One in seven older Irish adults are not getting enough sleep, new research has found.
The study, conducted by Trinity College Dublin, found that people are at risk of poor health as a result of not reaching the recommended hours of shut eye.
Adults aged 26 to 65 should get seven to nine hours' sleep each night, while those over 65 should aim for seven to eight hours of rest.
The research found that the majority of adults (70%) were getting the optimal amount of sleep, but 14% recorded an average sleep duration shorter than the recommended level.
17% were recorded as sleeping for longer than recommended.
The study was published by the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS).
The study, which focused on the sleep patterns of older Irish adults, tested more than 1,500 people over the space of a week using fitted devices.
The results showed that sleep duration increased with age, and that adults aged 50 years and older sleep for an average of seven hours and 42 minutes per night.
The study showed that poor health is more likely to be associated with shorter sleep compared with good health.
Physical activity also contributed towards a normal sleep.
TILDA researcher and lead author Siobhan Scarlett said: "While sleep duration is not recognised as a public health concern, this research highlights an important subset of Irish adults who are not meeting the recommended guidelines for sleep duration and are at increased risk of negative health outcomes.
"Awareness of the impact of sub-optimal sleep duration and factors potentially driving these patterns, particularly those which are modifiable, is important.
"Addressing the underlying causes of undesirable sleep patterns may help to facilitate improvements in the health and wellbeing of our older population.”
Previous studies on sleep have found that both sleeping too much and not enough could have a negative impact on peoples' health, such as contributing to cardiovascular and chronic disease, and impairments in cognitive and mental health.
