Falling and Asleep

It’s not a typo – I didn’t mean to write “falling asleep”, but I wanted to get your attention to a link between good sleep and the risk of falling in older folk. Australian scientists have published their results of a survey of people aged about 80 who were living in a hostel or who replied to their questionnaire on the Internet. There were 150 subjects in each group.

Most of the participants in both groups reported sleep disturbances. In those living in hostels, falls were associated with poor sleep quality (4½ times more frequent) and with poor sleep quality (2½ times more frequent). In the Internet group, increased falls were reported in connection with poor health rating, the use of spectacles (especially bifocals), and walking aids (cane or walker). The association with sleep disturbances was less than in the hostel dwellers.

Other risk factors for falls that the scientists found included depression, pain, the use of diuretics (‘water pills’ – presumably because the users had to get up at night more often), and impaired mobility.

The latter was measured in the hostel-living subjects using the Timed Get Up and Go Test. This involves getting up out of a chair (seat height roughly 18½ inches), walk 10 feet, turn, walk back to the chair and sit down again. Subjects do one practice run, and then three actual runs, with the times averaged. Less than 10 seconds indicates freely mobile; more than 30” shows impaired mobility.

Well, it’s time to go – start the stop watch!