234 - Siesta and healthy aging in older Mediterranean people: the MEDIS epidemiological study (ID 531)
Abstract
Background and Aims
Sleep is a basic human need and is essential for good quality of life. The aim of the present work was to investigate the association between siesta, i.e., daytime sleep and healthy aging (HA) among older Mediterranean people.
Methods
2564 islanders from MEDIS study, >65years old, were enrolled. Participants who reported having siesta for over 5 days per week were defined as “daytime sleepers”. Various anthropometric, socio-economic, clinical, dietary and lifestyle characteristics were evaluated. HA was also evaluated using a validated index composed of 10 health-related social-, lifestyle- and clinical characteristics.
Results
Compared to non-daytime sleepers, daytime sleepers had 20% higher level of HA score (p=0.001), were more likely to be physically active (p=0.01), and to have higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet (p=0.02), while they were less likely to have hypercholesterolemia (p=0.04). Daytime sleepers had 6.7% higher HA score, compared to no daytime sleepers (p<0.001). Female daytime sleepers had 5.9% (±1.4%) higher HA score compared to non-daytime sleepers (p=0.008), whereas male daytime sleepers had an increase of 4.9% (±1.4%) on HA score (p=0.01) (p for sex comparisons <0.001). Regarding the effect of age, older old (i.e., over 80 years) daytime sleepers had 9-times higher odds of having HA score over the median (p<0.001) compared to their no daytime sleeper counterparts.
Conclusions
Siesta was independently associated with higher level of healthy aging. Siesta seems to be an important component of healthy aging and lifestyle and should be promoted and encouraged to older adults, since the aging process is a complex phenomenon.