In the crib, you had it made. Fuss a little and you got a breast in your mouth. And when you weren't suckling, you were comatose--up to 18 hours a day. Now? You sleep like a man--lousy. By the time you reach 20, that 18 hours is slashed to 6. And as you age, the number shrinks even further.
Here's why: Inside every brain lurks the suprachias-matic nucleus, or "internal clock." It knocks you out and wakes you up. At birth, it's set for maximum crib time, but as you get older, the clock shifts your metabolism and hormones in ways that deprive you of deep, dead-to-the-world sleep. Add that to age-specific wake-up calls--alcohol when you're 20, kids when you're 30, your bladder when you're 50--and your bed becomes bedlam. And that puts you in line for any number of daylight nightmares, including high blood pressure, decreased resistance to invading microbes, a compromised bodily repair and maintenance system, and the tendency to fall asleep while the boss is talking, rather than safely back at your desk. That's why we came up with decade-by-decade strategies for dealing with life's worst sleep saboteurs.
Read 'em and yawn.
Six hours and 54 minutes. That's the amount of shut-eye the National Sleep Foundation says you're getting. It's also 2 hours and 6 minutes shy of the 9 hours--not 8--the experts say your body needs. "We need more sleep from puberty through age 25 than at any other time in our lives, except when we're newborns," says James Maas, Ph.D., a Cornell University sleep researcher.
The Four-Step Fix
Be in bed by 9:30 every night. In no time you'll want to kill yourself, but at least you'll be well rested for the job. The alternative: Take every other night off. If you go out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, then turn in an hour early on Tuesdays and Thursdays. "While this is far from optimal, it will help pay off your sleep debt before it becomes so large that you feel tempted to try to make it all up on the weekend," says Michael Vitiello, Ph.D., a professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.
On bar-hopping nights, order your last drink 3 hours before you call it quits. According to Vitiello, this should give your body time to process the booze before you (a) crash (on the drive home) or (b) crash (in bed). If your blood is clear of alcohol, you'll sleep more soundly. Or, if the damage is already done, make the last call a double virgin screwdriver. Fructose, one of the sugars in OJ, can speed up the metabolism of alcohol by as much as 25 percent.
Each night at around 11, your internal clock shifts you into slumber mode by secreting the hormone melatonin. And that's a good thing, unless you need to fall asleep earlier. MIT researchers have found that taking 0.3 milligrams of a melatonin supplement can help you fall asleep faster (if you can't find the right dosage, pick up easy-to-break scored pills). Swallow one of these sleeping beauties a half hour before you want to nod off into oblivion.
If you follow tips 1 through 3 and still feel like sleeping in on the weekends, don't. Your internal alarm clock will fight you all the way. Instead, force yourself up at your normal waking time and your inner clock will thank you with a deeper, longer sleep the next night. Awake but dragging? Hang on until noon. Japanese researchers found that sleep-deprived subjects who took a 15-minute nap right after eating lunch were less groggy and more alert for the rest of the day than the bleary-eyed control group.
Your 30s and 40s
You're probably getting a little more sleep than last decade, but still not enough. Worse, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), men in their 30s and 40s get 82 percent less deep, "slow-wave" sleep than men in their late teens and early 20s. Slow-wave sleep is the phase in which your body receives the serious R & R it needs to rebuild itself.
The Four-Step Fix
Before you go to bed, pop some vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid). According to Ron Klatz, M.D., president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, this is your antidote to too much cortisol, the stress hormone that surges in middle-aged men. If that doesn't help, ask your doctor about taking some Bayer with your B; aspirin may also help lower cortisol production.
Until you get your cortisol under control, it will limit your deepest sleep, so you'll spend the night teetering on the edge of consciousness. Buy stuff to screen out the distractions: specifically, MSA Safety Works foam earplugs, a SleepMate white-noise generator, and Roc Lon blackout drapes. You'll be less accessible than God.
Kids waking you up? Order a copy of Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Richard Ferber, M.D. It's knocked out generations of wakeful tots. If the problem is an older child, take the TV out of his bedroom. A study at Brown University showed a link between easy access to the tube and increased sleep disturbances.
Go for a brisk six-block walk. According to University of Arizona researchers, that's the amount of exercise that's best at reducing sleep disruptions in men. (A regular workout program came in a close second.) Just do it in the late afternoon, like when you get off work. This will cause your body temperature to drop a few hours later, making you drowsy right before bedtime.
Your 50s and beyond
Here's when it all comes apart. In the previously mentioned JAMA study, the researchers found that after men turn 50, they get 28 minutes less sleep with each decade that passes. "By the time men reach their 50s and 60s, they have almost no deep sleep," says Sonia Ancoli-Israel, Ph.D., director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at the VA Medical Center in San Diego. A man in his 50s has nighttime cortisol levels 12 times higher than when he was in his 30s. Nearly one in 25 also has sleep apnea--a condition that interrupts normal breathing. And then there's the expanding-prostate problem: A swollen gland may prevent you from fully emptying your bladder, which means you'll make approximately 7,422 nightly trips to the toilet.
The Four-Step Fix
Grab some vitamin B5 (see "Your 30s and 40s," above) and wash it down with Gatorade about half an hour before bedtime. British researchers have found that athletes who down a high-carbohydrate drink have a lower exercise-induced cortisol spike than those who don't.
Get checked for sleep apnea. If it's just plain old snoring, ask your doctor about injection snoreplasty. During this 15-minute procedure, a doctor will stiffen your soft palate--the fleshy area above your uvula that causes snoring--with an injection of sodium tetradecyl sulfate. Cost: $35, which is cheap compared with a divorce settlement. Results last about a year.
Check your medications. A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that beta-blockers, a common treatment for high blood pres-sure, decreased melatonin production by 80 to 90 percent. Carvedilol is the only beta-blocker that didn't affect melatonin levels. Another culprit may be Prozac and similar drugs, which can lead to as much as a 30 percent increase in awakenings. Contemplate a switch to Paxil; it may actually help you fall asleep faster.
If you're peeing three or more times a night, consult a urologist. Odds are that your prostate is enlarged, a common problem for older men. Before you try drugs or surgery, consider taking saw palmetto. In a JAMA review of 18 studies, saw palmetto reduced incidences of nocturia--the nighttime urge to urinate--by 25 percent. Look for ProstActive by Nature's Way; it's the most clinically studied brand of saw palmetto available.