Insomnia therapy linked to 2% slower aging per year in adults over 60 |
Nearly 100 adults over age 60 with chronic insomnia took part in a trial at UCLA Health. Half received 8 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), which works on the habits and thought patterns that keep people awake. The rest were given sleep education, including sensible advice about routines and sleep hygiene.
People in the CBT-I group were nearly three times as likely to see their insomnia go into remission.
The team collected blood samples over the next two years and ran them through three epigenetic clocks, which estimate aging from chemical tags on DNA. The clearest signal came from DunedinPACE, which measures how fast the body is aging at a given moment. On that measure, the CBT-I group was aging about 2% more slowly per year.
Lead author Judith Carroll likens the different clocks to “looking at the speedometer — how fast you are driving — vs. looking at the odometer, how far you have driven.”
Last week, we reported on a study of nearly 100,000 adults that linked more dream sleep to a lower risk of 83 diseases. It couldn't say whether good sleep was protecting people, or whether healthier people simply slept better. This new trial gets closer to an answer by first improving sleep and then observing how the body responds. Stay tuned for more developments in this research space as they arrive.
For more on why sleep affects how fast we age, jump to “Could treating insomnia slow biological aging? Study finds promising link.”
| |
