About half of older men suffer from sleep problems, back pain or both, according to Soomi Lee, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. Lee recently led a study to investigate whether one precedes the other and found that back problems can increase sleep problems years later in men over 65 years old.
"We know that back pain and sleep are serious issues for older adults," Lee said. "We studied data collected over several years to understand whether poor sleep could predict back pain or if back pain could predict poor sleep, and we found it was the latter."
In the study, published in Innovation and Aging, the researchers analyzed data from the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study, a study of 1,055 older men who completed two clinical sleep visits six or more years apart and answered questionnaire by mail about back pain - measured by severity and frequency - every four months between the two sleep study visits. Sleep problems were defined by irregular sleep, limited amounts of sleep and self-reports of daytime sleepiness and sleep satisfaction.
