Older adults who find getting a good night's sleep increasingly difficult might want to consider a technique known as mindfulness meditation, a study suggests.
Mindfulness meditation is a program that aims to help people pay better attention to what they are feeling physically and mentally at any given moment, researchers explain.
For the study, University of Southern California researchers focused on 49 women and men in their 60's who reported experiencing sleep problems but had not been diagnosed with a sleep disorder.
Half were enrolled in a standard sleep education program while the other half were taught mindful awareness practices.
For 2 hours a week the mindful group learned a number of practices including mindful sitting, eating, meditation and movement. They were encouraged to practice what they were taught in their own home environment. Any discussion of sleep or sleep problems was avoided during the study, the researchers said.
"A lot of individuals who are undergoing sleep problems don't want to talk about their sleep anymore. It just further exacerbates their issue," says study author David S. Black. "I wanted to look at a program where you wouldn't have to talk about sleep and it would indirectly remediate some of those problems that go along with sleep, like worrying about it."
After 6 weeks, participants in the mindfulness group showed greater improvements in their sleep compared to those in the sleep education group, the researchers reported.
Greater improvements in symptoms of insomnia, depression and fatigue were also experienced by people in the mindfulness group, they said.
"Mindfulness meditation may be introduced to older adults as a short-term solution to remediate their moderate sleep disturbances," wrote the researchers, noting that mindfulness programs are often accessible within communities and are usually available at a low cost.
Such programs could serve as an easy, inexpensive intervention for people who, like those in the study, don't have more serious diagnosed sleep problems, Black says.
"This trial was intended for the majority of older adults who face sleep problems but do not have a clinical diagnosis of insomnia," he says. "It opens it up to a broader audience."
Sleep disturbances are a medical and public health concern for America's aging population, with estimates that 50 percent of people 55 years and older have some sort of sleep problem.
