Sleep: What does age have to do with it?
Short answer, quite a bit.
When I was a kid, I remember watching a TV show depicting daily adventures of a 40 year old dad. He had gray hair and a gray mustache. Perhaps he had a lot on his mind that turned his hair gray but I'm under the impression that our society looks younger and younger nowadays. We feel younger, too.
But we're not younger on the inside. Our organs know exactly how old we are! Adults above the age of 60 have less muscle, less blood flow to the liver and less kidney mass. Why is this important? Because liver and the kidneys metabolize and get rid of the drugs we take!
If you've been drinking coffee your whole life, all day long, and had no trouble falling asleep, it may change as you get older. Suddenly, maximum concentration of caffeine increases from 15 minutes in a 20 year old, to almost two hours in an elderly person, so you keep drinking more because you don't feel the effects right away, as you used to. It also takes much longer for your body to get rid of it and since it's still in your system, you may have significant trouble with getting to bed at night!
So, cut down on coffee, stop drinking it sooner in the day or switch to decaf - you won't believe how much difference this will make!
When I was a kid, I remember watching a TV show depicting daily adventures of a 40 year old dad. He had gray hair and a gray mustache. Perhaps he had a lot on his mind that turned his hair gray but I'm under the impression that our society looks younger and younger nowadays. We feel younger, too.
But we're not younger on the inside. Our organs know exactly how old we are! Adults above the age of 60 have less muscle, less blood flow to the liver and less kidney mass. Why is this important? Because liver and the kidneys metabolize and get rid of the drugs we take!
If you've been drinking coffee your whole life, all day long, and had no trouble falling asleep, it may change as you get older. Suddenly, maximum concentration of caffeine increases from 15 minutes in a 20 year old, to almost two hours in an elderly person, so you keep drinking more because you don't feel the effects right away, as you used to. It also takes much longer for your body to get rid of it and since it's still in your system, you may have significant trouble with getting to bed at night!
So, cut down on coffee, stop drinking it sooner in the day or switch to decaf - you won't believe how much difference this will make!