As people age, some may fall and end up with life-changing injuries, even if the fall isn’t a severe one. The injuries can result in chronic pain or the inability to manage on their own any more. A broken hip, for example, can result in a swift decline in health during the healing process (Broken hips can mean much more than pain in the elderly). Falls are one of the most common causes of death in this age group. For this reason, fall and accident prevention with seniors is an extremely important issue.

A new study has found that women who are 70 years old or older and who only sleep for 5 hours or less per night have a higher risk of falling than their peers who sleep for 7 to 8 hours per night.

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, broken hips elderly, older women little sleep, chronic pain

As people age, some may fall and end up with life-changing injuries, even if the fall isn’t a severe one. The injuries can result in chronic pain or the inability to manage on their own any more. A broken hip, for example, can result in a swift decline in health during the healing process (Broken hips can mean much more than pain in the elderly). Falls are one of the most common causes of death in this age group. For this reason, fall and accident prevention with seniors is an extremely important issue.

A new study has found that women who are 70 years old or older and who only sleep for 5 hours or less per night have a higher risk of falling than their peers who sleep for 7 to 8 hours per night. The study, published in the September 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 2,978 women age 70 and older, their sleep habits, their use of sleep medications, and history of falls.

According to the press release, Older women who get little sleep may have a higher risk of falling:

Participants averaged 6.8 hours of sleep per night and spent an average 77.2 minutes awake after initial sleep onset. The average number of falls one year after the collection of sleep data was 0.84. “A total of 549 women (18.4 percent) had two or more falls during the year after the sleep assessments,” the authors write.

The risk of having two or more falls during the following year was higher for women who slept five hours or less per night compared with women who slept more than seven to eight hours per night. Compared with those with a sleep efficiency of 70 percent or higher, those with a sleep efficiency of less than 70 percent were 1.36 times more likely to experience a fall. Similarly, women with greater wake time after sleep onset (120 minutes or more) were 1.33 times more likely to fall than those who spent less than 120 minutes awake after sleep onset.

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Tags: chronic pain blog, pain blog, broken hips elderly, older women little sleep, chronic pain