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Beware – drowsiness can be a killer for the elderly!
[mis à jour le 24 April 2009 à 14h00]
Researchers at INSERM (the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research) have established a direct link between excessive, regular drowsiness during the daytime and an increased risk of death among the elderly living at home.
In a country like France, this affects almost one person in five over the age of 65. These figures are the result of a study conducted on around 9,000 volunteers over a period of 6 years.
They show that elderly people who regularly report episodes of excessive drowsiness during the day have a 33% increased risk of mortality. And this remains true even when other risk factors are taken into account.
As we know, sleeping problems increase noticeably with age, mainly because of a drop in the natural production of melatonin, a hormone involved in sleep regulation.
As a direct consequence, many elderly people reach for sleeping tablets… Yet the undesirable effects of these drugs are serious and widely known and include addiction and dependency, fatigue, cognitive problems, a drop in diurnal vigilance and an increased risk of accidents. Everyone knows that falls are particularly common at this stage of life. And when a fall occurs there is a risk of fracture, including the very serious matter of femoral neck fractures: one in four victims of such fractures die during the year following their accident…
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