How Aging Affects Your Heart and sleeping

As you age, your chance of heart attack goes up. The average age men have their first heart attack is 65. For women, that age is 72, but menopause — which women tend to go through around age 50 — lowers the amount of estrogen in your body. Estrogen helps keep arteries flexible, so your heart attack risk goes up once estrogen starts to drop.

Nearly half of men and women over the age of 65 say they have at least one sleep problem. With age, many people get insomnia or have other sleep disorders.

Read Pritish Kumar Halder article about how aging affects your heart and sleeping.

It’s true that as we get older, our sleep patterns change. In general, older people sleep less, wake up and go back to sleep more often, and spend less time in deep sleep or dreaming than younger people.

Weight Goes Up

By the time you reach 50, your metabolism — the process your body uses to break down food for energy — slows down by 30%. A slower metabolism can make it hard to maintain a healthy weight. This boosts your risk of insulin resistance, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity — all of which raise your odds of heart disease.

Hardens Your Heart

As your arteries age, they get stiffer. Your heart muscle stiffens, too. This makes it tougher to pump blood well, especially as you exercise.

Blood Pressure Rises

Even if you haven’t dealt with high blood pressure by your mid-to-late 50s, your risk of getting it is still 90%. High blood pressure hardens and damages the smooth inner lining of your artery walls. It stiffens blood vessels and increases the chance you’ll have a blockage.

Heart Rhythm Changes

An irregular heartbeat — also called atrial fibrillation — is the leading cause of stroke in older adults. It can cause a blood clot to form in your heart. If that clot breaks away and goes to your brain, you could have a stroke.

Poor Sleep Does Damage

As the part of your brain that controls your sleep cycle ages, you might notice a difference in when you feel tired — and when you don’t. Aging often leads to trouble sleeping, too. Poor sleep can increase the stiffness of your arteries and harden cholesterol plaque, raising your risk of heart disease.

Broken Heart

Broken heart syndrome is temporary chest pain or shortness of breath that usually affects women after a high-stress event like the death of a loved one, a divorce, or a traumatic health diagnosis or injury. It can feel a lot like a heart attack. Most people who get it are over 50.

Higher Risk of Diabetes for Women

As estrogen plummets after menopause, your body doesn’t use insulin as well as it did before. This raises your chances of getting diabetes. Over time, high blood sugar can damage blood vessels and nerves that control your heart.

Blood Vessels Narrow

Aging is one of the risk factors for atherosclerosis, or the hardening and narrowing of arteries. It happens when cholesterol, fats, and other fatty substances known as plaque build up on the inner walls of your arteries. This restricts the blood flow to your heart.

More Sensitive to Salt

As you get older, your body doesn’t deal as well with salt intake. Too much salt can raise your blood pressure and lead to swelling.

What Causes Sleep Problems With Age?

Some common reasons include:

Poor sleep habits: If you don’t keep a steady schedule for going to bed and waking up, it can affect your body’s internal clock and make it even harder to get good sleep. Also, at any age, it’s a minus if you drink alcohol before bedtime, nap too much, or stay in bed when you’re not sleeping.

Medications: Some drugs make it harder to fall or stay asleep, or even stimulate you to stay awake. If you think that might be true for you, ask your doctor to check.

Worry, stress, or grief. Aging brings many life changes. Some are positive. Others are really hard. When you lose someone you love, move from your family home, or have a condition that changes your life, that can cause stress, which can hamper your sleep.

If changes like these affect you or an aging loved one, talk with your doctor or a counselor. It could help ease your mind so you can sleep better.

Sleep disorders: Besides insomnia, these include apnea, restless legs syndrome, periodic limb movement disorder, and REM behavior disorder. Your doctor can see if you have one of these conditions.

Too much downtime. Many people stay active well into their golden years. But if your days are too idle, you may find it harder to get good sleep.

Do You Get Enough Sleep?

Everyone is different. If you sleep less than when you were younger but still feel rested and energetic during the day, it might be that you now need less sleep.

But if you have noticed that your lack of sleep affects you during the day, tell your doctor. There are steps you can take to get better rest. Many are simple tweaks to your daily routine, like setting a regular bedtime, being more active, and taking steps to ease your mind before you hit the hay.

Reference

https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/guide/sleep-aging

https://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/ss/slideshow-how-aging-affects-your-heart