work does get worse as we age. I have had several patients who were able to handle rotating shifts well when they were younger, but had a lot of difficulty when they got into their 40's or 50's.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I did some sleep research back in undergrad, but I am far from an expect (check out the Sleep Medicine area for that)

I was curious if you get better at handling less sleep as you age? (to a point, obviously elderly people sleep alot).

What is "ideal" for your body, and what a person gets/tolerates are often two very different things. While a college student may "get by" on less sleep....they actually need a great deal more (of IV & REM) than they probably get. Throw in environmental factors, stress, substance use/abuse, etc...and you get a recipe for inefficient sleep.

As a person ages, inefficient sleep does not go away, but it becomes more problematic because now you mix in medical problems, physical discomfort, etc. A person can learn to get by, but in an "ideal" world they would get more than the 4-6 hours of "sleep" they are probably getting.

While it is not ethical (and against SDN policy) for anyone on here to provide professional recommendations, your local sleep specialist could probably work with you to gain better sleep.

 

[surftheiop]

I did some sleep research back in undergrad, but I am far from an expect (check out the Sleep Medicine area for that)



What is "ideal" for your body, and what a person gets/tolerates are often two very different things. While a college student may "get by" on less sleep....they actually need a great deal more (of IV & REM) than they probably get. Throw in environmental factors, stress, substance use/abuse, etc...and you get a recipe for inefficient sleep.

As a person ages, inefficient sleep does not go away, but it becomes more problematic because now you mix in medical problems, physical discomfort, etc. A person can learn to get by, but in an "ideal" world they would get more than the 4-6 hours of "sleep" they are probably getting.

While it is not ethical (and against SDN policy) for anyone on here to provide professional recommendations, your local sleep specialist could probably work with you to gain better sleep.

Im sleep fine when im not being kept up by roomate or w/e , i was mostly asking this out of intellectual interest and curiousity