Sleep genuinely changes with age. It fragments, it lightens, and the drive to sleep consolidates into fewer hours than it did at forty. Waking twice in the night at 68 is normal. Treating it as a disorder is what turns it into one.

What helps, in order of how much it helps

  • A fixed wake time seven days a week, including weekends — this does more than any bedtime rule
  • Morning daylight, outdoors if possible, within an hour of waking
  • No caffeine after early afternoon; its effect lasts far longer in an older body
  • Alcohol makes falling asleep easier and the second half of the night much worse
  • Daytime naps of twenty minutes, never after three in the afternoon

If you are awake at 4am, the useful rule is to stop trying. Twenty minutes in bed awake teaches the brain that bed is where you lie frustrated. Get up, sit somewhere dim and dull, and return when you are sleepy again. It is uncomfortable for a week and it works.

The goal is not eight uninterrupted hours. It is a routine that makes the hours you do sleep reliable.

Questions readers ask

Should I take something to sleep?
Ask a doctor rather than a pharmacy counter, particularly if you are on other medication. Many sleep aids sold over the counter are antihistamines, which leave older people groggy the next morning and increase the risk of a fall. That morning-after effect is the real problem, and it is why the habit changes above come first.
I go to the toilet two or three times a night. Is that just age?
It is common and it is not always harmless. Reducing fluids in the two hours before bed helps, and cutting evening caffeine and alcohol helps more. But waking repeatedly to urinate can also point to a prostate problem, poorly controlled diabetes or a urinary infection, so mention it at the next appointment rather than assuming it is nothing.

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