Healthy sleep cuts frailty risk in older adults

Having good sleep health across multiple dimensions appears to reduce the risk of frailty among older adults, reports a recent Taiwan study.

Drawing from the 2011 Taiwan Longitudinal Study on Aging, researchers assessed 2,105 older adults in whom frailty was evaluated using the Fried criteria, focusing on weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, slowness, and low physical activity. Self-reported parameters were used to measure sleep health according to the SATED model: sleep satisfaction, daytime alertness, sleep timing, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency.  

A total of 180 participants were deemed frail. Logistic regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex, and education, found that better multidimensional sleep health cut the likelihood of frailty by more than 40 percent (odds ratio [OR], 0.57, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.49–0.68).

This effect was weakened but remained significant even after controlling for comorbidities, cognitive function, pain, depressive symptoms, and lifestyle factors (OR, 0.78, 95 percent CI, 0.64–0.94). The benefits of healthy sleep were also significant for women (OR, 0.59, 95 percent CI, 0.48–0.72) and men (OR, 0.54, 95 percent CI, 0.39–0.75).

In particular, the domains of sleep satisfaction (OR, 0.34, 95 percent CI, 0.24–0.48), daytime alertness (OR, 0.21, 95 percent CI, 0.14–0.31), and sleep duration (OR, 0.50, 95 percent CI, 0.34–0.74) drove the overall beneficial impact of sleep health on frailty.

“Our findings show that better sleep health is related to lower odds of frailty independent of sociodemographic factors, health status, and health risk behaviours,” the researchers said. “Improving sleep health among older adults may help delay and prevent frailty.”