Two related studies published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences explored how sleep – or lack thereof – impacts one’s feelings of subjective age.
The adage, “You are as young/old as you feel” has the clear ring of truth, and sleep is the driving force of this feeling.
A 2022 study sought to characterize the discrepancy between chronological age and subjective age by analyzing 1,004 individuals aged 21 to 100. They found that subjective age was 11.5 years younger than chronological age, a discrepancy that increased with chronological age.
The first of the newly published studies queried 429 participants aged 18 to 70 about how old they felt, how many days in the past month they had not gotten enough sleep, and how sleepy they were. It turned out that for each night with insufficient sleep in the past month, participants felt on average 0.23 years older.
In the tandem second study, the researchers sought to validate that insufficient sleep was the culprit in feeling older. They conducted an experimental sleep restriction study involving 186 participants aged 18 to 46. Participants restricted their sleep for two nights – only four hours in bed each night – and then slept sufficiently for two nights, with nine hours spent in bed each night.
The study team determined that after sleep restriction, participants felt on average 4.4 years older compared to when having sufficient sleep. The effects of sleep on subjective age appeared to be related to how sleepy they felt. Feeling extremely alert was related to feeling 4 years younger than one’s actual age, while extreme sleepiness was related to feeling 6 years older than one’s actual age.
“This means that going from feeling alert to sleepy added a striking 10 years to how old one felt,” commented study lead author Leonie J.T. Balter. “Safeguarding our sleep is crucial for maintaining a youthful feeling. This, in turn, may promote a more active lifestyle and encourage behaviors that promote health, as feeling young and alert are important motivations to be active.”
We know that getting a solid night’s slumber is not the result of simply wishing it to be true or waving a magic wand. But there are natural solutions that can help millions of people relax, sleep and therefore, feel younger than their chronological age.
Nutriventia Solutions
Both melatonin and ashwagandha are proven supplements to coax sleep and condition the body to relax more easily, respectively.
Melotime™ is a unique melatonin shown to help provide eight hours of sound sleep. Its unique release profile can help improve sleep duration and quality as well as help ensure an alert, fresh awakening the next morning.
Melotime is released systematically during 8 hours of sleep, releasing the first 50% of the dose in the first hour and then the subsequent dosage is released at each 1 hour thereafter. This unique release profile ensures that the right dose of melatonin is achieved without the morning sluggishness.
A recent pharmacokinetic study compared Melotime and conventional immediate-release melatonin (IR). The IR exerted an immediate peak in melatonin within the first two hours of dosing and a rapid decline in another two hours (4 hours post supplementation). This may imply that such a rapid spike and decrease in melatonin within the first 4 hours may lead to the person abruptly waking up.
In contrast, the melatonin SR showed a steady increase and a gradual decrease in melatonin levels maintained over 6-8 hours post supplementation, increasing the chances of completing 8 hours of refreshing, healthy sleep.
Another critical component of a younger subjective age is the body’s ability to deal with stress, and to be desirably resilient. Ashwagandha is the go-to herb that, through time, increases the body’s ability to physiologically manage stress and increase resilience – this helps improve sleep.
Prolanza™ is a root-only ashwagandha ingredient with several distinctive features that set it apart from other ashwagandha ingredients on the market. Prolanza contains a high concentration (4-5%) of 10 USP withanolides and 10 additionally identified withanolides all working together to produce clinically demonstrated health benefits.
A human clinical study investigated the effects of a sustained-release ashwagandha (300 mg Prolanza®) once daily for 90 days. The researchers found that the ashwagandha supplement significantly improved attention, memory and sleep quality, reduced stress levels and boosted psychological well-being.
Healthy aging is a younger subjective age than one’s chronological age, and this is where proven supplements such as melatonin and ashwagandha can step in to keep the “olds” away.
Reviewed by Sneha Sawant Desai, PhD
