Retirement Aids Sleep, Particularly in Men

Retiring from your work may mean better sleep, say researchers. Many times, difficulty sleeping comes from stress more than anything else. If you’re working at a job that you either don’t enjoy but do, but comes with a lot of stress, this could be the cause of many a sleepless night.

Researchers in Finland looked at almost 15,000 people who had difficulty sleeping. they found that sleep difficulty dropped from 24.1% to 17.8% one year after retirement, with an even larger drop by year seven after retirement.

According to the study,

The postretirement improvement in sleep also was more pronounced in men, management-level workers, employees who reported high psychological job demands, and people who occasionally or consistently worked night shifts.

There was a difference, however, if the retirement was health-related. It could be that the sleep difficulties in those cases were due to illness instead of stress.

The results of the study were published in the most recent issue of the journal Sleep.

~~~

Image: iStock.com