Better Sleep With A Life Purpose

Want to stop tossing and turning? Get yourself a purpose in life. Researchers at Northwestern University and Rush University Medical Center have found that people with a purpose in life were 63 percent less likely to have sleep apnea and 52 percent less likely to have restless leg syndrome. They also had moderately better sleep quality, a global measure of sleep disturbance. A Northwestern University news release reports that the researchers studied the sleep patterns of more than 800 people between the ages of 60 and 100, using a 10-question survey on purpose in life and a 32-question survey on sleep. For the purpose in life survey, the sleepers were asked to rate their response to such statements as, “I feel good when I think of what I’ve done in the past and what I hope to do in the future.” The study is the first to show that having a purpose in life specifically results in fewer sleep disturbances and improved sleep quality and over a long period of time, although previous research showed that having a purpose in life generally improves overall sleep when measured at a single point in time.