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Not enough sleep could harm bone health in older women

21/11/2019

Not enough sleep could harm bone health in older women

Older women who sleep for 5 hours a night or less are more likely to have lower bone mineral density (BMD) and osteoporosis, a new study has found.


Conducted by a team from the University at Buffalo, NY, the study involved 11,084 postmenopausal women, all of who were participants in the Women's Health Initiative.


It found that poor sleep may negatively affect bone health. Specifically, the team found that compared with women who got more sleep, those who reported getting only up to 5 hours of sleep per night had significantly lower values in four measures of BMD: the whole body, the hip, the neck, and the spine.


The lower BMD measures of the group getting less sleep were the equivalent of them being one year older than their peers in the more sleep group.


Now one explanation for why these results were seen is due to how our bodies remove old bone tissue and replace it with new bone tissue, a process known as bone remodeling.


“If you are sleeping less, one possible explanation is that bone remodeling isn't happening properly,” said lead study author Heather M. Ochs-Balcom, Ph.D., an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions.


The full findings of the study are published in a paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

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