I don’t know if it’s actually true, but it seems most old people wind up getting up very early and going to bed early as well. Is this a) true, and b) if so, what are the reasons this happens?
How old?
I tend to be awake and eating breakfast before 5:30 every morning, and since I need eight hours I am usually in bed before 9:30.
Is that early?
My parents are now old, but they’ve never changed their wakening hours. I’ve never known them to wake up after 6:30 am in my whole life.
I am 66 and go to bed after 2 AM. Is that early? We are a family of night owls. My brother, his son and my son go to bed late too. My wife goes to bed early and she is 56.
After she retired my Aunt who was 88 never got up before 10 a.m.
Nothing but a WAG, but old people getting up and going to bed early may have happened more often earlier in the last century reflecting habits of an agricultural society.
As people get older, they are more likely to have trouble sleeping. If you are unable to sleep at 5 a.m., you might as well get up and start the day.
I would WAG that it’s more appropriate for the sun. I mean, if you’ve got nothing to do all day, would you rather be up at 11:00 pm or when the sun’s up at 5:00 am?
yeah, that and the increase in stuff to do at night
i can’t imagine there being many 24 hour stores before the 80s, many television stations before cable ceased transmitting around midnight, no internet to keep people occupied, so a lack of options plus the vestiges of a more agrarian society would suggest that people get up earlier and sleep earlier too.
Yes. I would personally define “early” as getting up before 6:30 or even 7, especially if you don’t have to get up that early to get to work or school.
Physiologically you need less sleep the older you get.
Or is this just a myth?
My father is in his mid-seventies. Most nights he goes to bed long after midnight, and he rarely rises before 10 a.m.
My parents get up earlier and earlier because they don’t sleep as well or as much as they used to. They eat at a godawful early time (dinner at 5, lunch at 11, breakfast the night before just about) partly because my dad’s diabetic and partly because when you’re up at 5 I guess you get hungry earlier. They go to bed at 10 (although my dad never falls asleep then) and have a bowl of ice cream at 9, halfway through whatever movie’s on TCM. There was no daily bowl of ice cream when I was a kid, I tell you what! Sometimes they put creme de menthe on it!
Hard to say, but at 82 I still sleep 8-9 hours, possibly because I exercise strenuously daily, and have for years. After retiring, I actually spend more time hiking or mountain climbing than when I worked.
When I retired, I thought, hey great, now I can sleep to mid-morning like I did when a teen ager, but was aggravated to find I woke up around 6-7 am as i did when had to go to work.
I go to bed around 10 pm. We eat dinner around 5:30-6:00 only because my wife and I want to get the meal over with and the dishes washed early enough to relax the rest of the evening.
First of all, Klondike Geoff, you put us all to shame! 
I am a total night owl (age 42) even when I have to get up early. The last three weekends, I have gone to bed at 11:30 and slept until around 3 pm the next day (I usually got up from 7:30 - 9 or so and then went back to bed. I know “they” say you can’t make up lost sleep…whatever! I’ve been an insomniac since the age of 15 and, also, there’s just something wonderful about being awake when everyone else is asleep and being asleep when everyone else is awake. I’m a lunatic!
What I have read is that it’s a myth. The need for sleep doesn’t decrease, but often the ability to sleep does decrease. Many people assume that if they wake up at 5 am and can’t get back to sleep, it means they got all the sleep they needed, but that isn’t necessarily the case. People can survive on less than ideal amounts of sleep for quite some time. What’s interesting is that many of the effects of sleep deprivation look like symptoms of aging - poor memory, reduced ability to concentrate, etc.
Wait…you go to bed at 11:30 PM and sleep till 3 PM the next day? Cause…that’s not really that late to be up, but it seems like a long time to sleep for only being up till 11:30…
And older, retired people are more likely to be able to recover this missed sleep by taking a nap during the day. (Which can then make them wake up early again the next night.)
Younger people are working & busier, seldom have the chance to take a nap during the day. So if they had trouble sleeping or woke up early one day, they are likely to be tired and sleep soundly the next night.
I’m 64, self-employed and work at home, so although I work far more than 40 hours/week, I can work or sleep whenever I want to.
I tend to sleep 3 times a day: from around 11 am to around 2 pm; from around 10 pm to around midnight; and from around 4-5 am to around 7-8 am. It adds up to around 8 hours.
And yes, Tivo is my friend.
During the week I will stay up anywhere from 1-3am and beyond. If I’m up beyond 4, I’ll usually just stay up. And I still have to get up around 7:30. So, I get very little sleep during the week. That’s why I have the marathon sleepfests during the weekend. Sorry I didn’t make that clearer. Although it still may not make much sense!
There is a pattern in which one tends to shift toward an earlier day as one ages–but I think it hits before one gets actually old. When I was a teenager, my dad’s early-rising habits drove me up the wall. I’d sometimes be going to bed as he got up. At about 40, I started to get like him, so that I will sometimes voluntarily get up at 5–but not 4 as he sometimes does. Both of us are sound sleepers. Extreme shifting toward early rising is a recognized syndrome or disorder with a genetic component–sorry for not looking for the name. I believe it is always more pronounced with age. I imagine the milder version is related.