WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine researcher Hans Van Dongen, PhD, was featured in a Prevention magazine article on 15 surprising reasons you can’t stay asleep at night.
Getting older can disrupt your sleep as you naturally wake up earlier, for reasons that aren’t fully understood, he said. Going to bed earlier helps ensure you get the same number of hours of sleep.
“You’re probably naturally getting tired earlier, but it’s easy to ignore or not notice the sleepiness if you’re used to staying up late,” Van Dongen told Prevention. “Most older people find that when they start getting into bed earlier, they fall asleep easily.”
Van Dongen is a professor in the college’s Department of Translational Medicine and Physiology and a core faculty member and former director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center.